Thanks Colin, that is high praise indeed
Thanks for the link to the thread Tony, that is a bloody good idea! We have a garish pink Christmas tree in the office (we LOVE the tackiest most tasteless decorations we can find in our office) which is also fibre optic, so maybe I can nick a branch from it
I am almost at the end of this tribute build, so here is one final progress report...
Now that all the main components are ready for paint and final assembly, I did a test of the flashing LED lights... oh dear, they were not very bright. The problem is there isn't enough fibres to carry enough light to each wing. Its a bit late to add more so instead I'll just add MORE POWER!! (urf urf!)
So now there are 2 6v battery packs hidden under the cotton wool!
Now we come to paint and there is a bit of a masking job here to get the colour demarcations on the wing. First off the wing and fuselage were sprayed with a custom mix of XF-16 Aluminium with a drop of X3 Royal Blue added to give it a slight blue sheen. Once this was try I masked up the tail to spray the blue over the top in the upper fuselage and tail:
Next will be the white on the strip down the fuselage and the bulky lower part of the tail...
In the mean time I finally remembered to attach the canards at the front of the fuselage:
This is after a bit more masking and painting to get the darker silvery-blue band on the nose and the red band around the middle and the mid-grey panel where the cockpit and passenger section will slot in.
With the cockpit and passenger section slotted in:
and from the other side
After this, the wings and tail were finished off but I forgot to photograph the progress - it was a matter of spraying several coats of white primer then some gloss white over the top, then repairing the damage caused when the masking tape came off
The fibre optic bundles were mated with the relevant LED, using the heat shrink tubing plus a dab of CY glye to give a good seal and then the wings and tail were attached to the fuselage.
Once this was done, I started with the
decals from the kit. Sadly these almost immediately started falling apart, but I was able to use some of the Spectrum roundels from an Angel Interceptor in the stash, so this wasn't a total disaster. The Angel
decals are a bit smaller than those with the kit but they went on okay and will do the job.
When fitting the wing and passenger section together I discovered a large gap, so this had to be filled with a plastic scrip which was then painted the same colour as the fuselage.
Its virtually complete, I just need to take some decent photos of it, but that will have to wait until I get some daylight in the conservatory at the weekend...