Scale: 1/1400

Parts: 16 resin

Instructions: 1 page

Decals: 1 set of pendants

Molding Quality: 7 some flash but no pinholes in mine

Detail: 7 - raised panels

Accuracy: 8 - Looks fine from what I can tell

MSRP: $60 US available from Federation Models

Overall Rating: 8 - this is a subject that is really needed and is presented at a good price and high quality

For your money you get 16 pieces of just slightly off-white resin, which together make up the additional parts of the Enterprise D as it was seen in the final Next Generation episode 'All Good Things'. You will need the ERTL Enterprise D kit to complete the model. Any version of the ERTL kit should be fine (original TNG, Generations and fibre optic versions) as I believe they are the same apart from the coloured clear parts in the fibre optic version. The parts have some flash on them, but this is not excessive and will not require considerable time and effort to remove. The edges appear a little ragged but it is difficult to tell whether this is due to resin missing along the edge or the flash. Casting quality appears good, and certainly compares with the few other resin kits I have. The parts come in the standard StarCrafts packaging and were well protected with styrofoam peanuts (mine came all the way to the UK without any damage).

Here's what's provided.

Your get the additional nacelle which is in 5 pieces, 2 parts for the top and bottom, 2 clear parts for the warp coils and a clear piece for the bussard collector. This means that the additional nacelle can, if you wish, be lit. I have quickly experimented with the additional bussard collector and because it is solid (the kit parts are hollow) the lighting effect it produces is different. Probably best to use one from another kit if you're lighting and use the solid one in an unlit version. The nacelle parts are obviously recasts of the ERTL pieces, but this means that the new nacelle should blend in well with the two kit parts.

The bulges on the tops of the nacelles (whatever these are, cloaking devices or phasers) are provided for the kit nacelles and is already moulded onto the additional one. A nice touch is that these locate into the 2 indentations on the tops of the nacelles, making alignment easy.

Panel lines are raised on both parts, as you would expect since the ERTL parts are raised, but they look sharp and the reproduction process has not adversely affected this detail.

The additional nacelle support is solid and will need to be drilled through if you intend to light your model. The piece that runs along the top of the secondary hull, and provides new impulse engines, is also solid and lighting up the windows along the sides of this would involve removing a lot of resin. Fit of this part appears fine and it sits over the existing kit parts.

The wings are the bottoms of the kit nacelles also provide the phaser details seen in the AGT version. Again, holding the part up to a built model the fit looks fine.

The torpedo launcher behind the bridge and the additional phaser parts to the sides of the bridge look accurate to the pictures I've seen. The small parts for the phasers would benefit from being bagged separately. It might be worth rebuilding the tips of these with brass or styrene.

Finally there is the megaphaser on the bottom of the primary hull. The main part looks fine and again accurate to the pictures. The part which goes around the neck is for me the hardest to fit. It's position is difficult to judge and the instructions are not helpful, though I'm sure that when I actually assemble it things will become obvious.

Perhaps most disappointing is the instructions. This is only my second StarCrafts kit (the first being the Equinox, which as a 1 piece model has no assembly), so I don't know whether this is typical. Several pictures are helpfully provided but the precise location of the parts is up to the modeller. This isn't too difficult to work out though by referring to reference pictures.

The decals provide new pendants for the top of the nacelles only. There is a lot of pinstriping (pretty much around everything), depending on how accurate you want to be there is going to be some additional decals to purchase. I believe that the new sheets for the Galaxy class from Thomas Models cover some of these, but as I haven't seen them in the flesh I can't confirm that.

I'm more than happy with this conversion kit and I'm looking forward to putting it all together. I'm planning on lighting mine, so between the conversion kit and the parts for lighting this is likely to be an expensive project (Of course I bought this one before Federation Models dropped their price!). Hopefully someone will produce a decal sheet for the missing features to augment the one provided.