Just a quick project I worked on in 2009. The Cheyenne-class was one of several kitbashed models that appeared very briefly on screen in the TNG episode ‘Best of Both Worlds’, in the Wolf 359 graveyard scene. I decided to flesh the design out properly. This included some slight reworking of areas that I didn’t like. For example, the original model used marker pens for the engines!
You can see the original model at Memory Alpha.
Cheyenne-class Model
The main changes I made were the engines. As mentioned above, these were just marker pens on the original! Here, I have fleshed them out a little, hopefully retaining the general character of the original. There’s no indication as to what the pod-like structures at the top and bottom of the ship were intended to be, because there are no photos of the rear of the model. I decided to make the top one into a shuttlebay, but the lower one could perhaps be a cargo bay. I did not bother modelling an interior for that one, though.
The texturing job reads a little flat to me here. Perhaps one day I will revisit this one, and rework the materials to be inline with my current standards.
There were several other minor alterations that simply made sense, usually to do with scale. I used the saucer windows and bridge model as scale cues. Based on those references, I assume that the saucer rim is thick enough to contain a full-height deck. I used the rim as my starting point, and drew up an approximate internal plan of the decks. The saucer windows on my model are pretty much identical to the original, so I think that largely validates my starting assumption. Unfortunately, the windows in the ‘neck’ portions of the ship were clearly over-scaled on the original. They appear to have been marked on at the same length as those on the saucer, but that fails to account for the extreme angle the saucer windows are at. Applying consistent deck heights throughout the ship yields the window arrangement you see on the finished model.
2018 Update: Navigational Deflector
I was persuaded to add a navigational deflector to my version of the ship, partly thanks to seeing a new photo of the original model that showed the underside. The deflector is of course the same type that can be found on the underside of the Galaxy-class saucer. Adding this in required new transporter emitters, and I moved the ship’s registry at the same time. The lifepods also required some adjustments to accommodate it.
Would you be open to sharing your model files for this? I’d love to 3d print your Cheyenne class. It’s easily the best model I’ve seen of one.