BSG Raptor with lighting 1/32

[3Dsf]

If you want lights which pulse like an aircraft’s strobes you either need a 555 timer and decade counter, or a programmable CPU. To keep it simple.

Sure wish there was more variety in the flash patterns of self-flashing LEDs. Even finding a slow flash is very difficult.

 

[Jimw100]

If you want lights which pulse like an aircraft’s strobes you either need a 555 timer and decade counter, or a programmable CPU. To keep it simple.

Sure wish there was more variety in the flash patterns of self-flashing LEDs. Even finding a slow flash is very difficult.

Thanks! I have an Adafruit trinket I could put in there but I’ve no idea how to programme it. Doesn’t sound too difficult to just do a simple flash though. I’ll have a go.

 

[3Dsf]

Here's the extremely complicated code required to flash two LEDs, one red and one green, for 1/10 sec every second, using a Circuit Playground Express children's educational microcontroller.

 

[Analyzer]

Here's the extremely complicated code required to flash two LEDs, one red and one green, for 1/10 sec every second, using a Circuit Playground Express children's educational microcontroller.

Doesn't get any simpler than that!

As a programmer I have no problem understanding/writing C++ scripts, it the circuitry stuff that is hard for me.

I've been contemplating a slow flash effect for use in my Imperial Shuttle

 

[Jimw100]

Here's the extremely complicated code required to flash two LEDs, one red and one green, for 1/10 sec every second, using a Circuit Playground Express children's educational microcontroller.

Ha that’s so simple even I could do it. I wish it was possible to code a trinket like that. No way will one of those playground Express fit in my raptor

Edit - which begs the question: is there anything out there that does fit the bill? A trinket sized micro controller that is compatible with those simplified web based coding systems? I’m guessing there’s a technical reason why that’s not possible.

 

[3Dsf]

which begs the question: is there anything out there that does fit the bill? A trinket sized micro controller that is compatible with those simplified web based coding systems? I’m guessing there’s a technical reason why that’s not possible.

The BBC micro:bit is 43x52mm. Still larger than a trinket.

Then again, if all you're doing is a simple flashing LED in a pattern, it's easy enough to copy and paste code.

https://learn.adafruit.com/pages/2358/elements/2974013/download

 

[Jimw100]

A couple of small updates:

Pilots

In relation to the 1/32 v 1/35 figures, I bought a 1/35 vehicle crewman to see whether it would work as a pilot. The answer is: Yes it would work and I think the scale looks fine for the Raptor (even with the 1/32 ejector seats.

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But I want my Raptor to be in scale with my Viper Mk2 (and Mk7) and the comparison between. the sizes of the pilots makes it obvious that the 1/35 figure is way smaller than the standard viper pilot. So it's not going to work for me. 1/35 on the left, viper pilot in the middle and my makeshift 1/32 F16/Raptor pilot on the right.

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Fin lighting

I've drilled some holes to route fibre or wires through for the rear fin lights. This hole is where the hollow lower part meets the hollow upper part. View media item 50530 As mentioned before the wires will need to go externally from the rear bottom of the main hull compartment into the main lower part of the fin, just where the two join:View media item 50531
I also received the "flasher chips" which I ordered, but haven't tried them out yet, mainly because I have no idea how to wire them. They have 3 wires, black, red and white and I've no idea how I wire that into a single led.

Interior Ceiling Panel

The greenstrawberry kit comes with a ceiling panel that goes just behind the pilots between the two bulkheads and replaces (I assume, as I couldn't see any way to fit them both in) a structural part of the original kit that joins the two sides. It's a weird part as it has a couple of holes which are presumably supposed to be for lights and then a big square hole that is just empty. I thought it looked a bit silly and I couldn't find any reference pics for what actually goes there so I decided to fill it with wires and stuff to make it look like an open maintenance hatch. I also added in another nano SMD above it to shine through the light holes.

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To be honest it won't really be visible once the roof is on but I thought "Why not?".

 

[Analyzer]

I wonder about the accuracy of Moebius with their scales

The 1/72 BSG fighters for example seem more like 1/80 or even as small as 1/87. The pilot figures are definitely noticeably smaller than other 1/72 stuff.

