CultTVman: David Campbell's Building and Lighting the Klingon Bird of Prey

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	Dave Campbell's Building and Lighting the Kliingon Bird of Prey

by David Campbell

This was generally a good kit, with sharp detail and hardly any fitting work required except for the side strips at the neck. Although there aren't many parts in the kit, it does take a bit of planning to make the best of it and hopefully this review will help with the more obscure points. With lights added and a muted, dirtied-down paint scheme, this kit is a real eye catcher and is harder to get now.

My first move is always to identify the part that will contain most of the lights, support frame (if required) and wiring harness. I find it easier to have all (or most) on one large peice, so that I don't end up with several loose panels attached to the power jack as the last pre-closure stage - that gets really awkward. In this case, the hull top would contain all the lights and wiring, except for the chin-mounted torpedo tube - no way around it, but at least it's only one part. Also at this point you have to decide whether you want the wings in down (attack) or up (criuse) mode: I chose down, because the up position is actually horizontal, which isn't a configuration that's seen in any of the movies. To fix the wings in the correct up position another 11°-ish has to be machined off the up-option radiator baffles.

A thorough internet and ST Encyclopedia search for colour schemes revealed that the ERTL colour list was wrong - the specified colours appeared too bright. I undercoated everything with auto grey primer then used Revell 30 (matt mid green) for the base colour, 55 for the dark highlights around the neck and bridge and Humbrol 66 (matt olive drab) for the lighter wing highlights. The engine baffles were sprayed auto matt black primer, drybrushed steel and later with a little rust red to give a hint of age. Wing underside red detailing was Revell 100 (matt rust).

Next was cutting the windows out - they're too thin to cut and file every one, so its the usual approach: cut out the doubles and triples then fill the individual window spacers back in with melted sprue. A careful sanding (there's a bit of surface detail especially round the 'shoulders') blends in the sprue to the surrounding contours, so leave the sprue spacers slightly proud on the outside.






		Now for the wing lights - two side-by-side at the wing root leading edge, where a small square lump is molded. File this smooth on the bottom half of each wing, then drill two 0.9mm holes 3mm apart and 'up' into the wing just behind each lump to take the two led's. Bend the led's at 90° just behind the flats and they'll slot right in - now fold the leads back along the top of the bottom wing surface and secure with a sticky pad then solder the leads on - leave 25cm cable tails and wire the led's in parallel. File a hole at the middle of the wing root edge, run the cables out of it and shut both wings up. The main hull room l.e.d.'s (two) were fixed to a short length of plasticard fixed to the upper body neck and cut to place the l.e.d.'s centrally in the bridge and primary hull spaces (see figure 3). The two upper hull room l.e.d.'s were placed as shown in figure 4 - I spent about an hour taping and testing with the shoulder hull segments to get the position and angle. I wired up all four l.e.d.'s in parallel and ran a short wire tail into the hull space. Place a patch of chrome/aluminium tape on the panel above the light sources to make extra sure that there are no light leaks. Drill two 3mm holes in the position indicated by the screwdriver in figure 5 - this eventualy takes the wing l.e.d. wires into the hull space.


			Next up was the construction of the warp emitter light chamber - a simple extension of the recess at the stern so that 2 led's could be mounted and their light contained. I used 2 narrow angle led's, but it's good practice to close off all light sources. The chamber consisted of two side strips with a rear bulkhead (Figure 1) and top/bottom plates. These were sprayed with auto chrome paint - takes a full 2 days to dry, but it gives a top quality (opaque and reflective) job. The led's were mounted on the bulkhead, which was folded verticaly in the middle to about 15° - this was the best angle I found for spreading the light uniformly around the emitter clear plastic peice. The torpedo tube l.e.d. was paralleled off the warp l.e.d.'s and housed in an 8mm long peice of 8mm plastic pipe and fixed in place with miliput which doubled as a light stop - the whole assembly being glued into the 'chin'. The clear part is glued to the outside of the hull later. The shield generator lights (Figure 2) were fixed to the panels in the same way as for the torpedo tube, but the plastic l.e.d. housing tube can only be 5mm high and the l.e.d.'s have to be filed flat to clear the shoulder hull section. These are also paralleled off the warp/torpedo line. The shield panels have a small thin panel on each side and the l.e.d.'s are more than bright enough to shine through - don't cut the thin panels out but do mask them off during spraying.







