Scale: 1/2500 - right at 2"/ 5.08cm long by 2.75"/ 7cm wingspan

Parts: 9 resin, which includes one each main hull, two wing pylons and three parts for each of the nacelles (no base).

Instructions: One page, two sided which is part of the packaging. One side serves as a good guide for where all parts need to go and the flip side serves as both as a painting and decal guide.

Decals: One full-color sheet. Decal sheet includes Bird-of-Prey feather pattern for top and bottom, as well as black TNG-Style Romulan "Warbird" emblem markings.

Molding Quality: 10 - pretty darned crisp, with exactly NO air bubble on my sample, only some very minor mold seams that will easily be removed

Detail: 10 - Nicely detailed

Accuracy: 10 - Looks dead On

MSRP: $20.00 USD (~$11.91 CAN/ € 8.56 EUR) available from Federation Models

Overall Rating: 10 - Very nice kit that needs very little cleanup work

Time to go Old School Trek, folks!

Back in December of 1966, we got an episode of Star Trek which showed that the United Federation of Planets had Cold War enemy of sorts - the Romulans - in "The Balance of Terror". Contrary to popular belief, the Romulan Star Empire was the first known enemy, not the Klingons. The first look we get of their ship is a glimpse as it drops briefly from "cloak" to fire on a small outpost which monitors the Romulan/Federation border. Kirk and the Enterprise must pursue to stop the Romulans from returning to Romulus with the news that Star Fleet can't penetrate their cloaking device. The ship mounting the cloaking device is the Romulan Bird-of-Prey, easily recognizable due to the large bird emblem on the underside of the hull, stretching across the pylons making them look like wings.

Gizmotron Models adds yet another great and classically elegant ship to his ever expanding number of great Star Trek related kits. As with all things Gizmotron, this kit is no exception to the high quality standard we've we've been getting from this manufacturer for about four years now. There are a number of accurate - and some inaccurate - models of this iconic Romulan ship available in a variety of scales.

It's a ship design that a number of fans of The Sacred Scale (1/2500, for the Heathen Few out there) have been asking for for quite some time now - and we've now got one to add to our TOS Era Romulan lineup.

What I Got

The kit comes packaged in a small ziploc bag on backing board with a color painting guide which also serves as decal placement guide. You get a total of 9 resin cast pieces: one each main hull, two wings and three parts to each of two engines. No base is included. There is also a small decal sheet which includes the now famous Romulan Bird-of-Prey pattern for the underside of the wings, as well as for the feathers on the top of the main hull and wings. This is one of the most accurate models of the RBoP (as it's referred to in the vernacular) I've laid my eyes on - and it's only about 2.75" / 7cm across! It includes the forward plasma disrupter emitter, as well as deflector grid lines, windows and hatches topside for shuttlecraft, as well as landing pads so the RBoP can land.

As previously mentioned, the backing card is also a basic two-page, front and back instruction and painting/decal sheet. The resin appears to be the standard gray resin that we've come to expect from Gizmotron the last several years. The resin pieces have only a touch of flash and with very little in the way of some seam lines. What little bit of both that exist are easy to take care of with a bit of Xacto and sand paper work.

Detail is crisp and clean and consists of mostly recessed recessed windows, deflector grids and hatches on the exterior of the hull. The main hull and warp nacelles are beautifully done and all parts are keyed to easily fit. The nod to the old McMaster (I think?) set of RBoP blueprints, which show the shuttle hatches and landing pads, is a nice little extra.

Assembly and Finish

I've only done a dry-fitting after cleaning the pieces with some some Comet Cleaner™, rinsed the parts, then cleaned again with Scrubbing Bubbles™ to make sure that any mold release was well and truly gone from the models surface. Just a very little bit of sanding was required to remove mold seams. The dry-fit assembly was straight foward with the parts fitting very easily and requiring no additional work to get them all to fit. I've used "Super Glue Gel" (Duro brand) to glue the parts of my other Gizmotron Models kits together and imagine that there will be no problem with this kit, either.

Conclusions

I'm very happy to own this and look forward to completing it for my collection, at some point in the future. My TOS Era Romulan Fleet has a new addition that looks pretty amazing, IMNSHO. If you're a fan of the Romulans, this is definite addition to your collection that you won't regret. Especially since they've been woefully under-represented in the modeling world.