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Fair American 1:48 by Model Expo

AllanKP69 said:
I love how you and others wire the models to shed some light in/on them, clever solution! I also like the reference to Baldrick. I've never seen Blackadder, but would love to give it a try.
Allan
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Thank you, Allan. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it all comes together. Adding an interior is new territory for me, further complicated by the addition of lighting.
 
Namabiiru said:
View attachment 546702
In order to wire the lighting for the ship before planking the hull, but still leaving the whole thing freely accessible as the rest of the build progresses, I am going to insert electrical contacts into the keel at the points where it rests in the pedestals. The pedestals themselves have leads soldered to the bases
View attachment 546703
One will connect to the positive side of the power supply, the other the negative side. The resistor and LEDs will be in series so wiring will be simple. I drilled holes for the leads next to the holes for the mounting screws.
View attachment 546704
With everything set in place, this is how it looks. No sign of wiring and the ship doesn’t need to stay permanently attached to the base.
View attachment 546705
With the contacts installed and the ship resting in the pedestals, resistance across the whole setup is effectively nil. I’ll call it a win.

Just waiting for some resistors to show up in the mail so I can test the lighting properly.
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What a brilliant solution! If I am interpreting this setup correctly, the whole ship is a switch, just slide it back a little and break the contacts turning off the lights.
My Bluenose just sets loosely in its pedestals which so far has not been a problem.
 
Daniel20 said:
What a brilliant solution! If I am interpreting this setup correctly, the whole ship is a switch, just slide it back a little and break the contacts turning off the lights.
My Bluenose just sets loosely in its pedestals which so far has not been a problem.
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Hi, Daniel! That’s a very interesting idea, but I don’t dare leave Fair American loose with as much rigging as she’ll carry. I’ll install a switch in the base, but the ship will be screwed down securely once the hull is complete..
 
Got to enjoy a nice long weekend thanks to the US Congress, so I put it to good use getting the base wired to power the LEDs that will someday go in a ship.

A test of the LEDs showed they were too bright for my purposes so yesterday was a trip to Electric Town in the otaku capital of the world, Akihabara. :p

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Grabbed an LED controller kit. This is what it looks like assembled. As you can see, the voltage range is 3-4.5VDC, and the smallest power supply I had was a 5V USB charger. So I cobbled together a voltage divider from the resistors that came with the LEDs.

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Here’s the underside of the base with all the guts installed. The red wires running off to the left go to the on-off switch. The PC board at the bottom only serves as the host to a USB-C connector I cannibalized from a battery charger. I wanted to be able to disconnect the cord whenever I need to move the ship.

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Here’s the connector from the back.

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The ship temporarily installed to test circuit continuity. I did have a bit of a scare when I connected all four LEDs for the final test and nothing happened. After end-to-end troubleshooting, I discovered the controller will only work with the LEDs in parallel, but not in series. A minor mod to the wiring inside the hull.

With all that done, I could finally add the feet to the base. Photos of that tomorrow after the glue is dry and tape comes off.

Next, It’s time to continue scratch-building gun carriages. I need at least one so I can verify whether another run of bulwark planking is needed.

TTFN.
 
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