I’ve been wanting to try lighting a model with LEDs, but I don’t know where to start. Any tips?
The Academy/Accurate Miniatures TBM Avenger looks like it lends itself to lighting, it’s got nice clear covers over all the formation lights, beefy wings with plenty of room for wiring, a cavernous fuselage, and a detailed radio compartment that otherwise is going to end up dark and invisible. I really think some LEDs would help this kit shine (forgive the pun). I’m thinking a setup with 5-6 small LEDs would work.
First thing would be understanding how a LED works - things like how much current over a diode you need, and the voltage drop over the diode that there is, different for diodes of different colours. Then you need to decide what power source you will use, and where to put it - if it’s a battery, you probably want a way to replace it when it gets used up, and a switch to turn the lights on an off. Once you decide how many diodes and what colours you want to have, you can make a wiring diagram, then connect the diodes “on the table” to verify it. Then you put all of the diodes in your model and start wiring them. You don’t really need much space for wiring, very thin wires will do the job easily. If you have more questions, I’d be glad to help. Good luck with your project, have a nice day
To be honest I’ve done a very little lighting of kits and most kits don’t work very well with them. If your doing a Sci-fi kit they I’d say go for it as they lend themselves to it but a WW2 aircraft I’d say no, its a lot of work and worry for maybe four lights.
Have a look for lighting kits as they take a lot of the stress out of building the loom and they are often built to fit the kit, but again its pretty much all Sci-fi. If you want to start on a kit just to light I’d have a look at the new Dragon Iron Man kit as it has a couple of easy places to light (its in my stash to do this) or the Mobious Cylon Raider from the last Battlestar Galactica as you can get lighting kits to fit in that easily and look very good.
LEDs need to have a resistor in series to limit the current, since the LED itself has a weird variable resistance and it is easy for them to draw too much current. One needs to be able to use Ohm’s law to calculate the value of this resistor from the current limit on the LED and the voltage you intend to use. Some LED sets come with a suggested value- most just expect you to calculate it.
One would think that some enterprising soul out there would be making and selling LED aircraft light sets, ready to use… I know that I’d buy some for my 1/32 stash.
I suppose it depends on the scale of the aircraft. One solution for smaller scale I have seen is that the guy put the LEDs in the fuselage interior and ran fiber optics out to the nav and landing light areas. It is hard to find LEDs small enough for the actual landing and especially nav lights in anything other than 1:32 scale.
Surface mounted LEDs can be VERY small - just a question if you can solder them. It’s worth a try. I guess they don’t sell too many LED light sets, because of the different options on one hand, and the relative ease and low cost of doing that yourself on the other hand. Give it a try, I’ll help you with the theory! Good luck with your project, have a nice day
I know Trek modellers use “navlike” lights in their lighting projects.
I don’t recall ever seeing projects where someone was lighting aircraft. I frequent lighting forums but not aircraft forums. Don’t see why it couldn’t be done.
Just a thought but instead of LED have you thought of using fiber optic lighting? The strands are very small but still bright and come in any color you want. I used them on my resin model of the super star destroyer Executor. The effect is amazing. Just a thought but its worth checking out as they dont require nearly as much electronic engineering know how or space.
A good source for sci-fi lighting kits is www.cultTVMan.com. Some are simple, some are very complex and expensive. Watch out for those! I sent one back, because it was nothing but a bag of loose components and very incomplete instructions.
Calculating the value of the current limiting resistor (to be wired in series with the LED) using Ohm’s law is easy.
R= E / I
Where E is the source voltage, and I is the rated current of the particular LED, which is usually specified on the packaging. R is rated in ohms, E is rated in volts, and I is rated in AMPS, not milliamps as probably listed on the package. Divide milliamps by 1000 to get the value in terms of amps before using the formula.
Just use the closest standard resistor value to what you calculated. If you pick a resistor on the high side, you’ll use less current and your battery will last longer.
And remember, resistance is NOT futile! It’s voltage divided by current. [:D]