The "Blighty Fighter"

For many worlds the only line of defence against the constant pirate raids is the ubiquitous Blighty Fighter. Designed by Steve Atkins to be an affordable, effective alternative to a full-range planetary defence grid and battle-fleet, The Blighty Fighter is most often seen deployed as point defence in frontier or colony volunteer/militia forces where no dedicated military organization can be supported. The success of the Blighty Fighter is probably due to its sophisticated design which combines the power of paired Gates engines with the punch of twin pulsar cannon in a package easily maintained in the least technically advanced environments. In even amateur hands, the Blighty Fighter is a force to be reckoned with.

Star Trek: Insurrection featured bad-guy aliens, the Son'a, whose ships were themed off of horseshoes. And they had a really neat shuttle, that I tried to copy. I'm only telling you this 'cause you probably couldn't tell by looking at it...
AWonderfest Certificate of Merit Winner.

Some time before, Lost in Space was released as a movie, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models International had a long two-issue article on it, featuring lovely stills and pre-production art of the "bubble-fighter". The bubble-fighter had some bold graphics that inspired some of the paint on the Blighty Fighter.

The last inspiration for this 'ship was a little piece of freeware, named Sam Spade, written by Steve Atkins for Win9x peecee's. For those of us stuck on Unix boxen or behind a firewall at work there's a web-based version, SamSpade. Both provide most every tool anybody needs to determine where a spam has come from, and who to complain to for it. Unfortunately, I have to use both tools several times a day (I get a lot of spam).