USS Icarus |
| By April Welles |
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This is the USS Icarus, NC-166, a pre-TOS build I did for my Off-Hand Challenge (a challenge I came up with in the SSM Forums). The Icarus was one of the Daedalus-class ships that fought during the opening months of the Earth-Romulan War. Most of the Task Force she was in were destroyed. The Icarus herself was severely damaged. The spherical primary hull was, for all intents and purposes, gone. All that remained- fortunately for the survivors- was the Bridge and 'B' deck. The forward two-thirds of the sphere had been blown away by a Romulan ship's self destruction. Access to the secondary hull was accomplished via ladders and Jeffries tubes. The secondary hull had sustained much damage as well, taking the remaining crew- and the one hundred rescued survivors of the task force- nearly a week to make her warp capable again. During which time the captain, who had been injured during battle, died. Once she was repaired, the First Officer ordered their return from the disputed zone. Within a parsec of Andor their engines finally gave out. Sending a hyper-pulse radio signal, they were able to be rescued and the Icarus was towed back to Andor for a consensus for repair. The majority of the ship was repairable, but the primary hull was a total loss. The Andorian engineers had come up with a new design they wished to try. |
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According to their simulations the saucer design would increase warp envelope inclusion, thus making it more energy efficient, and a smoother slip into warp space. This also increased the ship's top warp speed by a factor of 1. Due to the new primary hull design the Deflector/Sensor system was moved from the front of the ship (in what used to be behind a radome in the sphere) to further back on the ship and exposed for more efficient sensor readings and deflection of space material. Because of the severity of the war Starfleet needed all available ships, and she was pushed forward in her repairs and upgrades. After six months at the Tenebian Shipyards above Andor the Icarus was launched. She received the new Starfleet markings as well as her improvements. She now had a fuller laser firing arc than before. Her dorsal saucer laser was able to fire nearly the entire diameter of the ship, including any angle beneath her. She also had an upgraded missile launch system just above the turret. To cope with the new flatter-rounded design the ship has thicker decks than her descendants. The primary hull is six decks thick. However those decks are strongly reinforced. When she was launched she was sent to the front lines and performed magnificently, returning from the war heroic after engaging in 31 missions. Once the war was over she was decommissioned and subsequently used for target practice for the new Mk I photon torpedoes - an inglorious end for such a valiant vessel. This ship was built nigh-on entirely with my left hand, my "off-hand" (as I am a right-handed person). I say "nigh-on" because I used my right hand for using cutting and drilling devices for safety. Everything else - glueing, puttying, sanding (more puttying, more sanding), painting and decaling was done with my left hand. The model itself was held in my right. I used a Cheetah Productions Daedalus kit as the donor for this Challenge. I also used the saucer section from the 1/1600 scale kit, and the endcaps came from some leftover 'Zoids' toys. The base color is Acrylic camouflage gray. The decals were a mixture of ones sold through the store (Cheetah Productions; Pre-TOS markings) and spares from my studio. | |
