Scale: 1/1400 - about 10.5" / 27 cm long

Parts: 8 resin

Instructions: 1 page for both painting & decal placement

Decals: ALPS-printed waterslide markings for one ship

Molding Quality: 8 - some flaws and bubbles

Detail: 8+ - quite good work

Accuracy: 9 - very good, despite few references

MSRP: $60.00 USD (~$85.82 CAN/ € 53.66 EUR) available from Federation Models

Overall Rating: 8+ -- worth the money

Image: Top of the saucer

Image: Underneath the saucer

For several years I built the standart ERTL kits of numerous ships of the Star Trek universe. But ERTL didn't produce all of those interesting ships of Starfleet and of course not all of their ships are in scale with each other, so I decided to earn more experience in modelling with resin. I looked around for a good resin kit to start with. I think the USS Awhahnee is a likely candidate - so I came up with the Cheyenne-Class kit from Starcrafts.

WHAT YOU GET

In total there are 8 white resin parts, seven of them to make the model. The last one is the well known Starcrafts base. The model itself consists of the saucer part with the two "necks", one to the upper and one to the underside, the two pylons which will each be holding two nacelles when assambled, and at last the four nacelle parts. In the box you find a one sided "paint guide" (it's not really paint guide, just a listing of which colors you should use), which also shows where to place decals. In my box I found two identical paint guides and two identical decal sheets, but I think this is an exception. There was no brass rod or anything included to connect the model to the base.

The kit comes well packaged in a box filled with styrofoam peanuts. The model looks great for what I can tell - perhaps not everybody loves the design and it isn't my favourite too, but I like it. On a closer look I could see some flaws on the saucer, the two pylon parts and the nacelles, but I think it's nothing what sanding couldn't cure. The model parts nearly are completely free of flash;only the base has still a lot of release agent still on it.

There are some bubbles on this kit. Most of them are at the front and the end of the warp nacelles, with three nearly unnoticeable bubbles on the saucer. The whole rest of the kit is bubble free. There is no warping on any of the pieces, and both pylon pieces have been worked out very nicely. The detail of the kit is very good. There aren't a lot references for this model as far as I know, but for that, the kit is well detailed. The windows are the same type and size as ERTLs Galaxy-Class windows are, not as many for sure but they look quite good. I think it is absolutely accurate to the references you'll be able to find on the net.

There are decals included for one ship, the USS Awhahnee. These waterslide decals look good, but seem to be more "fragile" than the decals you know by ERTL. As I mentioned before, I had two decal sheets in my box, but I think that has been a little "gift" of Starcrafts, which is an exception.

ASSEMBLY AND FINISH

CONCLUSIONS

Even if this kit has some flaws and bubbles, I think it is a very nice one. Starcrafts has produced a nice model with great details, despite the lack of references around about this ship. The kit shouldn't be to difficult to handle even for an beginner in resin models. Over here in Germany most models are more expensive than in the US, but I think at $60 it is worth its price.