BTW, I recommend buying the PL lighting kit and then modifying it to suit. It's very well designed but it serves only as a starting point. As such, it includes a lot of useful parts even if you want to make your own custom lighting setup. My recommendations:
- First, ditch all the cool white LEDs. Use Natural White (4500K) for the spot lights as well as the point lights in the nacelles and engineering deck. Then, use warm white lights for everything else. You can use your own blinker circuit if you prefer.
- Add dimming for each individual light to get just the right brightness level for each one.
- The "light pipe" in each engine nacelle is ingenious, but, from what I've seen so far, the light pointing aft ends up being too bright compared to the lights on each side. They are all supposed to be about the same brightness. You might be able to address this by first painting the outside of the light pipe white (minus the input and output points, leave those clear). Then, light-block the outside with foil tape, heavy primer, etc., again leaving the the output points clear. Now, test the brightness in a dark room. Reduce the brightness at the rear point by frosting that output point. You can do this with sandpaper. If that does not sufficiently reduce the brightness to "balance" the output, you can also try tinting the rear point with transparent black. If that still doesn't work, a coat of transparent white should do the trick. Again, try to get all five points to be about the same brightness.
- Another problem area is the windows in the bulb and Cobra head. The lighting kit setup doesn't really work here. What is needed is an even glow that's not too bright. There are many ways to do this. The key is to avoid having bright "hot spots." Instead, try to establish an even glow of light. Finally, don't make it too bright! So many times I see model spaceships where the windows are so bright it looks like a warp core breach is in progress. LOL
- The same issue is present for the "comb" lighting. The kit has two bright hot spots here and it needs to be an even glow. Make the area behind the comb a "light box" and try to illuminate it evenly. Don't let it be too bright.
- Finally, the bridge lights needs to be dimmed. The output here must also not be too bright. Don't forget these are WINDOWS and not a continuous ring of light. The window outlines are molded into the clear part but you have to look close in order to see them. ParaGrafix provides a PE piece to frame these windows correctly.