So, Disneyland was great. I had a good run, I PRed
by 10 min from last year. We might have done better, but due to the
construction of Star Wars Land the normal Tinkerbell rout was changed leading
to a number of bottlenecks where we were just stopped. Still it was a great
time.
My
parents joined us in Disneyland. They also brought me a great birthday gift, an
airbrush with compressor! I was hoping to start playing around with it this
weekend, but unfortunately the one model shop we have in town was not open
Friday or Saturday, despite their posted hours. So, I do not have paint to play
with yet. Looks like I am going to either have to make a trip to Idaho Falls,
or find some online.
Airbrush and compressor
The airbrush up close
Still,
I did get some work done this weekend. I built the electronics for the two
bussard spinners. I had ordered some blue LEDs to go in them, but due to some
voltage issues with all the different colors of LEDs I am using the blue LEDs
simply do not light. They require a higher voltage and when the lower voltage
LEDs are in parallel they seem to just suck all the power. Oh well, they still
look pretty good with red, yellow, and green LEDs.
Having
seen the tangle of wires on the prototype I worked to find a cleaner and less
bulky wiring. It looks at little odd, but it fits well into the nacelles. I took
a few pictures of the steps: drilling holes in the disks that hold the LEDs, a
shot of the disks, soldering the wires. I took a picture to show the difference
between the prototype and the real spinner wiring. The videos below show the
spinner bare, under the bussard shields, and in the dark. I also have one
showing the two spinners together on a single chip. A single spinner on the
chip is brighter, but I am not sure if using one chip per spinner will be any
brighter. There is only so much voltage to go around.
The first disk drilled and ready for electronics
The pin vice with a bit in the disk.
soldering the LEDs
finished spinner assembly
the prototype and the second spinner assembly
Up
next, well that will depend on what supplies I get first. I have some supplies
for the base and to work on the vanships in the mail. I will be sorting out
paint this week as well, so we shall see. I hope to do some painting on the
finished Star Fleet ships to learn how to use the airbrush before I start using
it on the Enterprise. I also need to figure out how I am going to deal with the
windows. Lots to do over the next few weeks.
