MoJo Rising
Member
Great question. So I trimmed the cockpit tube and positioned all of the cockpit pieces and the extra long cockpit nose cone to see how it would fit. Here's what I found:
If you try to position the cockpit as Tony designed it and remain "accurate" you will have to do major surgery on the interior support posts as they will get in the way. However, if you trim the floor of the cockpit by about half an inch it may not be as accurate but in my opinion it will look better and install far easier.
As for the LED versus EL light panel for the roof: there is virtually no room to get very much of anything in between the roof panel and the hull. If you were willing to trim the rear wall circumference by about 3 mm it would open up the number of possibilities. However, as it is I would be very resident to try to bend a fiber-optic 90° to wedge it in there. EL panel would probably fit but you will also probably not see the light it would produce.
My suggestion: trim the floor of the cockpit so that the overall cockpit is shorter; cheat the positioning of the roof down by a few millimeters. This will mean a slightly more claustrophobic cabin but in my opinion it will not be noticeable and The trade-off will be well worth it because it will make it possible to put fiber everywhere. Then use fiber optics and an LED engine to light everything.
For myself, I'm waiting anxiously for the resin set that's going to be produced by Mr Salzo from the Shapeways pieces. I DID find a pepakura pattern for the Revel cockpit and gun ports I forgot I had downloaded some time ago, that I've resized and am going to mess around with and see if I can produce a reasonable looking alternative to the more expensive pieces though.
