All the electronics were assembled and tested before anything was glued together. Then I had to cut many of the wires so that I could construct the model. I built the ship in subassemblies: the secondary hull and neck, the warp engines, and the primary hull. This allowed for ease of painting and decaling with what I hoped would be only minor touchups upon final assembly.

As everyone knows the most time consuming part of any Star Trek model is the painting. The Enterprise A is probably the most complicated of all the Star Trek models because of the detail and complexity of the actual studio model. I spent many hours looking at pictures of the studio model and figuring out exactly how I was going to paint this beast. After many failed paint tests on a piece of scrap sheet styrene I finally realized that my base color was wrong. While the studio model was painted Pearlescent White for Star Trek: The Motion Picture it was repainted several times afterward. The Enterprise A is in fact not a white ship. It is actually many various shades of gray. With that realization I was able to develop a proper base coat by mixing a little of Testor's Model Master Aircraft Gray and Light Gray together. All the rest of the paneling was done with slight modifications from this base color.

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