I’ve been working over this 1/32 Colonial Viper cockpit for the last couple days. I began by opening up several instrument faces for lighting.
I constructed a light tunnel in front of the main IP to shield the side instruments from light bleed. All open faced were filled with clear plastic card then had various instrument decals applied over them.
Then it was a simple matter of testing the lighting system. The camera kind of went nuts trying to auto adjust the light but the instruments light up very nicely showing great detail. The blue is a little overdone because the 1.6mm LEDs for those have not arrived yet. I’m letting an engine 5mm LED do double duty for the test.
Is that a lighting kit for that specific kit, or did you build it yourself?
WOW!Please finish this one kinda quick like!
This lighting kit is made from scratch. I think there are a couple of production kits out there already but really, I only have about $5 tied up in this one.
Mk. VII?
Mk. VII would be very cool but this one is the classic Mk. II. Maybe a Scarlet Viper in the near future.
For lighting the Viper: I definitely recommend you make your own lights from scratch. I bought an after-market kit and paid way too much for what it was, and had to throw away the plastic parts they sent because they didn’t fit and the original kit parts looked far better.
For the engines, I used white LEDs and painted the clear plastic lenses with Tamiya transparent blue acrylic, airbrushed. Here’s a view of mine. I also put a red LED in the cockpit but nothing nearly as neat as what Swanny is doing here. Great job, sir!
Yours sure looks good Chuck.
I’ve been puttering along on this project for a while now but today I took a vacation day from work, the wife is working, my daughter is working all day so I got some serious modeling done. The fuselage is now ready to assemble
and I was able to run an initial engine test.
Wow, great work on the Viper! Are you going to post a tutorial on LED lighting to your site? I tried LED lighting for an SA-16 Albatross I did a few years ago but didn’t have something that was apparently necessary, and the result was that about a second after putting AA-battery to the LED leads, the LED burned out.
I have a Fine Molds X-Wing, Y-Wing and TIE Fighter that I am holding in the stash until I can develop a comfort level in working with lighting.
I did some tutorial work for lighting on my Iron Man build on my site. Not sure how much I’m going to post on this one but do have the Fine Molds X-Wing coming up and will probably get pretty in-depth with it.
WOW ! She’s turning out good.
I have that kit with all the Extra’s too. Hope when I get to building it, it looks as good as yours.
Bud
What you were missing was the current limiting resistor. If you look at the catalogue for the LED, there will be a number of figures given for Forward Voltage etc. The important one is the maximum forward current which must never be exceeded. Knowing the supply voltage and the maximum current, it is easy, using Ohm’s Law, to work out the required resistance which is connected in series between the sypply and the LED.
Ohm’s Law
Most of the 5mm and 3mm LEDs can handle about 20 milli-amps mA of current so to keep things simple just take the voltage you plan on using like say a nine volt battery then divide that by the amperage, .02 and you get your minimum allowable resistance. 9/.02=450 Now you need to install a 450 ohm resistor, OR GREATER, on the plus side of your power line before the LED. There is more to Ohm’s Law than this but this is the area that impacts our discussion. As the Ohm value (resistance) increases the LED will get dimmer. I had a hard time finding 450 Ohm resistors for my project so stepped up to the 470 Ohm unit and really you cannot tell that the LED is any dimmer plus it’s lifespan will be a bit longer now.
Putting a steady LED in a model is really a very simple thing to do. Getting them to flash or strobe gets a little more complex because you have to add timer chips, capacitors and diodes to the circuit.
This one is done. I don’t have good luck taking low light pictures with my digital camera so apologize for the slight blur but in person the lights inside are crisp, sharp and bright. The wooden box holds the battery and cost me a buck at the craft store.
Beautiful job, Swanny! The cockpit lighting is most impressive. I also had the idea of using a box something like you did for the battery. However, I managed to cram the battery inside the fuselage and left the thruster assembly unglued so it can be pulled off for battery replacement. I used a miniature slide switch mounted in the underbelly of the ship, with the actuator sticking out through a small hole. Can’t even see it if you aren’t looking for it!
This kit was well made and a lot of fun to build. It’s easy for a beginner to build a basic model, but it can be enhanced as far as the imagination can go, and can be a challenge to experienced modelers as well.
Here’s another shot of mine in the daylight-
Great job on yours, Swanny. I gotta get me one of these kits! One of the fellas in the local model club is doing something similar to yours. He broke open a Photo-Etch cockpit set in the same scale to further detail his, but you’ve got more light holes opened up.
Thanks for sharin’, as well as to you, too, Cadet Chuck.
Throwing one of these together now myself…that’s some pretty sweet work Swanny. [#toast]
Thanks
What fun! Makes me want to build something with lighting.
Swanny
in addition to the great build I like your switch it is well incorporated!
we have multiphase LEDs that are no larger than a “jumbo” led inside our TIE costume chestboxes. I think the hole size needed for this is 3/16 inch or better.
They run off a 9V battery with a resistor in series to each LED. I am running two multiphase (red/blue/green alternating) and two steady (red white) LEDs off of one battery, and the bright white is the big power draw. When the white one starts getting dim after about 5 hours or so it’s time to change batteries.
The mutliphase would be good for a display that would need to change constantly. I dont know if there are other color combinations out there, the circuit is all internal and looking at it I cannot tell it from any other clear domed LED.