Billy Lehner's Klingon Cruiser
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My wife says that I can't leave well enough alone when it comes to making models. She says I simply overdo it and get
carried away. She is right. I got carried away with this model too.
The shape of the Klingon Cruiser is unusual.
The shape of the cruiser is a strange combination. The ship has bug eyes, a Panama hat and clown mouth, a swan neck, a turtle hump and bat wings. It had straight, triangle and round shapes. It looks like a builder's nightmare. But the design of the Star Trek TV show's enemy, the Klingons and their Klingon Cruiser worked; it was believable.
The design is one of pure contrasts.
The large, bulbous head and broad, massive, body gave the D7 a powerful and strong look to it. The elongated neck gave the opposite effect of a fragile spacecraft that could only seem to move in space. The design is a great artistic shape that looks well balanced at all angles.
I built the lighted Star Trek Enterprise and the Klingon Cruiser in the 1960s.
The model was just lit in the nose section. But it gave me hours of enjoyment as I imagined them lit up and soaring through the galaxy planning to ambush Captain Kirk and the Enterprise. I did not make the best models back then. It had globs of glue and glue strings. The neck was fragile. It was unpainted and looked like...plastic! My lack of modeling skills and crooked, peeling decals made the model sad to look at. But it was one of my first lit models and I was proud to have assembled it properly even if it wasn't the greatest model in the world.
I wanted to build it again but AMT has not made the lit version in decades. I understand AMT does not make the model anymore. Finding and building a rare, unbuilt, 1960s model to put
together is more money than I would care to part with. And I don't have the heart to destroy the collectible value of these 1960s models.
But there are still plenty of unlit versions of this
models around since AMT reissued them in new artwork box for the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of Star Trek.
I see them regularly at Ebay. At least until the, out of production, model kit excess stock dry up the models are plentiful and cheap to buy.
Thankfully the AMT Klingon Cruiser model is the
exception to the rule that AMT only makes inaccurate models. This model is almost completely accurate.
With the exception of a strange tube that can be left off the model and the holes filled and a different end to the warp engines the model is true to the TV show version. And I rather like the AMT version of the warp engine.
I wanted my lit starships again!
I have already lit the unlit 1975 AMT Romulan Bird of Prey and wrote an article here at this web site on the build-up. My lit Enterprise was on hold until more parts come in the mail. So the next model project was the Klingon Cruiser. I imagined a modernized version of the 1960s model and a tribute to AMTs rare decent quality model. The ship would have modern white high intensity LED lighting in the sensor dome and windows. But I wanted lit impulse engines with a little twinkle effect but how would I do that? I found the perfect answer to the twinkle effect using belly button lights.
As I built the model I added more lighting.
The model was lit entirely with light emitting diodes (LEDs). A 5-mm high intensity white LED for the nose section, a 5-mm red high
intensity LED for the impulse engine, and a 3-mm yellow and green standard LED for the engine positioning light. The flashing in the impulse engine, engineering positioning lights and rear hangar
deck warning light were created with, yes, belly button lights!
Belly button lights are used at Rave parties. It is a small, self-contained unit that is taped into a belly button. When
lit the lights give off a fairly intense, bright, random and continuous red/green flashing effect. The flashes are biased more toward the red flashes.
They are small because they are constructed
of Surface Mount Technology (SMT). They are also efficient running for approximately 24 hours on a set of two alkaline button cells.
The LED lights mount in the circuit board are tiny high intensity red and green LEDs and bright enough to be easily seen. The lights give a nice random flash to them. Combining two belly button lights in the impulse engines of the Klingon Cruiser give a very random flash to them and make the impulse engine area look like power surging through them.
I found a lot of these lights selling at Ebay.
The prices range from 15 lights for $9.99 to about $3.50 each. Before you bid look carefully at the shipping costs. Some of the sellers charge outrageous shipping!
