Polar Lights Original Series USS Enterprise
1/350th Scale

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And this part of our story begins...

With A Video
...And Some Circuitry Sodding About!

Welcome back all!
Now on the previous page I spoke of the variable speed motor controller I had bought in
for running the bussard rotating fan thingies.
You may recall waffle and a couple of pics to that effect anyway.

You do?

Splendid!

Well as one sometimes does, I shot a shortish vid showing the effect
without all the blinky/flashy stuff and slung it up on Youtube.
Nope, no need to search for it, here it be!


OK, now we got that sorted, onward!

Right then, the flashy/blinky stuff time is upon us so let's be a getting to it.

Circuits found online some time ago for the chaser which worked
out rather well in the mahoosive TOS Galactica Viper
I did some time back,
along with a nav and strobe thingy some decent soul
had plastered up for the hard of thinking folks.
Like me for instance.

Said circuits got redrawn in to a pattern that could be etched
on to some copper clad board.
Which was done with surprisingly little fuss and after many holes drilled,
some unlucky components got a hot iron applied to their legs.

Nasty but all in a good cause I assure you!

There are they after a goodly run test to make sure i'd done me job right.
Turns out I had and that was a shock.


These were put together,
wires from the nav/strobe board fed through the chaser board.
Then a wrap of insulation to the edge so nothing came in contact with the boards.
All the aluminium foil on the inside to be precise.
Shorting out was just not kosher at this point.




The half ton of spaghetti hanging out the front as mentioned on the last page...
This...


was carefully sorted out,
All relevant connections meticulously soldered and insulated,
A final test to ensure ones job was done right
and then the lot given a good twist up
along with a hefty shove to jam it all in there.


So pretty much that's the bulk of the assembly complete.

I decided at this point a bit of the bling thing to
just give the eventual display stand a bit of a finishing touch.

On one modelling message board I frequent,
Namely Resin Illuminati, there is a thread by one 'Viper Aviator' who hath used
his graphically oriented fiddling skills to turn out some
very nice pics of Starship style dedication plaques.

One of which was selected by yours truly and then redrawn to make a photo etch mask.
This was done and after the usual photo resist faffing about
some 13thou" brass sheet got thrown at the etching tank.

The result as etched and cut from the fret.




Some brass polish and elbow grease got applied and this is how they turned out.




And the same out in natural daylight.




And that will do just nicely!

So then, time for a full on power up test.
The below Youtube vid shows that in all it's light leaking glory
along with meandering commentary by your host with the least here so enjoy!


And that's the lot for now gang!
More coming as/when/if I can get back to it.

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