U.S.S. Defiant NX-74205

JD
The adventure begins..

Torsten
I will follow your journey with great interest 🙂

JD
Welcome Torsten. The worst part of a snap kit is the snaps themselves. Meant to be permanent, once you snap them together, good luck getting them apart, and you have little control over the seams. I want avoid this pitfall by drilling out the posts, which are hexagonal, and now the fit is great. The best seams I have seen on a Polar Lights kit. I can now move on to figuring out where to mount various leds, and see where the light blocking will be needed. The major major flaw is the front nacelle bulkhead should have been made clear for lighting, so I will attempt to mold and cast these parts in uv resin..

JD
Captain's log: Stardate 99444.16 Nothing much to report, some progress indicated, that is all. Starfleet out.

Torsten
And there was light 👍

Nathan Dempsey
I'm watching too 🙂

JD
Hi there!😁 I finally got around to building and testing the nacelle with my tinted lens idea. I'm liking the results

Robin (WhiteGlint)
👀

Torsten
It looks great 😎

Starbase101
I see this kit suffers the same as the larger version, having a locator pin behind the lit area and casting a shadow onto the clear part. If you move the LED more towards the ship body (angle it towards the clear part) and also put a mirrored reflector in front of the locator pin you can eliminate the shadow it creates.

JD
Port nacelle assembly completed.
Interesting solution Starbase101 🤔
I think I might be ok if I can cut out the locator pins, as they aren't necessary anymore.

JD
Not much time on the bench lately, but made some progress. I was able to remove the locator pins in the forward sensor array, and redesigned a better parallel circuit. The blue light is a little weak reaching the plasma vents..

JD
Configuration #2 gave better results, though the light is still uneven. I have ordered 3mm side glowing optical fiber to play with

Starbase101
For the plasma vents try blue LED strip tape, double density. You can scratchbuild a "box" underneath each row of vents for mounting the light strips and keeping blue light from spilling out to other areas.

jan zumack
Crazy man... 👍

Torsten
The blue light looks good 😎

JD
Thanks Gents. After much experimenting, I have come up with an arrangement that I think will work. Soon on to light blocking and further testing before final assembly. Then I can get started painting and decals. I've also ordered slow flashing leds for the navigational beacons.

Torsten
That with the light is already very 😎, maybe I must also think about how I can use something like that with me

JD
Thanks Torsten! I hope you do 😉 I finally figured out how to light the plasma vents! It only took me a month.. 🤨

Spanjaard
looking very nice. looking forward the final result

JD
Thanks Spanjaard! A little more progress installing the plasma conduits..