by John Douglass

At a time when Earth's shipbuilding facilities are engaged in new construction, turning out state-of-the-art war craft, smaller facilities throughout the solar system were hard at work converting older spaceworthy craft into long-range patrol craft. Such ships were relegated to the far-off reaches of planetary space for long, boring voyages with little hope of contact, and a pronounced preference (and orders!) for running instead of fighting when there is.

This one started as an Albatross-class light transport, the Robert Robbins. The interior space and much of the exterior was replaced with sensor equipment. One long-range weapon was added more for the psychological health of the lone pilot than in any expectation of usefulness. The engines were also replaced with modern, if custom-made, oversized units to give the vessel the power it needs to quickly investigate spacial anomalies which signal the arrival of enemy vessels, and escape to give warning of same. As with all vessels of this class, initial re-construction was followed by the only paint job it would ever get, with the result that subsequent upgrades or repairs were often quite apparent.

I took as my inspiration Harugoro's Griffon 2, a copy of a Kow Yokoyama ship pictured in the Model Graphix series, Maschinen Krieger Blechmann. I started with an amphibious Albatross, one of those ancient Monogram kits that was proud of all the rivets, yet which contained a decent amount of inset panel lines. Go figure.

I lopped-off the ends and stuck the top of the wing into the slot where the cockpit windows had been, turning the whole model upside down and backwards in the process. But, I wanted the engines to be forward-projecting tubes, and now the wings had rearward-facing engine fairings! What to do, what to do...

So I made a grill - a section of layered custom-shaped disks to accomodate both shapes as an interface. Have to remember that trick.After that was the fun part - Adding a plastic test-tube to be a sensor package and a lot of stuff to be... A lot of stuff.

Image: Rear view

Image: Underneath

Image: Top view