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The Saucer Section
12 October 2006
With the Engineering Section completed, it was now time to turn my attention to the Saucer Section. Before I could get very far with the painting and wiring, I had to figure out a way to get the spot light effect I wanted on the top half of the saucer. As is, the model's bridge dome sits too low to allow a light under it to shine on the saucer in the way that I wanted. Thus, it was necessary to raise the bridge dome a bit to get the necessary room. A number of other modelers that I've talked with on the Hobbytalk message board have been doing the same thing, although it seems that my method was a bit more ham-fisted than the one they used ;). The first step was to remove the "ridges" at the top of the saucer where the dome is supposed to go. After that, I built up the area with several layers of sheet styrene.
Left:
Trimming down the ridges.
Center: This shot shows the area I built-up under
Right: The dome has been elevated with sheet styrene
Once I had the area built up like I wanted, I used a temporarily-rigged LED to make sure the effect would come off like I wanted. The spotlighting still doesn't match the effect seen on screen (the movie makers cheated, using a spotlight that wasn't actually mounted in the model), but it still looks pretty good.
Left & Right: This is the mock-up of the spot effect. The dome obviously hasn't been light proofed yet!
Once I got the physical modifications to the parts done, I primed both halves of the saucer and painted them with several coats of flat white. The next step was the big one. It was time at long last to do the aztec masking on the saucer! The pattern on the saucer is much more regular and predictable than the one on the engineering section. The masks had both a "positive" and "inverse" component to them. The positive pattern gets laid down first, and then the inverse pattern gets filled in later. I decided to do the bottom half of the saucer first, so that if there were any mistakes in my methods, they would be made on the less-noticeable underside of the model.
Left: This is
the "positive" part of the pattern.
Right: Here is the pattern with the inverse parts filled in.
Left: The
instructions recommend applying the masks in a "checkerboard" pattern.
Right: The whole bottom half is now masked.
Once all the masks were applied to the bottom half, I painted it with severalr coats of gloss white, removed the masks, and did some detail painting on the RCS thrusters, the phaser banks, and the area where the saucer joins the neck. I also painted the lower sensor dome and tested out the spot lighting effect on the lower half of the saucer. This effect is much easier to achieve, thanks to the shape of the hull and sensor housing. If only the top half was this easy!
Left: The
gloss white on flat white effect really works nice!
Center: Here you can see
some of the detail painting I did after the aztecing.
Right: This is a test of the ventral spotlighting effect.
With the bottom half of the saucer finished, I attached it to the rest of the model to use it as a base for the saucer's lighting. I ran into some trouble making this joint, and despite my best efforts at claming, taping, etc, the joint didn't some out as tight or as solid as I would have liked. Unfortunately, this resulted in a fairly large light leak in the final model. Oh well, that's a lesson learned! With the bottom half out of the way, I turned my attention to the top. Aztecing the top of the saucer presented a few problems that aren't present with the bottom half, as the aztec masks have to be trimmed around the impulse engines and bridge area to get them to fit.
Left & Right: Masking the top half was a little trickier than the bottom.
Once the painting was done, it was time to do the wiring. To facilitate making connections to the wires coming from the engineering section and between the two halves of the saucer, I installed a terminal strip on the saucer portion of the armature. Also installed in the saucer is the VooDoo FX Navaboard that provides the strobing and blinking effects for my model. The board wasn't cheap, but it came assembled and featured adjustable resistors for changing the flashing rates of the lights. It was definitely a time-saver! I completely wired the top half of the saucer and installed the rims onto it before I attached it to the rest of the model. To avoid having to make too many connections between the top and bottom halves, I tried to light as many of the flashing lights around the edge of the saucer with one LED mounted on the bottom as I could. This worked well in some cases, but not so well in others.
Left:
This shot shows the terminal strip. The
Navaboard is to the right.
Right: The dorsal half was wired independently.
I ran into some trouble when I attached the saucer rims. The joints between the sections resulted in large light leaks. In order to eliminate these leaks, I used small pieces of electrical tape applied to the inside to reduce the leak. This worked to an extent, but there was still light leaking through.
Left: I made
sure to carefully glue the rim sections on to avoid gaps.
Center: Despite my best efforts, gaps like this one still resulted.
Right: Fortunately, the worst of the leaks were eliminated with a bit
of electrical tape.
With the saucer done, major construction on the
model is complete. All that is left is a little filling, detail painting,
and decaling.
Above: Almost done!
Andy Rucker