captain america

Shot of the nacelle strut illuminated by the white LEDs in the base.

Top of the saucer. The light projection onto the hull is courtesy of an LED which I held dangling over the model as I snapped the pic. Though there's a light shining from out of the base of the bridge decks, it barely projects onto the hull at all; the LED being too large to aim downward from inside the crowded confines of the kit's interior.

..And a few more awful pics of the finished model, which I can proudly say I assembled with NO painting whatsoever. I swear, these Bandai shake-n-bake models are like scaled-up versions of those little Kinder Egg toys... Makes me think it might not be such a bad idea to market them encased in a chocolate egg

The Samurai Monkey character art in the company logo was provided by Rob; I simply dressed it up. The irate little guy at lower right is a marker rendering by me of myself at work.

Aight... Read the article on LEDs for dummies. Flawed article, because I'm more confused now than before I read it... Us simple-minded folk prefer diagrams; makes learning easier, so I included one of the wiring on my model. The only thing that's wrong in the diagram is the position of the on/off switch; it should clearly be between ALL the LEDs and the battery contacts. Hopefully, this will provide a clearer indication of what I've done, and if it can be converted to a wall-outlet.

Hi stamen. Sorry, I'm just VERY new and dense with all this. Would I need a resisor for EACH LED in the kit, and if so, do I need to place it right on the LED itself? The ship itself has been glued shut, so I can't get inside it to access those LEDs anymore, but the base/battery box is still accessible. Inside this display base, there's essentially two main "poles": one positive, one negative, and these connect to the battery contacts. I simply soldered all the red wires from the LEDs to the positive pole, and all the blue ones to the negative. I was just hoping that there would be a way to replace the battery box (and batteries) with a wall outlet, and maybe a resistor of some sort in between them to keep from blowing the LEDs. Alas, I'm an artist, not an electrician, so even the simplest of wiring jobs is a big step for me... Makes for a purdy model though

Hi Stamen. The LEDs in question are superbrights, I guess. 5mm, 10mA there are 6 "white", and 2 blue superbrights inside the ship, and two regular red LEDs (non-superbright) in the front of the nacelles to light the bussard collectors. The 5 in the base are white superbrights also, all are 5mm size. If it helps, the radio shack parts number for the white superbrights is 276-9083...2 per pack.

Hi Valkyrie. Well, I took the plunge and replaced all the lamps in my Enterprise with superbright LEDs. In fact, I went even further, by adding 2 extra LEDs inside the saucer section to produce the "projection" effect onto the hull. The one on the top didn't come out as great as I would have liked, as it's hard to get a proper light patch onto a surface that's dipping away from the light source. I also added 5 LEDs into the black base which serve as spotlights to illuminate the lower hull... Not bad for a guy who sucks at wiring things! Ok, now here's the thing. This kit now has 15 LEDs, which are powered by 3 AA batteries, and I'm guessing that since there are so many bulbs, that the batteries just can't produce the brightness that I seemed to get when testing the bulbs one at a time. Essentially, would there be a way to make the whole unit capable of using a wall outlet for power? Perhaps using some sort of off-the-shelf plug-in adapter unit? I'd ask the guys at my local radio shack, but judging from the blank expression on their faces when I asked them about LEDs, I figured it would be safer to ask here

page 2 of 2.

Hi all. It's been a while since my last update, so this is a bit overdue. The molds for the Boosater have all been completed, and aside from a few leaks which have since been repaired, all the test-shots look excellent... The quality will be comparable with what you get on a CLUB M/Work Shop CAST kit, save for a tad more flash. The masters and molds are currently en-route to Jesse, and if all goes well, he should be pumping out the first few kits next week. Just as a quick teaser, here are the shots of the instructions for the kit... I'll try to post some pics of the actual castings later this week. Cheers...

Hi all. I have a bit of a technical question for those of you who may have some experience in lighting model kits. I'm currently looking at a newly-purchased Bandai NCC-1701E Enterprise kit, and I had some questions about the small grain-of-wheat bulbs included. Essentially, these look ( to me anyway) like scaled-down versions of regular lightbulbs, and as such, that most probably means that they'll burn out eventually. Problem is, once the model is properly built, there would be no way to open it back up to replace them. So in short, my question is twofold: what is the expected life of these grain of wheat/rice bulbs, and do they have any advantages at all over LEDs (particularly superbrights)? Thanks in advance for anyone who could, um... Shed some "light" on my dimness

The more I read about it, the more it sounds like this thing is a real piece of garbage... Or crap. The term "MPC" suits it well. Bravo Toynami, I applaud you.

Hi guys. Just wanted to give you a quick update on what's going on. I've already begun pouring the molds for the masters, and hopefully that process will be done by friday evening, or Sat morning at the latest (cure time and all), with the first test-shots ready that same evening. My goal is to get a set of molding masters off to Jesse first thing Monday, so that he can begin making molds & casting. My guess is that whole process will take him at least a week to get started, so I'll be making the first kits over here, just so that we don't have to keep folks waiting too long for their models. Hopefully, I can start shipping the first kits within 10 days from now. Cheers,

Hi WM. Actually no, because of the way that the booster litterally "wraps around" the fighter, it can't simply slide in & out. Since there was no official reference material for the booster ejection, I made it so that the very tips of the lower fuselage are designed to blow away with exploding bolts, and pressurized C02 nozzles would then "push" the Valk down slightly, and then the Valk's own thrusters would allow it to slide free of the booster structure. I didn't make those tips separate on the kit, simply because my parts tally is already up to 15, and I wanted to keep the kit as simple as possible.

Hi guys. Actually, the scribing process on this thing was what I call a textbook example in an exercise in frustration: lots of compond curves and hard to reach areas where my scribing templates would constantly deviate as I was scribing. Surprisingly, when the final primer coat went on, it didn't look quite as bad as I thought it would, but Hasegawa could definitely have done better. ...Problem is, I don't think the subject got enough coverage in the series/isn't popular enough for them to warrant producing one... So you're stuck with my crappy resin kit

last pic.

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