But then again, the Bandai 1/72 B-wing pilot is similarly small compared to other 1/72 Star Wars pilots.

 

[Jimw100]

Landing Gear

I also knocked together the photo etch landing gear. I wanted them to be detachable using magnets because 1) I am bad at deciding whether I want the model in flight or landing mode and 2) I'm not sure the landing gear will fit with the armaments. I might magnetise the armaments too.

So I just put them together as per the instructions, but inside the top of the two side legs I put a 5mmx2mm neodymium magnet, with a matching one drilled into the wing.

The PE landing gear bay cover covers up the magnet so no need to even use putty. Win.

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I put the same in the front landing gear attachment point but couldn't fit a 5mm in the actual landing gear leg so I put 2 3mm ones in instead.

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The front landing gear leg seems strangely very short, not sure if I've just done it wrong somehow.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that these magnets will be strong enough to stay attached with them weight of the whole model on top of them. the 5mm magnets are really strong (apparently they will hold about 500g - not sure if that is magnet to magnet or magnet to steel) but because the side legs are canted outwards the leverage of them is going to pull the magnets apart I think.

Anyway, if it doesn't work when the model is together I can either glue the legs on anyway or probably rip the feet off the legs and glue them straight onto the body for a "wheels up" look.

 

[Jimw100]

Another small update - I got the “flasher chip” wired up and it works exactly as I had hoped. It gives a standard led (or a flashing one, unexpectedly) an aircraft strobe type appearance. You can apparently put up to 3 leds on the one chip as well.

Unfortunately I have no idea what the generic name for this chip is and the only place I’ve ever seen them is a uk site. Not sure what the rules are on linking to commercial sites on here?

 

[Analyzer]

Looking good!

As far as the chip, is it a "555 timer" chip?

I've very briefly looked into them, but I am a little unclear on how to change the flash timing or even how it needs to be wired and kind of shelved trying one out

 

[Jimw100]

I don’t think it’s a 555 timer. I think you have to wire those into resistors to change the timing and this is just a single unit, semicircular profile and about 4mm long

 

[Jimw100]

Assembling the main body

Ok so this bit should have been easy but...no.

I’ve heard a couple of other people complain about how badly the standard kit fits together and I think the greenstrawberry parts (at least the way I’ve fitted them) do not help.

You can see here how far away the two hull sections are from fitting.

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The only solution I could really think of was brute force, clamps, lots of glue and filler.

I think a lot of the problems were caused by the fitment of the console wall and the two cockpit sidewalls/bulkheads. If you glue these in place so that the bases are fully in contact with the floor piece and the tabs are engaged then the side pieces flare out too much for the outer hull (and roof) to fit properly. So you need to lean the walls inwards slightly, so the outer edge is actually away from the floor piece by several mm. I didn’t know this until too late, unfortunately.

I did eventually get the pieces all attached, and I used quite a bit of perfect plastic putty, mr surfacer 500 and superglue and baking soda to get all the gaps filled. It need clamping but the angled surfaces make that very difficult to do, at least with the clamps I have. View media item 50522View media item 50523View media item 50524
The front plate that covers the USB port is tough to fit properly as well. The two parts of the hull bow outwards at the join and I’ve had to sand them down so much to get a flat surface for the plate to fit onto that I’m quite suspicious they will disintegrate.

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I also had to cut down the internal roof section which I mentioned in a post above, as it was stopping the two sides from being close enough for the roof to fit.

I’m going to have serious problems when it comes to putting the cockpit canopy on, as it is going to have something like a 5mm gap all the way around. I’ll need to fashion something out of styrene to fill the gap I think, which is likely to look slightly terrible. We’ll see.

The other problem is the door - I really wanted to have it held in place by magnets so it can be opened and closed, but there’s zero chance of it fitting well enough as far as I can see. The top right corner has a gap of several mm and the bottom of the door is too wide. Again I may need to use some styrene to make the door fit, but it will definitely look odd as the door (or the frame, depending on which way I do it) will be a weird shape.

