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1/1000 scale Polar Lights TOS Enterprise with lighting


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When I finish my Airborne Miniature figure I'm going to dive into this kit, but I've already started work on the windows while (literally) letting the paint dry on the miniature. 

 

I'm going to use the new Hobby Link International navigation strobe board to do most of the lighting, though I will be adding some additional lighting. I've never used a board before so this will be a first. I kind of suck at electronics so it will be interesting, and I'm sure there will be lots of swearing and gnashing of teeth. 

 

I've watched a few videos of others who have built and lit this kit. The problem is that there are no cutouts or even indentations for the windows. Most I've seen use the decals as a template. I decided to buy the Paragrafix brass template to have an actual frame to help manage the drilling. 

 

I started on the neck and used a pin vise, then tried to clean them up with a sharp Xacto blade. Good god it was tedious. I have the Tamiya hand drill but the collet didn't hold the really small drill bits I needed to use at this scale. So I bought a set of collets off of Amazon for about $8 that I thought would work. 

 

I am so glad I did! I finished up the rest of the right side hull in about an hour. I drilled straight down on the outside edges of each rectangular window, then went back and drilled from each edge at a 45 degree angle to carve out the middle section of the plastic. I did that from each side until the middle section was gone, then cleaned it up with the drill. 

 

It's not perfect, but it's vastly better than I could have done with a pin vise and blade. Not to mention much, much faster. 

 

The Pragrafix template taped into place

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The 45 degree angle drilling to clear out the middle space of the windows 

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Windows partially cleared. You can see that the neck is much rougher where I used a pin vise and blade.

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Windows mostly cleared out. I will still do some minor cleanup on them but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. 

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Different angle of the cleaned out windows. 

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Finished the lower saucer and half of the upper. Some pics and a short video to show how I cut them out with the Tamiya drill and Paragrafix templates. 

 

The templates taped in place with once section cleared out. 

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Still needs some cleanup but the main cutouts are done. 

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Short video demo of the drilling. 

https://youtu.be/OxiXs3rgMMc

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Minor update. I started work on the LED strip lights for the saucer and secondary hull. I also did a quick test of the flasher board for the nav and strobe lights. I have an idea for how I'm going to do the warp nacelle lights and hope to test it this week. 

 

The pics are from a quick light test I did to make sure everything was still working after being glued in place. I will cut down the wires later and solder them together so I have as few wires as possible to thread through the neck. It's going to be tricky with the two nav lights and the strobe from the Hobby Link International board also added to the saucer. 

 

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Not a big update at the moment. I primed the model and did some light sanding on the saucer to make it really smooth. I'll probably hit it with another light coat of primer to check the surface before spraying the final color.

 

As for the Bussard collectors...I wanted to scratch-build them so I ordered red, green, orange, and yellow flickering SMDs from Evans Designs. My goal was to mount them on a sheet of styrene that would fit behind the nacelle end caps to create at a multi-colored flickering effect, if not an actual spin. I coated the inside of the clear end pieces with a light coat of transparent orange. 

 

It worked pretty well, but the issue is that the resistors on the pre-made SMDs are just too large. They will completely fill the secondary hull as they are presently configured. I reordered a single set of the four SMDs from Evans Design and asked them to connect all four to a single resistor if possible. I'm waiting for that to arrive so I can check it against the space I have. 

 

If that doesn't work I'm going to buy the light kit from TenaControls. It's expensive but I really want to light this right.

 

Here are the SMDs glued to a sheet of styrene with Elmer's Glue (or PVA glue depending on where you're from). You can see the resistors behind them. There would be eight in total for this current setup and that is just too much for the secondary hull to handle. 

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Here they are lit. Sorry about the quality. I couldn't really get them on camera without completely blowing out the brightness. I'll try to take a few more pics this evening. 

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I'm still at a pause on the nacelles until the revised lighting arrives. Until then, here are some shots of the latest work on the saucer. 

 

Red and green nav lights in. I tested them with the Hobby Linc International board and the blink rate works fine. I will most likely place the board in the base because of space considerations. 

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The view from above. 

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The bridge on with some putty around the seam to fill in a small gap. I still need to sand a bit and repaint. 

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Minor update. I got the new lights in from Evans Designs and they (a) fit great, and (b) look fantastic. I ordered the set for the other nacelle now that I know they will work.

The camera keeps blowing out the light but the effect in person is really great. the colors are pretty close to the actual studio model and the random flickering really looks good. I'll take a video once I have both assembled.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got a bit more work done. 

 

This is the little bit of styrene I cut to insert the four LEDs for the Bussard collectors. Once I inserted the LEDs I super glued them to the styrene to hold them in place. 

 

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The nacelles are glued together with the lighting in place. I'm very happy with how the lighting turned out for them, especially considering it's a home-grown solution. 

 

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The seam on the nacelles. Ugh. They weren't terrible but I may be terrible at puttying and sanding. I think I finally got them to where I want them (mostly) but I also think I sanded them out of true round so I may have to reshape them a bit. 

 

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The mess of wires in the lower saucer. I did end up adding two white SMDs directly above the three little lights aiming directly down on each side of the saucer because they weren't getting enough light from reflection alone. 

 

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Light test. I will paint the bridge side lights with a dab of transparent red as a last step. I need to retest one of the solder joints but I should be able to seal the saucer halves together tonight and then work on the edge seam. 

 

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Saucer bottom. You can see the three small downward-facing portholes are now nice and bright. 

 

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And some saucer edge windows. 

 

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Slowly coming along. 

 

Ugh. Saucer seam. 
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More ugh. Pylon seams. 
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After quite a bit of putty, sanding, re-priming, sanding, etc., I finally have them just about done. 
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Saucer is done with sanding. Tonight I am planning on adding the base coat using Tamiya's Sky Grey. Then clear coat and decals! I plan to have the saucer completely finished before final mounting on the neck. 
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Quick test fit. The pylon and secondary hull spine seam are going to be a pain. The pylons and nacelles are still in primer gray. The secondary hull is in what will be the final gray color. 

I will also be adding one more LED into the base of the neck to light those windows. I'm concerned there's not enough reflective light from the secondary hull to light them properly. 
EO1VdQPl.jpg

 

That's it for now!

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  • 1 month later...

FINISHED. 

 

So I decided to build a custom base out of a picture frame, sheet styrene, and plastic mirror sheets. Single on/off switch and a mounting rod. 

 

Things I learned: 

 

  • I still kind of suck at airbrushing and need to work on those skills.
  • The decals on this were pretty thick and hard to get looking like paint.
  • I have yet to find a gloss varnish I really like -- I used Humbrol and it was okay, but not great. In the past I've used Future and may go back to that.
  • I still haven't found a matt varnish that works worth a damn in an airbrush. I'm pretty sure it's my skills but holy crap it's hard to get a decent matt coat that doesn't look chalky and dusty. Testors in a spray can is still the best for small items for me so I may try decanting that into a cup and using it in the airbrush in the future. Anyone with suggestions/recommendations on good matt varnishes for an airbrush, please let me know! I've done all kinds of searching on different forums and YouTube and this seems to be a problem spot with a lot of people. 

 

It's a shame the nacelle lights are so blow out. The four LEDs (red, green, yellow, orange) that flicker at variable rates look fantastic in person, but they just blow out on camera. 

 

On to the pics! 

 

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I realize the red window is not in the correct location but the LED in the neck is right behind it and I used the red to knock down the hot spot. 

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