Building the Klingon Cruiser part 4 by Billy Lehner

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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.

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.

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.

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.

next is part 5