I had some major light leaks along the cockpit bulkheads, but they’re much better after I added some Mr Surfacer 500. This stuff really is awesome for filling gaps. Before and after shots:

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Next I’ll be fitting the main engines, as well as doing some of the painting. Really I shouldn’t paint th exterior until I’ve got the whole thing put together, as I’m sure there will be giant gaps to fill, but I’m keen to see what the colour scheme will look like. Because I don’t have an airbrush I needed to choose a colour that was available in both spray cans and brush paints. I went for tamiya JGSDF Brown - it’s probably a bit darker than the real thing but should look ok I think.

 

[Analyzer]

The interior looks great. Lighting levels are perfect and the new pilots really make a difference

 

[Jimw100]

Attaching the engines

I painted the inside of the engines black for light blocking and then covered them with aluminium tape on the insides to help diffuse the light. I was wary of the LEDs showing as hot spots through the photo etch end pieces so I decided to position the LEDs at the forward end of the main engine piece, and I also used a piece of clear plastic, sanded to make it diffuse the light and I also added a bit of white fabric to the clear plastic for the same purpose. One thing I will say is that the greenstrawberry PE parts for the engine don't actually leave many gaps for the light to show through. View media item 51441And with all the LEDs running off the one small battery my engine LEDs are quite dim. Plus this Raptor suffered a hard landing just after I attached the engines and (amongst other very structural repairs) I had to re-attach one of the engine LEDs as the wires had snapped (probably the fiddliest soldering job I've ever done and also resulted in melting a hole in the side of the hull, but never mind). So now one of the engine LEDs is dimmer than the other. Oops.

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I thought it would be very difficult to paint the engine pieces and the rear of the hull once it is all put together so I painted them prior to assembling. This was my first try at paint chipping too, so a good chance to try it out somewhere where it won't be too visible. I did a Tamiya grey primer coat and then I decided to do patches of dark grey (I think it was Citadel Eshin grey) and some dark metallic patches within the grey bits so that when I put the masking fluid over it it would look like some chips went just through the brown paint to a grey undercoat and some went all the way through both layers to the metal of the hull. I used a cocktail stick and also a bit of foam to apply the masking fluid. I think it worked OK, but the problem with the Tamiya spray paints (or with my painting technique) is that they dry very hard and I found it was difficult to uncover (or find) the smallest "chips".

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I also decided to try using rub n buff on the engines to make them a bit more metallicy. Not really sure how well it worked, you can see the comparison below. The one on the left has had rub n buff over the metallic paint. I also found that the acrylic paint needs to be reeeeally dry or the rub n buff will take it off. I tried it on some parts that were painted a few days earlier and the paint came off, but on parts that had been painted several weeks earlier it worked fine.

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Attaching the engines should have been pretty straight forward, as the pieces all have tabs to line them up and I hadn’t done too much mischief to them to accommodate the lights (just a 4mm hole in the back). But basically the engines didn’t line up either with each other or with the supporting piece. They were probably a good 15 degrees off and one pointed up and to the right, the other down and to the left. So I had to rip them off and pull the engine attachment bits off, cut the alignment tabs off and glue everything back so it was straight, then fill the gaps created by angling the engines properly (see second photo below).

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Fitting the Door

I also had a go at getting the door to fit (see above for why it didn't fit). I used a razor saw to cut part of the way through the inside of the door where it angles in, and then put some superglue in the cut and clamped it in place in the door frame so that it would reshape. View media item 51115View media item 51116Then I cut a bit of 1mm styrene to fill the gap at the top. The fit is now much better. Not great, but acceptable for me, and the door actually stays on. View media item 51118I'll have to work out how to get it to stay attached in the open position at some point, which will likely involved magnets.

I got this 1/35 resin figure as well because I still might not put the 1/32 pilots in, in which case I will have some crew in the back instead. He's not very "Battlestar" but gives an idea of scale.

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Edit: should have said as it’s not too clear from the photo, that figure is kneeling

 

[Analyzer]

Its a shame about the fit issues, but looks like you worked it out nicely

The rub n Buff does look good. I can tell the difference

 

[korben44]

With the rub n buff, you do need to polish it once applied and it makes even more of a difference. I used rub n buff, silver leaf, on my Rey's Speeder and gave it a good buffing. I use Mr. Surfacer 1500 black as a primed basecoat with the rub n buff directly on top of that.

