Part XII: Window replacements from down under and more LED's!
Few weeks ago the famous 'radiator grill PE sheet' that Madhatter has send me arrived in the mail.
First of, another great thanks to Madhatter for sending me these parts!!!!
Having them in my hands I got to work removing my 'makeshift' circular bridge windows. And cut two rows from the PE sheet (very difficult to cut, took me a while to find a way to get a row removed from the sheet).
I don't have pictures from the removal process, but I do have a nice closeup after installation!
Wanting to finish the electronic part of the bridge tower, I started cutting out the other windows on both sides:
the large ones needed styrene strips to support the PE windows.
I found myself looking at the bridge tower assembly for a long time. I wasn't sure at all how to tackle lighting these windows.
First option was to create boxes like with my hanger to place a LED in. But the inner walls of this tower has the most weird shape, cutting out boxes for this would of been a hell.
After being stuck on this for a while, and holding a LED behind the windows in the dark and moving it etc a solution presented itself.
In short, I hung up 4 3mm blue LED's like chandeliers in a position where from the outside you couldn't see the LED trough the windows but they still had a nice coverage.
To help with the spreading, a center styrene board was added lined with alu-tape. Then two more on the sides for the big windows. This was followed by strips of tape and cover plates and more strips to stop light bleed and so on....
I then cut out the top of the Hull where the tower goes, to make room for the cover plates and feed the cables. (in hindsight two holes for the cables would have sufficed)
This was the finished result, the tower with an alu-tape cover at the bottom and two bundle of cables.
I glued the tower on the hull, yeah I know.... I haven't seen a single Venator builder do that so soon, but I wanted to fix the light bleed now.
And my other reason is because detailing the tower would follow and I wanted to flow from the tower to the hull to unify the two parts.
These two being stuck together wouldn't be any problem, if a LED dies I'm screwed anyway. (lets hope they don't).
This resulted in my first full light test of the bridge tower assembly.
One in bigger resolution (I like this pic):
I am extremely pleased with the result.
As a bonus! detailing of the bridge necks and tower has begun. Especially the back sides, for some reason no detail is present at all.
That is it for now!!
The plan is to finish the complete bridge tower and then move on to either the hull or trenches.