Tirydium Models Lighting Kit – Eurofighter Typhoon 1:32

[Mike]

Lighting Kit – Eurofighter Typhoon (for Revell)
1:32 Tirydium Models

Some of you may be familiar with the work of this young company, formed by one of our members Madmonk, often referred to by his real name Warren. He has taken the new technology that is available to tinkerers with electronics, and applied them to our hobby to light models with kits specific to their needs.

This kit is aimed at the Revell 1:32 Eurofighter Typhoon, and has been sized accordingly, with sufficient wire so that the LED/fibre optics gets the light into all the right places. A tiny chip on a small slice of veroboard PCB is at the heart of the kit, supplying the voltage for the constant lights as well as the timing for the flashing strobe lights. The lights are as follows:

Tail light – white LED with 1mm fibre guide.
Wing Tip – red and green LED for port and starboard.
Top strobe – red LED with 1mm fibre guide (short).
Bottom strobe – red LED with 1mm fibre guide (long).

The board has been backed with a piece of double-sided insulating foam, so you can place it within the fuselage simply by removing the backing paper from the adhesive. It runs on a voltage of 4.5v, which is easily provided by a 3-cell AA or AAA pack, which you can buy online and hide somewhere on the base of your model. The instructions walk you through the integration of the parts into the kit as you build it, even suggesting the best glues to use, and where to drill holes to accept wires and fibre guides. There are also a page full of helpful pictures of the process that are referred to throughout the build, which should be a great help to the novice.

A short video by the man himself

Although the kit simplifies the task of lighting your model massively, you will have to take a drill, scalpel or sanding stick to the internals to create channels for the tiny wires and fibre guides, as required. It would be helpful to have some experience and confidence in that sort of work, to avoid any unnecessary stress. The wires are very thin and easy to hide, as each one has a diameter of 0.5mm, while the fibre guides have a 1mm diameter. The LEDs are the relatively new Surface Mount Devices (SMD), which are very compact and bright, and have solder pads rather than legs. Each one has been pre-soldered to their wire with the correct resistor for the suggested voltage to prevent overloading and premature failure of the LEDs, and these are protected by heat-shrink tubing that makes the joints much more stable and able to withstand handling during installation. The fibre guides are supplied by similar SMD LEDs, and these held in place by heat-shrink tubing to, so all you have to do is glue them in place, attach the wingtip lights to the little screw-down contacts on the board, and add a power supply to the generous wires coming off the board.

Conclusion
This kit is about as simple as you can get for the end-user, while incorporating some fancy technology in the shape of the ATtiny85 microprocessor that is the heart of the control system. As long as you are happy making minor alterations to the interior of your model, you should get along just fine.

Very highly recommended. Make your model stand out from the crowd by flashing at people!

Review sample courtesy of

[Paul A H]

Now that looks cool

[Madmonk]

Glad you like it Paul.

Cheers,

Warren

[pittnuma]

Highly recommended, I enjoyed the build, doing the same to my Tornado's once I can get my head around this Flightpath cockpit that is!! Reminds me I need to do a finished article video!

Here is a build

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234958755-132-ef2000-typhoon-gpu-complete/page-7

Edited January 19, 2015 by pittnuma

[Mike]

Praise from a satisfied customer is always good, and your build thread will be helpful for anyone else installing the same kit, or just as a generic guide for laying out the looms

[Madmonk]

Thanks for the comment Darren.

Cheers,

Warren