 

[Jimw100]

Wow that does look cool, nice one. I'll definitely try it again on my next model, which will likely be the Viper Mk7.

I made a bit of progress with the tail fin lights, so here's another update.

Tail Fins

As mentioned above, I sort of forgot to include the lights in the fins when I did the rest of the wiring. And also the wingtip lights. I've now decided there's no good way to retrofit the wing lights so I'm just going to leave them off. However the fins are doable, because some of the wiring is exposed under the cabin floor as I haven't yet glued the main hull bottom piece on, and there's room in that hull piece for another bundle of wires.

I toyed with using fibre optics for the tail lights but I always think they look too directional. Plus I wanted them all to strobe on and off at the same time and having two green and two red probably wasn't going to work. FYI I think in the BSG series the Raptors have green on one side and red on the other but they're constantly on. I just thought strobing was cooler, and sort of more realistic. If a fictional spacecraft can be realistic. With LEDs you get a good amount of light from the sides as well:

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Anyway, I got some little SMD LEDs and I drilled holes for them to go in the requisite places. I held the magnet wires in place with blu tack whilst I used some Micro Kristal Klear to glue the wires in place.

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I had to cut away at some of the surfaces of the fin pieces as they overlap and I didn't want the to pinch the wires, and then cut away a little hole for the wires to come out the bottom of the fin. They run externally for a few mm and then they go into the bottom hull piece. I also had to file a channel in the hull piece for the wires to run until they get to clear space inside the floor.

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As with the engines I didn't fancy my chances of being able to paint these bits after they were attached so after I put the pieces together and filled a few gaps, I primed these and this time decided to do a tri-colour chipping regime, black grey and gunmetal.

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I used the Vallejo masking fluid as before, and again I don't think I could get the smallest "chips" (the ones made by applying the masking fluid with a bit of foam) to show up, but hopefully it looks OK.

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Then it was just a question of wiring it all up. Earlier in the build I connected the engine LEDs to the main body with a little connector so I didn't need to attach the engines straight away, and I managed to use this to my advantage by adding in a section of wire between the two original connectors with a male and a female on it, and I spliced the 8 SMD wires and the three wires from the flasher chip into this, then just plugged the two ends back in.

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Not neat, but it works.

I would put up a video of the strobes but I think I would need to put it on youtube or something first, so can't do that at the moment. I think it looks pretty good though, and the little tiny 3.7v battery is still doing a great job powering all these LEDs at a decent level of brightness. I think it's something like 21 LEDs now.

 

[Jimw100]

A few small updates - getting close to the end now I think!

Seatbelts and Canopy

These take so long to do (although actually they are a much better design than the Viper Mk2 ones, as all of the five straps loop directly into the central buckle so can be put together and then glued in place in one go) but I think they really add to the look of the cockpit. I've also finally attached the pilots now. It's a bit cramped in there...

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Now the pilots are in I have confirmed that the canopy should fit, but I needed to do something about the enormous gaps, rather than just use filler, as the filler would be visible on the inside through the clear plastic. So I've superglued 1mm styrene around the edge of the canopy. It worked a lot better than I thought it would.

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I also dipped the canopy in future/pledge which worked really well, but then when I was using isopropyl alcohol to clean up the Mr Surfacer 500 that I used to cover the styrene I found out that future doesn't like alcohol. So I've got some nasty streak marks on the inside of the cockpit glass. I've put some more future over the top, to see if that helps. I suppose it can't make it worse.

Door

I attached 3 2mmx1mm magnets to the door and the frame to hold the door in the open position. I could probably have done with using 4 or 5, but it just about stays put with 3.

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You'll see I've also attached the wings, which went on OK. A few gaps to fill but nothing awful. The vents that go on top of the wings were a bit awkward, they really don't fit very well but a few goes with Mr Surfacer and they're ok.

 

[Fett_Ish]

Use the streak as a bit of weathering/damage to the window. You are really bending this kit to your will, its going to be a piece to be proud of. Not to mix medias but "it's more putty now than styrene, custom and amazing...". Can't wait to see it finished.