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Bablyon 5 Starfury from Revell


Kallisti

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Starting build finally! With my Spitfire VIII out of the way for the Pacific War GB, I can begin on this beauty!

So first lets begin with the electrical connections for the stand.

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Here you can see the stand modified to include the 2 pin plug that will transfer power up into the model. In the background you can see the modified lower fuselage part which has the socket attached in an enlarged slot. The wires from the plug are enclosed in groves either side of the top of the stand that have then been covered over with thin plastic card, then travel down another groove cut into the end of the vertical part of the stand to disappear into the base itself. Another plug exists the base to connect with the power supply.

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Wires on the underside of the base.

That is the first stage. Next will be preparing the engine nacelles for their lighting parts...

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Building progresses with drilling out the engines for the lights:

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You can see the blue inserts here as well.

Lower wing is under construction with lots of filling and sanding... I seem to be spending my life sanding at the moment what with the nose of the Thunderbird Firefly as well!

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  • 1 month later...

and a month passes...

Ta da!!! Progress at last!

The top wing has been joined and sanded but thats basically the same as the lower wing so not that interesting although the grand canyon-like seams took quite a bit of filler and sanding. However the most important progress has been on the electrics...

The soldering iron came out along with the Meccano electrics box to supply extra wire since the amount supplied with the lighting kit is very minimal. LED were soldered ans work performed with fibre-optic cable and heat shrink tubing...

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Here you can see one of the lower wing engine nacells with the pair of blue LEDs fitted. One will directly illuminate the rear exhausts which have been drilled out for the blue lenses while the other LED is butted up against the end of the fibre optic cable and joined using some heat-shrink tubing. The fibres can then be split to provide lighting for the retro and manoeuvring jets.

Connecting it all up to the 12 v DC supply, usually used to power Meccano Fairground rides (eg

) but was originally a Hornby train set controller, we get to see this:

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Bah thats boring, how about THIS:

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Shiny!

Edited by Kallisti
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  • 2 weeks later...

I will return to this build in the new year - having too much fun building the RAF Mustang at the moment and then of course there is the gorgeous Sara... ;)

Edited by Kallisti
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A minor update, the resin guns arrived from Starship Modeller today and they are fabulous!

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The new ones are on the left (in case you hadn't realised) while those on the right are the kit parts! There really is no comparison!

So once the Mustang is completed, I'll return to the Starfury in time to complete the GB...

Today's Koshism: Ah, you seek meaning. Then listen to the music, not the song.

Edited by Kallisti
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  • 3 weeks later...

and we're back!

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After a sojourn building Mustangs and almost ruining a poor girl in a chainmail bikini, we return to Babylon 5 and to the wiring up of the lights... second set of lights now installed, almost ready to close up the engines on the lower wing...

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Lots of progress but its all small bits which don't photograph very well!

The 4 main engine exhausts have been painted and the blue inserts added so that when they are lit it looks like this:

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and in the dark even better!

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After this, all 4 lighting setups have been installed in the engine pods and the upper wing closed up. An exercise of cautious soldering attached the wires for the lower wing to the circuit board which has now been installed in the main body. The circuit board is held in place with PVA glue.

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All the other exhaust ports have been drilled and painted. The whole body has been given its main coat of paint, the resin guns have been cleaned up and scrubbed adn this weekend will get drilled out a bit more then painted up. The canopy has had its coat of Klear and masked up.

The main bit of work the latter part of this week has been the cockpit. This is the transparent resin replacement. The bits that were to remain transparent to allow the lights to shine thorugh were masked up and two coats of matt black were painted on the rest. Then the cockpit colours were added. Using some photos off the net of the actual cockpit set, I could match the colours. Funnily enough it looked liek the main part of the interior was cockpit green!

Then the decals went on and the pilot painted up. I tried to put the faceplate decal on but it was just too thick and wouldn't settle down even with lots of micro sol and set, so I cleaned it off and painted it gloss black.

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Then here it is as a test fit (ignore the wonky upper wings, that just coz its only sitting on the top)

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and her it is backlit with orange and white

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This weekend I'm going to try to source a couple of 6v batteries I can put in series to get a portable 12v power supply. The mains power is an old Hornby train controller that came from my Meccano collection, but it that might not always be possible to use that, eg Farnborough IPMS has all the models on tables in the middle of the room so to get power to it I'd have to stretch a lead across the floor and I'm certain SOMEONE will trip over it and CRASH!!!

Today Koshism: "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Edited by Kallisti
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I forgot last night but here is also the back plate which has had some work done on it such as drilling out the various protrusions and a lick of paint...

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You can also see the exhaust covers for the lesser exhausts there.

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