		Make two bulkheads as shown in figure 6 for the shoulder hull sections - this contains the light from the shoulder room l.e.d.'s, because the shoulder sections open directly onto the radiator baffles with a wide gap that shouldn't be filled and shouldn't be lit either. The bulkheads were chromed and glued to the shoulder hull sections - test fit with the shield panels to make sure the step is the right way round.

The wiring harness now involves two wires supplying four room l.e.d.'s, two supplying the four wing l.e.d.s and two supplying the warp/torpedo/shields. To power this I used a 6-pin mini din plug into a socket epoxied into the hull bottom. First, cut a 9mm hole where the stand slot is. Next, fold the wings of a 6 pin socket up (to clear hull profiles) and paint a ring of maskol round the socket near to the plastic recess - this seals the socket against the hull as about 15ml of 30-second epoxy is poured in place. Put the plug into the socket from the outside before the epoxy is poured to ensure alignment later.

Thats the modifications finished, now for painting and fixing. Pour a bit of Maskol into a toothpaste-tube lid, etc, and dip the tip of each wing l.e.d.'s into it - this'll stay on during painting. Now spray the wings, inside the wing-tip guns, underneath and outside the shoulder/bulkeads, top and bottom hull halves and coolers with Revell 30. The radiator baffles are sprayed black and drybrushed silver. The hull side panels were sprayed with auto dark grey bumper paint, drybrushed gunmetal and given a thin black wash. Now fix the radiator baffles to the tops of the wings (excellent fit), fix the shoulder/bulkhead assemblies on top of the hull and fix the gray strip and shield panel along the bottom of the upper hull (very fiddley - note that the end of the strip is about 2mm short of the back end of the hull). Because the hull halves go together with the grey strip in between, theres no masking required over the severe surface detail and the closure gives an excellent finish. Now bring the wings and hull bottom close and pull the wing light wires through the holes made just aft of the shoulder hull sections. Wire up the three wire pairs to the socket in the lower hull and note the pinpattern. Close the hull halves after tucking in all the wires and doing a light test. I do this by leaving some wire tails attached to the plug and just touching them against a 3V (2xAA) battery pack.

Touching up will focus on the stern where an open hole into the warp l.e.d.'s appears and has a hull seam down each side. Although this has to be smothed and re-painted, this is offset by the time saved in closing up the pre-painted hull halves with the gray strip in between. I stuffed cotton wool into the warp space to keep spray paint out during the re-spray. The wingtip guns, wing coolers, torpedo conduit and cloaking device are easy add-ons, but the wing-tip decals will need decalfix to pull them into the surface detailing. The warp emitter clear part was rubbed on the inside with 1000 grit wet&dry then dipped in thinners to bloom the outside. Silver paint was applied to the outside where the instructions suggested painting the inside - this gave the closest match to the studio model pictures to be found at http://www.interlog.com/~ask and lots of other sites. The stand was made with 8mm brass tube cut to size with the 6-pin plug epoxyed into place at one end and the other seated into a 2mm thick plasticard box made just big enough to take the switches and battery packs.

The wiring details are shown in Figure 7, and the arrangement is very straightforward: you can get by without any veroboard. The variable resistors allow the various lights to be balanced easily while keeping the l.e.d.'s within current limits. Although there are a few light sources, a set of 6 C cells will give about 18 hours of continuous use, and the expense of the l.e.d.'s is more than offset by the long operating life compared to bulbs and the relatively difficult job of fitting access hatches into such a compact model. If you want to save some money, replace the 4 room l.e.d.'s with 3V 'maglite' type bulbs, leave out the variable resistor and use another 2-cell battery pack

The finished article is shown in Figure 8 (lit) and Figure 9 (unlit).

The parts list is as follows:

red l.e.d., 2.2V, 5mm, wide angle CZ38R (5 pieces)
white l.e.d., 3.6V, 3mm, GV65V (8)
6-pin mini jack JX04E (1)
6-pin mini socket JX10L (1)
switch ML79L (3)
variable resistor 100-ohm UF97F (3)
2xC cell battery holder+PP3clip JG75S
4xC cell battery holder+PP3clip HF95D

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©1997-2006 Stephen J. Iverson. Other material copyright of original owner. No material (images or text) may be reproduced without permission of Stephen Iverson and original copyright owner. Additional copyright and legal information