Power

Next up. Electronics.
I'd not really done any since school, which was rather a long time ago - but figured I could still solder a few LED's and resistors together. After a little more googling to find out what I would need I had a very rough plan.

First up though, I needed a way to get power into the ship. So, a small hole was drilled into the base plate. This was measured to fit a cheap DC extension cable I found on the net. The attraction of this cable was that it includes the socket and connector that I would need.

I cut the cable in half, and fitted the socket into the hole which I then glued in place (it fitted very snuggly anyway, and the height of the ship means it's not going anyway - so the glue was more of a precaution).

I then stripped the cable end and isolated the two parts (there's an inner core which is either the + or -, and then a bunch of surrounding wires which is the other.

Finally, I assembled the first parts of the ship. I'd need a basic hull to fit the LED's into place.
You can see in the picture I've covered the back plate in black tape in an effort to stop light leak (I couldn't find the silver tape Ian recommended). I've also fitted some wire mesh over the light holes for extra detail.

Sticking with the theme of Power. I dusted off my old soldering iron, and started sticking leds and resistors together. I've discovered I'm not very good at this, and also I could do with more flexible wiring, mine was quite stiff and often quite hard to arrange as I wanted (including when I finally fitted it to the ship).

I attempted to build the 555 fader circuit Ian used in his, but after several failed attempts bailed on that idea. It would have been nice - but in hindsight, I'm not sure I could actually have fitted the extra circuit board into my small ship - maybe with more planning. We'll see next time... On the plus side, I now have a nice little hobby breadboard for prototyping any future attempts.

After everything was in one piece, and I'd squeezed it all into the hull, I roughly taped the rest of the pieces into place to see how it would look.