Background

With a renewed sense of paranoia over increasing dominion confidence and the Romulan involvement, the Klingons agreed with federation officials and engineers to combine technologies and intelligence - named after the military advisor to Chancellor Gorkon, the 'Falchion Class' U.S.S Kerla was the product.

A revolutionary Heavy Fighter craft capable of high warp speeds, with the firepower to engage capital ships, this class has incredible sub-lightspeed manoeuvrability, enabling ships to dogfight with the more elusive single-pilot fighters. Equipped with a Klingon cloaking device, it is excellent for reconnaissance as well as spearheading large-scale strikes.

The Klingon/Federation alliance has also allowed the culmination and development of weaponry, namely modified type 'U' Federation pulse phaser emitters; modified Klingon disrupters giving twice the yield of the B'rel-mounted disrupters. Strip phasers are located on the aft dorsal and mid ventral. The forward Quantum torpedo launchers are accompanied by SRSHS (short range shield harmonic sensors). At shorter range than 2k, these can match the torpedo frequency to the shield harmonics of the threat vessel. Each torpedo launcher is equipped with a dedicated ammunition replicator for sustained sorties. Aft and ventral launchers are placed for heavy bombing runs.

It uses upgraded technology comparable to that used aboard the U.S.S Defiant to prevent structural integrity collapse at high warp. This ship has 1/3 the mass but the same engine output as the Defiant.

• Front quarter, lit
• Aft quarter, lit

This ship also has an Ablative armour matrix consisting of a castrodinium/neutronium composite over standard duranium/tritamium hull plate. It has regenerative, multi-layered shielding with random modulation settings. The ship has 4 Decks with the first longitudinal warp core stretching fore to aft along the length of the ship. Thrusters are concealed on the warp core, providing an extremely high yield, last-ditch, close proximity weapon. It carries a crew of 30 Human and Klingon.

Model Details

The ship is 100% scratch-built with no kit parts at all. It was designed in conjunction with a colleague. In addition to the co-operative design, he donated some smaller surface details however I constructed and painted the Kerla solely by myself. Dimensions are Length = 57.4cm, Height = 18.9cm, Width = 64.4 cm, constructed in white and black sheet styrene of differing widths, and lit with small Christmas tree bulbs powered by a 10V main adapter. Designing started on the 5th May 1999, and building finished on the 29th June 1999. The paint is Humbrol matte enamel. Due to the lack of universal decal sheets where I live, I had to paint the registries and markings entirely by hand. These and other small details have been blurred due to the 72-dpi-resolution limit.