The Belly lights would have
to be permanently mounted in the sealed model so the lights would have to be modified to accept an external power source, a 3-Volt transformer and a power switch.
To download and view an Apple
QuickTime movie of the impulse engine effect go to this address (.841 Mb download): http://members.aol.com/af5942/D7_impulse_engine_quicktime
Here is another QuickTime movie of the rear of the impulse engine (1.084 MB download): http://members.aol.com/af5942/D7_impulse_rear_quicktime
And finally here is a QuickTime movie of the nose and side of the Klingon Cruiser (1.1 MB download): http://members.aol.com/af5942/D7_nose_quicktime
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I bought two different brands of belly button lights at Ebay and found this no name brand to have the brightest and most random
looking blinking effect.
Two reasons I like this brand of lights are, reason one, after modifications the electronics can be easily be placed back into its sturdy housing.
The second reason is the casing has a built in magnifying lens to spread the small LED lights for better dispersion of light in the model.
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Pry open the casing with your fingernail. Discard the small T-shaped rubber power shaft/switch. The left over hole
for the switch will be used to feed the power wires out.
Push out the batteries with a pen and discard.
Orient the back of the circuit board as shown and cut off the left battery clip. Leave one stub of the battery clip on so that when the modified electronics are replaced into the casing the stub will provide a stable base for the electronics. The pictures show how easy it is to modify the lights.
The electronics are very heat sensitive so go easy with the soldering iron! Use a low-powered 30-Watt iron that is well heated and only use the iron on the circuit board for a few seconds
at a time.
Luckily the lights are self-energizing. When power is applied to the circuit they normally start on the on state. So one DPST switch is all that is need to power up the lights.
I used a 3-Volt, 500 milliamp (ma) DC transformer marked "Black and Decker" that I found at a thrift store for 99-cents. The belly button lights normally operate on 2.8-Volts and work
directly off the transformer. Do not use a current-limiting resistor for the flashing circuits that you would normally use for LED circuits because the resistor cannot supply enough current to light the
LEDs correctly.
Two other high intensity LEDs were used in the Klingon model. A white high intensity LED was used for lighting the front section.
With the 4.5-Volt transformer I tested I set the LEDs to run at 20ma by using 110-ohm resistors in series with the LEDs. All static lights were used in parallel circuits because I barely had enough voltage to run them but I had plenty of excess current from the transformer. Another reason to use series connections for the LEDs is simply that if an LED should quit (unlikely) only one circuit would be affected and not the whole lighting scheme. If the lights were set up in series and should quit the entire static LED circuit would be affected.
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The front-end lighting is straightforward. I made decals of small windows and applied them to the upper nose deck.
Those decals showed me where to make the windows. The square windows were made by micro drill bit in a pin vice then carefully cut out with a sharp Xacto blade. Fiber optic "stems" supplies light to the round windows.
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The lit recessed deflector dish effect was easy.
The model was molded a light blue. I shortened the tube one third and carefully masked the tunnel with aluminum foil sprayed with Krylon Easy-Tack repositionable artist adhesive out of the can. After the model was painted the foil was removed. The deflector lighting effect is simply the high intensity LED shining through the translucent blue plastic.
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This is the inside of the nose of the ship. In there is the high intensity LED and fiber optic going into the neck windows.
The "goose neck" of the model always seemed fragile to me so I added a reinforcing piece of plastic spruce to the "neck" of the D7. It was a tight fit with the spruce,
fiber optic leading from the nose of the ship to the center neck windows and the LED wiring.
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The base of the neck where it meets the engineering section was also reinforced using spruce pins and a technique I learned when
I build home speakers. I placed two spruce rods extending from the front body wall to the rear body wall. The spruce rods mutually couples the front and rear walls and reinforcing both
walls. This effective and easily modification doubles the strength of each wall. Since the top and bottom are attached to the walls the neck is effectively attached to all wall of the hull
making an extremely sturdy box and solid neck bracing. I can safely say the walls would rip out before the neck would!
