Finished Project: Spalko's Homing Beacon from Indy IV >>

[tim]

I also posted an extended work-in-progress thread at COW, but summarize below.

I wanted to build from scratch one of the small beacons that we see Mac leaving behind so that Spalko could tail him and Indy as they searched for Akator. I also wanted to make mine blink like the hero prop in the movie.

I purchased some plastic domes (for panel indicator lamps) and high-brightness blinking red LEDs with built-in IC.

I mounted an LED on a scrap of perf-board with a current limiting resistor in series. The completed circuit was then epoxied inside the dome. I decided to use two silver oxide button cells to power the device; these resulted in good brightness and a blink rate of about 1.5 Hz. I next found some half-inch copper coupling at Home Depot, cut a piece to length, and painted it silver.

I used a piece of 5/8-inch oak dowel to form the tail section and battery cap.

Finally, after puttying, sanding, and painting the oak tail section, I added an o-ring to complete the prop replica. I estimate the result to be 90%-95% screen accurate, which I think is pretty good for my first scratch-built prop replica attempt. :cool

 

[Stefan Jones]

great work !

here is, what I came up with after your kind help:

it has a working ON-/OFF-switch with a blinking LED, working on a display now.

best wishes

Stefan Jones

 

[dropshipbob]

Well done, and you make it sound so easy!

 

[troopermatthew]

Wow that is great

 

[Stefan Jones]

here is a fast assembelt display for that beacon:

when I say "fast" , I mean fast.....you will laugh, when I tell you what kind of parts I used for that one. It doesnt look bad for my first selfmade display, but I would like it to look to look more professional. How do you display your smaller props ? I mean, I have other props I would like to present better as the batman coin or the goonies doubloon or a terminator chip for example............

best

Stefan Jones

 

[tim]

And here's a final photo with a proper "CCCP" label added! I used Word 2007's "Century" font and Avery clear address labels for inkjet printers.

 

[tim]

So, I took my beacon replica travelling recently, and managed to lose it by leaving it in the hotel room. :wacko

Needing to make another, I decided to improve on the design. I removed the current limiting resistor (unnecessary because of the IC built into the blinking LED), used silver spray paint for the body (instead of hand painting), and elongated the olive drab tail section to make it more screen-accurate.

I present to you the Spalko Beacon Mark II.

 

[Indys brother]

BAH! I thought I was going to do this one for my first scratch built prop!! I was searching for an image of the thing to work off of,.......and it lead me right back here to these forums. I think I'll probably try to do one anyway for a display I'm working on. At any rate, they both look cool, guys. :thumbsup I guess I could try to do one that beeps, too. That'd be a little different.

Edit: Do either of you have a good shot of the actual prop that I could work off of?

 

[tim]

I guess I could try to do one that beeps, too. That'd be a little different.

That would be cool! Go for it!

Edit: Do either of you have a good shot of the actual prop that I could work off of?

I don't have any up-close shots of the prop, but there is a drawing of the item and some other stills over in a thread I started on the same subject over on Club Obi-Wan.

 

[Indys brother]

I don't have any up-close shots of the prop, but there is a drawing of the item and some other stills over in a thread I started on the same subject over on Club Obi-Wan.

I'm not a COW member, so I can't view anything over there. Could you post something here? Please?

 

[tim]

I'm not a COW member, so I can't view anything over there. Could you post something here? Please?

It was a whole thread over there, which I distilled down to the first post in my thread above without reposting inline images that I'm not hosting.

 

[Indys brother]

Ok, I've got the blu ray, I'll see if I can get anything more useful off of that, thanks for the response!

 

[tim]

Ok, I've got the blu ray, I'll see if I can get anything more useful off of that, thanks for the response!

Awesome! Look forward to seeing some caps.

 

[Indys brother]

Well, just poking around a little, I'm finding some familiar shapes. This looks too good to be true, but I can't quite make out it's dimensions:

Of course, there are some other more obvious ways to go:

(I'm looking at the green one)

 

[tim]

You'll find that the shape of the actual prop is a bit off from the two items you've posted.

Here's a screencap that I just rediscovered on my image host, which helps drive home the point.

 

[Indys brother]

Hmm. I was just referring to the green portion sticking out of the bottom of the beacon, which I can't really make out in that last pic. And am I crazy, or does that last shot look different from the length/width of the first one.....this most recent one looks shorter and wider to me.

 

[tim]

Hmm. I was just referring to the green portion sticking out of the bottom of the beacon, which I can't really make out in that last pic. And am I crazy, or does that last shot look different from the length/width of the first one.....this most recent one looks shorter and wider to me.

Yes, as I recall, my DVD player program screwed with the aspect ratio when taking those caps. I corrected it in my very first cap in the first thread, but not in the cropped one that I just posted. The latter does give some sense of the overall shape, though.

Blu-Ray caps will definitely be helpful.