Pt III Cockpit Lighting and Painting

So I purchased some photo etch for the cockpit to light it all up and make it as accurate and believable as possible.  So here is the photo etch from Green Strawberry.

So I start out by removing the center and side console etch for the cockpit.

 And here we have the removed.

And the cockpit pieces of the y-wing

The center console etch goes over this front piece of the cockpit.

 So to light it, I need to remove all of the plastic so that light can show through the etch.

 So now that it has been removed, here's how the center console will fit in the cockpit.

Next I need to remove the plastic from the sides of the cockpit. To do this, I start out by drilling many holes in the side.

 Once these holes are drilled, I can get an exacto blade in there and remove the rest of the excess plastic, again, so that light can shine through the etch which will be applied to the sides.

So here is the starboard side cleanly removed...

and with the etch glued in place.

And the port side...

 with etch glued in place.  And you can see with the white behind it, how it appears as though the holes are white lights.

So at this point, the 2 side photo etch pieces have been glued to their respective plastic parts and the center is still just temporary.

The photo etch comes with some decals to backlight for color in the console.  While all 3 sides come with decals, I will only be using the center decal, as it actually has some nice graphics on it such as a ship, targeting system and computer mumbo jumbo.

 The center console has now been removed from the cockpit and I'm ready to prime all the parts.

Just being primed with the etch makes the cockpit already start to feel light one piece and come alive.

Now that the pieces have been primed, I begin by detail painting the center console.

The graphic decal is then glued to the backside of the center piece.  There is also a light blocking plastic sheet with the decal to put behind it to only allow light to show through the colored areas.

The center etch is the glued to the front piece of the cockpit.  Now to light the center console, I will place an LED behind it for the light to shine through the holes.  To get the most light possible and direct it all towards those holes, I'm going to build a light light box behind the console to contain and direct that light.  So using styrene, I've cut strips and glued them in place creating a small box.

 Then applied white paint to the bottom side of the center piece as well.

After attaching the final styrene piece, I paint the entire outside of the box black to block any light from escaping and leaking out into other areas of the model.

 My SMD LED in then inserted through the hole, glued in place using Elmer's glue...

 and then tested.

Now that the center portion is complete, time to move on to the sides.  I begin by detail painting the sides as I did with the center console.  And also weathing the back portion of the cockpit with a black wash and some mud and dirt pastels.

As stated above, I will not be using the included decals for the sides.  Instead, I will be painting the back side of the holes using clear transparent color paints of red and yellow.  Where white is needed, no paint will be applied.

And a shot with the pilot in place

 

And here is a test of the side consoles with light coming from my cell phone screen.

So you'll notice in the 2 following screen caps from Star Wars, that there are hoses running behind and on the sides of the pilot.

So, of course, to make my model as accurate as possible, I'd like to add some of those hoses.  My first thought was to try what I've seen other modelers do for those types of hoses, which is wrap very thin magnet wire around a slightly thicker wire nice and tight.

While this technique can and does work, I'm not completely happy with how they look, and they're actually a little to large and not to scale with the model.

So it then occurred to me that guitar string has that same texture and comes in different thicknesses.  So I ordered a set of guitar string hoping at least 1 or 2 of them would work well.  And the 2 smaller ones are perfect.

So I began cutting string to length and bending them as I saw fit to put in the cockpit.

I ended up making 4 hoses in all.  

 Then it was time to prime the string...

Paint and weather the string...

And glue in place in the cockpit.  And here we have the finished cockpit.

And at this point, time for a little light test to make sure the center console LED is still working once in place.

And a photo for scale reference next to a dime.

And finally, a test with the side consoles to make sure it's all working according to plan.  So I placed the cockpit piece in the unpainted nose of the Y-wing to test.

So there we have my Y-wing cockpit built and and I'm ready to move on.



Stay tuned.  Much more to come...