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The front of the impulse engine grill was painted the body color then a slight touch of Testors Metalizer aluminum paint.
Then it was masked over using Parafilm so later painting would preserve the color of the grill and prevent paint from getting on the translucent backing behind the grill. I did this because I wanted a slightly different color to the grills. On the backside of the grill I used new car license plate plastic for the belly button lights to glow though.
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Under the impulse engine a separate box was built to house the belly lights and fiber optic for the main body lighting.
Glued aluminum foil sprayed with Krylon Easy-Tack adhesive was mainly used not to reflect light but to prevent light from leaking out of the hull. It was easier, faster, more economical, less messy
and a more reliable way to prevent the light from leaking out of the ship than painting the inside black.
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The rear impulse engine "exhaust" was cut out using a Dremel Minimite rotary tool. I masked over the front of
the engine with transparent tape and filling the cut area from the inside of the engine with gap filling super glue made the translucent engine.
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The hull flashing lights were made with fiber optic glued to the front engine belly light. The front belly light was partially
covered with foil. So while the engine lights blended together the flashing positioning/hanger bay lights, connected by fiber optic flashed independently of the "blended" engine lights.
Since the belly lights flashed too randomly and harshly to view on their own I also wired in the engine bay a high intensity steady state red LED to "smooth" out the flashes.
While the front LED ran at 20ma current, my maximum output for LEDs, I ran the rear, red, LED at only 16ma. Running the red LED at the lower output gave just the right combination of smoothing light to the engine. Using a 180-ohm resistor did this.
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The LED in each warp engine positioning light was a standard intensity, 3 mm LED positioned behind the light casing that was
thinned from the inside using the rotary tool. A fiber optic was glued to each LED and led out to the rear of the warp engine for the rear positioning light.
To simplify the electrical system I chose to use a dual power system to prevent
the blinking lights from interacting with the static lights. The blinking lights were run directly from a 3-Volt transformer and the static lights were run from a 4.5
-Volt transformer in parallel circuits with resistors dropping the current to a level safe for the LEDs.
Wires are routed out the lower tail of the ship. The ship's hull was then
assembled, painted and trimmed.
The ships construction was based on the widely sold Klingon blueprints but painted the TV prop colors.
I used pictures of the original Klingon Cruiser prop for the color paint scheme. When the Cruiser prop was on display at the Star Trek Exhibit at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington D.C. back in 1992 I took photos of it. Color balancing the photos I determined what the colors were and custom blended the shades of
paint for the model. The light gray frontal area was close enough to Testors Model Master Dark Ghost Gray but the other colors were custom made by trial and
error. The shiny trim is Testors aluminum buffing paint and the shiny trim on the warp engine is a combination of aluminum buffing paint with the center painted
titanium buffing paint. I used an Iwata HP-B and HP-C airbrush to paint the model. A little weathering with the use of the wife's makeup and the job was complete.
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Here is a photograph of the model with a photographic gray card. The card was carefully spot metered and exposed for
middle gray.
If you have a gray card available (it is easily picked up at a photo store) you can match your gray card to my gray card using a computer graphics program (I use Ulead PhotoImpact). If you do that then you will see what color I painted the Klingon Cruiser.
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I couldn't leave well enough alone. With this model build-up I got my 1960s Klingon Cruiser back prettier and updated.
It is better than the first build I did back in the mid-1960s. So now I have a super rare, one-of-a-kind, lit Klingon Cruiser.
The belly button lights for different models? Yes, I might
use them in the warp engine nacelles of the Enterprise models I have yet to build. The do have great potential.
I would suggest you stock up on these belly lights if you want to use them in
models. They are small, cheap and easily modified for transformer power. Another reason to consider buying them now is that simply if these lights are a fad then fads come and go.
Ten years from now they might not be sold. Then how would you get that "just right" effect in your model?
Billy Lehner
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