Twinkle twinkle

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.