By James Spry - images & text © 2002

Image: Decals and Instructions

Image: Closer look at the decals

The Norway-class is the third and final starship from Star Trek®: First Contact to be produced in resin. A year or so ago Ask Models provided us with a poorly crafted and inaccurate version. This model was also difficult to acquire, but being the only one available at the time, I managed to purchase one and also did a review of the kit here on Starship Modeler.

I was thrilled to hear that another manufacture, Nova Hobbies, decided to create a new more accurate version of this rarely seen ship. I was requested by Nova Hobbies to provide another review of this ship, but this time with their product.

What You Get:

In a plain cardboard box, filled with a generous amount of packing peanuts, you get 7 resin pieces that make up the ship. The model is broken down into two warp engines, two pylons, the bridge, the primary hull and the stand. Instruction sheets and decals are also included.

The primary hull is nicely detailed with crisp deflector grid lines, and appears to be identical to the pictures in the Star Trek Encyclopedia. The bottom of the hull is entirely conjectural since the ship has never been seen from the bottom. Nova Hobbies took creative liberty and made the bottom fairly similar to the Steamrunner Class ship. No lifeboats are seen from the top, so it makes sense for them to be added to the bottom of the ship. There are few lifeboats, however if you choose to you can add additional lifeboats elsewhere on the ship using aftermarket decals. There are also no phaser strips so those will also need to be added if you choose to do so. This can be easily accomplished with sheet styrene. On my kit there are very minor bubbles at the front of the hull, but these are easily repairable.

The warp engines are a little rougher and will take additional work including removing excess flash and filling in bubbles and chips, but again this is easily done. The detail on the engines is a little sloppy and the lines appeared to be rushed when crafted however, they can be re-scribed with relative ease.

The pylons are nicely done and with only the exception of removing flash and seamlines with sanding, no additional work will be required for these pieces. No warping was evident in my kit.

Instructions & Decals:

Due to the fact that this model is a straightforward build, the instructions could be seen as quite spartan. They give a quick explanation of the ship from the movie and why certain details were included in the model. The only painting reference is a suggestion for the hull color and from the picture taken from the Star Trek Encyclopedia.

Accuracy:

As stated in the instruction sheet, there is very little reference material available on this ship. With the information I have at my disposal I compared the pieces with pictures and film and this kit appears to be very accurate. The actual length of the ship is pretty much a guess, but this model is smaller then the Ask Model kit. To state that one is more correct then the other is difficult at best, however.

Conclusion:

I believe this kit was nicely done overall and I was very happy to add it to my collection of Trek models in 1/1400 scale. The usual clean up is required as is expected in any resin kit. Nova Hobbies is improving with every new kit they produce and I look forward to future kits from this company. Order this kit with confidence and sell your Ask Models kit on EBAY, it is more trouble then it is worth.