Sovereign Replicas USS Enterprise NCC 1701-E
1/650th Scale


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A smidgen of an update for you...it's been a good day
Main Saucer Lighting
The contractual blahblahyakkedyschmakedy first

Right then folks and folkettes, decided to lay into the saucer main lighting.
In a change to the completely un-advertised and unscheduled program and in
keeping with making it all up as I go along,
I decided to give some 10mm white LED's a run instead of the usually used 5mm.

One thing to note, they use the same 20milliamp but have a few thousand mcd more
to play with than the white 5mm so, here we go.

First job was to take care of the front upper spotlight 'splash' so to speak.
So as as something to try, I cut some templates of a sort in 5 decreasing sizes from ordinary paper.
These were backed with Blu-tac so the back end of the template would
sit quite close to the inside surface and the front of said template
would sit about 5mm or so above the surface.

Each template was laid on in turn and a dusting coat of silver was airbrushed on, also in turn.
The results looked a bit like this...





Right, not too bad and the effect will be made a bit more subtle
when the main paint work goes on but that's for later.
The spotlight for the lower saucer front will have to be tackled from the
outside for reasons that will become clear later on as we progress.

Next little task was a simple one i'm thankful to say.
Airbrushed some Tamiya clear red on the inside surface of the impulse drives.



That done, onto the next bit...
The LED Shuffle
As stated before, the rough count of the LED's has to be somewhere in the vicinity of 65 for the main lighting,
so a bit of dividing down and we get an allowance of 22 for the main saucer lighting.

Not many I think you'll agree but let us giveth it that shot my brethren!
So 19 LED's with resistors fitted, tack glued on paper squares.

Hook up wire all over the darn place...

The single exterior and single interior spotlight in the top also fitted,

the 3mm in the saucer exterior bottom plumbed into the wiring mess,

the whole shebang wired together and now for the test,

so 350mah/12v pack connected and plugged into the mains,

throw the switch,

have momentary panic attack when nothing happens,

realise I'd hit the wrong switch,

hit the right one and...







Well I like it !!
But must have a test out of the brightly lit hellhole so with bits and trailing wiring in hand,
off inside to have a look in normal indoor lighting.



















Well now, seems just about right to yours truly so next up is much LED and wiring securing,
addition/installation of nav/strobe lights, most likely some cleaning up and then assembly
of top and bottom saucer parts...
though none of the above necessarily in that order,
style or anything else for that matter, you get the general idea.

And that's the lot for this small but perfectly formed and acceptably illuminated update.

More to come at a later date so as always, see thee then and go easy people!


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