Weekend update...
I cut about an 8 inch length of Plastruct tubing and glued it into a hole drilled into the top of the base with styrene cement. The aluminum tubing with power plug will slide inside this sleeve allowing for removal from the base:
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IMG_4360 by trekriffic, on Flickr
The tubing was reinforced underneath with AVES and Tamiya epoxy putty:
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IMG_4376 by trekriffic, on Flickr
The fantail windows had to be cut from their backing and glued in flush with the interior surface of the hull with CA; otherwise, the fit was too tight with the shuttle bay in place to allow the hull to close:
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IMG_4363 by trekriffic, on Flickr
The windows viewed from outside:
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IMG_4364 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Work was done on the connecting dorsal...
I wanted a mix of dark and translucent white windows so I had to cut up the kit parts to mix and match. The windows were then glued in using Devcon 5-minute epoxy which doesn't mar the inside layers of light blocking/reflective paint. It does tend to get on your fingers though which is a real PITA.
For the orange window on each side I overcoated it with Tamiya transparent orange acrylic on the backside. For the two windows on each side with screens behind them I carved away the backing plastic with a dremel router bit and thinned the window pane to about 1/32" thickness in order for the photo-etch screen to be barely visible when backlit:
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IMG_4365 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Once the PE screens were cut to the size of the window frames I laid them into the recesses and filled from behind with CA:
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IMG_4366 by trekriffic, on Flickr
I then laid down adhesive-backed foil strips to frame the opening and lessen the chance of light bleed:
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IMG_4372 by trekriffic, on Flickr
The dorsal halves with windows in place. I made the starboard side match the studio model as far as dark and light window placement; the port side was done with a different pattern since since I do not think it logical to assume that window symmetry would be a requirement on board the Enterprise:
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IMG_4361 by trekriffic, on Flickr
I pulled the G and C harnesses from the light kit and followed the instructions to connect the light strip sections using the edge connectors. No matter what I did I just couldn't get them to light using the connectors so I desoldered the wire leads from the connectors and soldered them directly to the strips:
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IMG_4373 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Once that was done I peeled the backing tape off the strips and stuck them to the locatios indicated on the top and bottom inside surfaces of the dorsals facing in opposite directions. The tape didn't appear all that strong to me so I first laid a rectangle of double-sided adhesive foam tape down on the hull mounting points before sticking the LED strips to the foam tape. Then I squeezed a nice glob of hot glue on the wires at each end of the strip to provide strain relief for the solder joints and added insurance in case the tape ever gave way.
Here's a light test of the finished dorsal with the wire harnesses for the dorsal and saucer power hanging out:
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IMG_4375 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Moving back to the secondary hull, I soldered the wires to the four DC power panel jack contacts and sealed them shrink tubing. Then I packed the jack with Tamiya putty all around makig sure not to get any where the other hull half needed to mate up with it:
IMG_4359 by trekriffic, on Flickr
For the nacelle struts I glued in the black window insert to the outboard halves before laying in two sets of wires and gluing the two halves together for each strut using styrene cement:
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IMG_4377 by trekriffic, on Flickr
One thing I notiiced about the strut halves concerned some slight warpage of the parts when I first removed them from the sprue. I had planned to clamp them tight between two lenghts of 2x4 when gluing them together so when the glue dried they'd be flat but I didn't need to do that after all. I surmise that having lain on my worktable in the garage for some weeks where the sun could warm them thru the garage door windows they gradually flattened out on their own. Nice!
The last thing I did Sunday evening was some work on the bussard lighting parts...
I modified the plastic bussard bulbs to allow insertion of clear and colored LEDs inside the bulbs.
This should hopefully translate to a brighter lightshow once the orange coated inner spinner with mirror button and white frosted outer domes are in place. First I snipped off the shaft at the base of each bulb designed to fit into the bulb tower bulkhead. Then I drilled a small hole using a bit in my pinvise before using a round router bit on my battery operated "dremel" to finish the job. Some of the bulbs had air bubbles inside which greatly speeded up the process:
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IMG_4370 by trekriffic, on Flickr
After doing about 5 or 6 of these I was able to get an almost perfect fit each time with the Lighthouse LEDs. I'll use a mix of diffuse amber/orange, white, and maybe yellow/gold wide angle and ultrabright LEDs for the 5 always on lights in each bussard and a mix of blue, pink, green, and red lights for the flashers:
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IMG_4371 by trekriffic, on Flickr
I hollowed out 22 bulbs in all giving me a few extra in each color as I'm still deciding what mix of colors I want to go with for the flashers. This took about 2 hours to finish as I had to take a break now and then due to finger cramps from holding the bulbs as I worked.
Here's one of the amber/orange LEDs inserted into an amber bulb and powered up:
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IMG_4367 by trekriffic, on Flickr
That's it for this update.
Thanks for sticking with me on this build!
