Scale: 1/1000
It was a well-known fact among her circle of friends that one of Starfleet's most brilliant engineers and starship designers, Isobel Crusher (yes, the daughter of Wesley) was a bit of a geek (like her father) and a huge fan of vintage sci-fi stories and antique entertainment media.
It was this obsession with vintage sci-fi that led to her most celebrated design - the Spectre class. Isobel was heavily influenced by the "Ghost" from the Star Wars franchise, when she was designing the shape (and indeed naming) this class.
Following on from the renowned Defiant Class, and the other classes of compact warships that it spawned, the Spectre-class frigate was the latest of Starfleet's line of ships designed for military missions rather than exploration. Although primarily a "warship", the class is equipped with some research labs, and other crew and support facilities that you might expect to see on light exploration cruisers and mid-range scout ships, enabling it to be used in non-military missions during more peaceful times.
Being quite quick and easy to build, Spectre-class ships were included (to act as escorts) in the many fleets that were sent into the Gamma Quadrant as part of the ongoing exploration and diplomatic missions which continued for years after the end of the Dominion War.
One of the defining features of this design was the angular shapes incorporated into the hull which not only aided in deflecting sensor scans (helping the ship be more stealthy, even if not a full "cloaking" effect) but also working in combination with the enhanced hull plating and improved shield technology to increase the deflection of energy weapons, such as phasers and disruptors, to make it superbly resilient in a fight. Another interesting feature of this class is that, not only does it have a number of large "escape pods" along the dorsal side of the rear hull, but the whole front hull can detach and act as a non-warp escape craft in the event of a catastrophic failure of the ship.
The USS Eisenberg became one of the most illustrious of these ships towards the end of the 2410's (after the "Star Trek: Picard" era). Of particular note was its successful single-handed defence of fleet of 6 Cardassian science ships from an unprovoked attack by the Lo-torri (a not well known insular race in the Gamma Quadrant), which paved the way for a stronger treaty between Cardassia and the Federation and their eventual entry into the Federation family.
Model Construction
In my head, I thought the idea of the contest was to build a vehicle using parts from both Star Trek and Star Wars and blend them together - I'm sure there are some out there that think that that is heresy.
Construction started with a "Ghost" model from the "Star Wars X-Wing" range of miniatures. The engines were cut off and other "sticky-out bits" were also sawn off. Next, the front portion of an XL-sized Eaglemoss Star Trek Runabout was cut-off and attached to the rear end of the modified Ghost, upside down, so that the front windows would become the navigational deflector (after a bit of filing to make it a single recessed rectangle). Other items, such as Lego bricks, sponge-foam sheets, card and filler were all used to further modify the shape of the main part of the hull. A small "tank track" part from my bits-box was used to become the impulse engine deck.
Finally, pontoons/floats from a float-plane model were assembled, and a hole cut into each one so that they could be mounted as warp nacelles. I chose those for the nacelles because they reminded me of the nacelles on the Zheng He, Riker's new ride in ST: Picard - being the time period that I'm placing this ship in.
The whole model was painted a mid-to-dark grey colour and then smaller details were painted,and decals (designed and printed by myself) were added to complete the final detailing phase.
The Spectre-class frigate is presented to you in 1:1000 scale.