Latest progress...
I am soldering the wire leads to the LED strip lights and sticking them down to foam tape before squirting a glob of hot glue for strain relief at each end:
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IMG_4387 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Here's the lower saucer with strips installed:
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IMG_4386 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Last night I soldered 30 AWG Kynar wire to two tiny SMD LEDs and taped them into the trench over the center of the shuttle bay using transparent tape:
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IMG_4393 by trekriffic, on Flickr
Then I did a light test with just the two SMD LEDs on. I still need to add the 4 LEDs that mount on the perimeter of the back wall to light the sides of the bay and the side gallery windows:
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IMG_4390 by trekriffic, on Flickr
The rearmost LED is almost directly beneath the three small spine lights so I'm pretty sure I'll get them to glow too.
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IMG_4391 by trekriffic, on Flickr
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IMG_4389 by trekriffic, on Flickr
For the gallery windows on the back wall I glued some of the Shadow casters from the ParaGrafix PE set:
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IMG_4392 by trekriffic, on Flickr
I won't be using the two sternmost LED strip lights as most of the windows in that area are not lit. Instead I'll place one 5MM superbright LED in that area
facing the back wall of the bay. It should provide some additional illumination to the bay and really make the figures in the backwall gallery pop!
Last thing for this report...
I wanted the option of showing the bay doors open or closed so I cut out the middle section of bay doors from the "closed" bay door part to use with the "open" door part. The closed door part was thicker than the open door part so I thinned it with my dremel, a seam scraper, and sandpaper before light blocking with black enamel and primer on the inside facing surface. The outside of both parts was painted with my custom hull color mix:
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IMG_4396 by trekriffic, on Flickr
That's it for now.
Have a good one!
