Revell Republic Cruiser with lights

I bought the model over 18 months ago where it has been languishing in the shed. Until now.

[FONT=Arial]After spending over a year building a 1/35 scale Australian version of an M113 for dear friend of mine, I decided that I needed to build a sci-fi model (I have many models waiting to be built). I had no idea which one to build from my stockpile, so my wife asked me place all of my sci-fi models on our bed and she would figure out which one would test skills I had never used before.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial]I spent half an hour out in the sunroom and was then told to come into the lounge-room. The model selected on the coffee table was the Revell Republic Cruiser. Now all Star Destroyers are my favourite star ships of all time in particular, the Imperial II class and the Executor class.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial]My immediate thought was "I can light up this one". I have never built a kit with fibre optics so this will be a learning curve for me. Also, I have never added nurny's or greeblies; although the kit is fairly well detailed, I saw many places for improvement after reviewing The Revenge of the sith a number of times.
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[FONT=Arial]While placing orders over the Internet for the electronics, styrene, paints, etc, I reviewed The Revenge of the Sith on my computer and took as many screen captures as I could of the Republic Cruiser. This gave me an understanding of the lighting requirements and the greeblies that needed to be added to the base kit to fill out the details.[/FONT]

Good luck don't forget we like pix!!!!!!

I'm going to try lighting my first kit with this one too, eventually. There was a guy at Starshipmodeler.com that had clear casts of the engine nozzles for that kit to light it. I'm not sure if they still have them or not.

Greebling the ventral trench

I am still trying to work out how to use the thread tools so please, bear with me.
The greebling of the ventral trench is done. It took me about 5 days and was quite difficult to work out what "looked right", since the images from the movie are quite blurred.
I have to say that I started this thread a week after starting the build. I will now keep some continuity going now.
I used .025" and .035" styrene rods and .010" styrene sheeting for the greeblies. Although it may not look like much at the moment, after some painting it should look good.

Sluis Van Shipyards said:

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I'm going to try lighting my first kit with this one too, eventually. There was a guy at Starshipmodeler.com that had clear casts of the engine nozzles for that kit to light it. I'm not sure if they still have them or not.

You may be thinking of the FO kit made by MadMan. It has clear inserts for the main engines.

The Fibre Optics
I searched the net for an FO kit for this model and found on Starshipmodeler one made by MadMan lighting. I ordered one of the kits and while waiting for it to arrive, downloaded the instructions.
I found that there were not enough LEDs or FO to light up the Cruiser as it is in the movie. So I placed an order for an additional kit from the MadMan and also ordered more FO and LEDs from the fibreopticstore.com
I have the first Madman kit and today, the additional bits and pieces from the the FO store. Just waiting for the second kit from MadMan.
The key to powering the all of the FO is the controller cards from MadMan. Each card can power 12 LEDs. I want about 20.
While waiting for all of the FO stuff to arrive, I began making the power supply and writing up the wiring diagram.
The way this ship will be lit up is in two stages. The first is to have all of the bream trench, bridge, small and medium engines light up with one switch. A second switch will light the main engines, the hanger bay floodlights and the red ligths around the main guns (gunnery lights).
Below are the FO and LEDs I have so far and all of the kit plus additions.
Yes, I am building in our guest room and have taken up the fold-out bed.

Just go slow and dont use alot of pressure. They break real easy as you found out. I've in the past not even used a pin vise just turned it by hand

Looking good so far! Here's a link to some screencaps,

Screencaps » Star Wars

Nice link Scratchy. Whether the details you’re adding Noumcea are screen accurate or not, it sure doesn’t matter to me because I like what you’ve done so far. Keep up the good work.

Peagis said:

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Just go slow and dont use alot of pressure. They break real easy as you found out. I've in the past not even used a pin vise just turned it by hand

Pete - thanks for the advice. I have never used bits soooo small before and can get a little heavy handed at times.

Cheers. Dave

Scratchy said:

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Looking good so far! Here's a link to some screencaps,

Screencaps » Star Wars

Love the link. I got a few more dozen images added to my library now. Looks like I will have to get some more styrene!

Randy13 said:

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Nice link Scratchy. Whether the details you’re adding Noumcea are screen accurate or not, it sure doesn’t matter to me because I like what you’ve done so far. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I don't think I will ever replicate the CGI version in the movie but am giving it my best shot. There is only so far one can go with greeblies IMHO.

Started drilling the holes for the .5mm FO today and then thought I should check if I had enough of the FO to do the lighting I wanted.

I worked out that the 80 feet I have is only enough for 162 x 6 inch lengths. Not enough... I need another 200 - 250 feet of the stuff.

Nice Progress! I'm thinking of buying this model. Would you say it's worth it?

Hunt270 said:

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Nice Progress! I'm thinking of buying this model. Would you say it's worth it?

Hunt, the kit is worth buying. Out of the box without mods it will be a rather quick build but look quite fine. If you are like me and many others, adding those "extra bits" is worth the effort even though it will take much longer to build.

I have my fingers crossed that at the end of this build the ship will look damn fine. The main thing is patience, particularly when using modelling skills you have never tried before.

Stay tuned as the build progresses. Many thanks for the compliment.

Yesterday I drilled the 0.5mm holes into the starboard, forward bream trench (part 48). 29 holes total. They are the ones marked with red dots. The other, smaller holes are for the 0.25mm FO. As you can see I only got a third of the way along this piece before the #80 drill bit broke.

The new bits should be turning up this week sometime....

For those who are not familiar with the number of trench pieces I have enclosed the instructions for the right hand side.....Sooo many holes to drill.

When I finshed drilling the holes for the trench piece, I thought about what I should I do next. I really didn't want to do anymore drilling for the day. I reviewed the images I had of the ship and found that the red stripe that runs from the ventral hanger bay to the nose had a shadow on the edges.

The image I got this from is when the cruisers are lifting off from Curoscant on their way to Utopau.

This meant that some styrene sheeting was required to overlay the etching on the model. I started with 0.25mm sheeting but it looked too thin, so I used 0.75mm sheeting.

Although not complete (should be finished tonight), it adds some depth to the bottom of the ship. Once the styrene is in place there will be a bit of putty work.

Hunt270 said:

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Nice Progress! I'm thinking of buying this model. Would you say it's worth it?

Definitely worth it!!!

Got another four #80 bits in the mail today. I will be more careful with these ones because of the number of holes that I still have to drill

The styrene for the spine from the hanger bay to the nose is complete. Just waiting for the glue to dry before hitting it with putty.

I then reviewed more screen captures and saw that the hanger bay provided with model is not deep enough. So out came Mr Dremel and I cut off the top of the moulded box which holds the hanger piece is placed into.

The hanger bay had to have its depth increased by about 7mm. I also cut out much of the rear and forward walls of the box as this is where the main lighting comes from.

More styrene to come because there is no crane and the walls of the hanger are missing a lot of detail.

No pics to show at the moment. Have been busy drilling holes for the FO while waiting for some inspiration on how to rebuild the hanger bay.

I now think I have a pretty good idea for the hanger. I pulled out two boxes of left over parts from Warhammer 40k models I made quite a few years ago. Many interesting things are lurking in the boxes.

Stay tuned.

The hanger bay has started being built after I made a few drawings. At the moment I am working on the side walls.

The walls below the original hanger piece are 0.25mm sheeting measuring 48mm x 6mm. The ribs are 0.64mm rods, which will be cut once the glue has dried.

nice work.. can't wait to see the final product!

Hangar bay looks real nice.


-Mike