I spent a lot of time on the paint. Painting, sanding, painting, sanding, again and again, down to 12000 grit. It still isn't perfect. But the worst flaws are on the under side. After awhile I just didn't want to continue. Getting a really good paint finish it incredibly difficult.
But polished and waxed it ended up pretty good.
Just before sealing up the hull, I made a display stand. I planed to hold the
model on the stand using string magnets. So after the stand, which includes
magnets, was built, I put the lower half of model on the stand and place
magnets inside. The magnets of course jump to the magnets below in the stand
and so are perfect placed. I then just covered them with canopy cement.
Also in this photo you can see that I used cheap thimbles for the headlights, the same thimbles that hold the engine lights. For the headlights I installed super bright, flashlight style, LEDs. The thimbles work perfectly.
The kit included a hallway for the rear of area. This area was never shown in the show, so there are other interpretations out there of the back area. I like the corridor though. I put in a ceiling light and it looks pretty good.
I took a break from the model at this point and thought long and hard about power. I wanted to come up with some way to use rechargeable batteries, but I really wanted to be able to change the batteries when they stopped working.
The lower hull include inside detail for door that open for landing gear. A landing gear add-on set was once available for this kit I guess. I thought about cutting one hatch open to access batteries.
But there's just not a lot of room in there. I'd have to customize the battery pack and recharge circuit. In the end I decided that I just wasn't confident in my electronics enough to pull that off with a reliable result. I settled for a micro USB port in the bottom to power the lights.
I also really wanted to make it turn off and on via a remote control. A wireless relay is no problem, but unfortunately the floor lighting uses a different voltage than the other LEDs, as does the circuit board for the reactor effect. Again, it figured it was just too complicated. I could probably do it, but would it just explode one day? Someone with a little more electronic experience could do it.
Still phots and even video don't really capture the effect. It turned out quite well I think.
Wiring and lighting, lighting and wiring, one wall at a time...
Figures are not my strong suit, but there they are.
On to the interior floor and structure...
The floor is a large clear piece to allow lighting from the underside. For painting, it gets masked off as needed for a grey section at the front and a yellow outline in the center where the hatch is.
Here it is with the lighting panel underneath. I actually made a very regrettable mistake here in that the middle hexagon, the hatch, which is clear above and grey on the underside was not sufficiently light blocked. I should have use the silver metal tape. That would have been perfect.
As a result though, on the completed model, that hexagon is slightly lit in the rear half. The lighting panel on the bottom covers half the center area.
I painted that area, but it wasn't enough.
Overall with the structures in place the details are pretty nice.
Read though all the posts on this project here!
Next up we have the Mobius Models Flying Sub kit, from The 1960s television show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. This is probably one of the most iconic and well known fictional vehicles from all of science fiction movie and TV history. Who does love a nuclear powered sub that flies!
This recent model release marks a huge improvement over kits that have been available over the years. At 1/32nd scale, it is much larger. It is also based off entirely new scans of the original studio models, its contours and details differ from previous models It is much more accurate. Even the box art is more accurate to what we saw on screen.
I did a lot of preparation and planning for this one. I really wanted it to turn out well. Lighting is of course a must. There is a lighting kit specifically for this model, so I got that. But I quickly realized it wasn't enough. More LEDs would be needed, a lot more. I acquired warm white surface mounted (SMDs) from Evans Design.
The upper and lower hull halves in this kit are about the largest pieces of molded plastic I've seen. Fortunately the quality is quite good, although I think the kit over all would benefit from having more separate (smaller) parts for more detail. There actually are not a lot of parts to this thing.
I also used a photo etch set. Basically, you cut away all the details, and open up for light, all the control panels and replace them. with photo etched (PE) brass. The PE kit comes with decals for the control panels that go over the PE, letting colored light through in all the right places.
It I had to do this again I think I would not use many of the decals, or at least not the entire decal. I could have painted, or made and painted, better control details.
I used metal tape for light blocking on the backside of the panels. This give complete light block and reflection for addition light where it's needed. It was overkill. I actually ended up using and blocking the LEDs more selectively, indivually.
Here's a wall from the sub with the PE covering the cutouts and the initial paint. Looks good.
Here's a wall panel more or less done, with the decals. Again, I wish I'd just painted the PE.
A note about colors, particularly of the walls and such... The studio sets no longer exist so the show itself is the only available reference. Viewing stills, one quickly realizes that the on-screen colors are all over the map. This was the very early days of color television. Control over what things looked like on screen were not refined. It's also clear that they were not always consistent, and changed things, for specific scenes in order to highlight plot elements or actors. We are kind of on our own for colors. I used a combination of what looked right to me, and what paint I had on hand were possible. You will definitely see models painted a little differently.
Read though all the posts on this project here!
