I ordered Bandai's TMP Enterprise snap kit from HobbyLink Japan on August 19, 2003, and the package arrived September 4. The total cost after shipping was 7780 yen (around 66 US dollars). All the hull pieces were pre-painted, and detailing was quite accurate, given that the overall length is only 14.5 inches. The kit included 6 grain-of-wheat bulbs to light all the windows, the warp nacelles, and the deflector dish. The lighting system is powered by 3 AA batteries stored in the display base. The instructions are impressively illustrated and describes each step in 9 languages.

Like a couple of other people, I decided that the bulbs included were not adequate for the nacelles and for the deflector dish. The nacelles and the deflector dish looked kind of green instead of blue. To rectify this, I used blue LEDs (part# E7113PBC-H) from eled.com with 1/4 watt, 100 ohm resistors soldered to the positive leads. The problem with this was that the bulb used to light the deflector also supplies light to part of the secondary hull. To solve this, I kept all the original bulbs in the secondary hull and stuck a blue LED right behind the deflector. Then I placed aluminum foil behind the blue LED to prevent it from being visible from the rest of the hull windows. I would have loved to have cut the arboretum windows out and lighted those and added other lights to the model, but I was afraid of damaging it. I hate having to periodically replace batteries, so I connected a 4.5 volt AC adapter to the base.

Wiring the electrical system was time-consuming. The nacelle wires actually run outside of the pylons and are covered by blue tape. The resulting look isn't smooth and therefore somewhat disappointing. All of the wires are connected to a hub in the secondary hull. Connecting each wire indvidually as the manual instructed got messy and made them frayed. After several tries, I decided to simply twist all the red wires together and all the white wires together before connecting them to the hub.

It's hard to see in the pictures, but there are gaps in the exterior seams that allow for light to bleed out. The most obvious of these are in the secondary hull and nacelles. Other than cementing the seems, which I've decided against, there aren't a lot of options to address this.

Overall I think Bandai did a very good job. The gaps and light defficiencies will have to be dealt with by anybody assembling this kit, but no kit is perfect. If I ever get my hands on another one of these kits, I'll add more light modifications.