Polar Lights 1:350 Scale Star Trek Starship Enterprise, Part 8

The warp nacelles feature a lighting effect for the front ends of the engines; the Bussard collectors. This cool thing about this kit is that it allowed for building it with the engine effect designed almost exactly the way the studio model works.

There is a panel of lights, Christmas lights originally, with blinking effects. Over that is a rotating inner dome with vanes, all covered by an outer dome.

These lighted panels can be simply painted silver. But many builders use reflective foil to enhance and defuse the light. 

I have read that the studio model used random pieces of broken mirror glued around the lights. So that's what I did.

These bits of broken mirror are available as a crafty item. I got them cheap on Amazon, enough for 20 Enterprise models.

I just glued them in used Micro Kristal Klear.

Here's the components with an electric motor to turn the vaned inner dome. Shown is the LED panel with blinking effects, the "Christmas lights" and the domes. The domes have been scuffed on one side (outside on the inner dome and inside on the outer dome) with fine steel wool.

I struggled with coloring these parts. The whole thing has an amber tone on screen that was either on the original parts, or was all the lighting. After trying several things I finally used a metallic copper ink on the inner dome. The color looks very accurate and it is translucent giving just the right amount of diffusion. As an added bonus it is somewhat reflective.

 

See all the posts for this project here.