baQa'! pay' QapHa'taH beghwIj 'ach vItI'laHbe'!

Translation: Damn! Suddenly my deflector is malfunctioning but I can't fix it!

One of the LEDs burned out, so the deflector ring is wov on one side but wovHa' on the other. There's no way I can get in there to fix it. At least the poS side isn't completely Hurgh. Do'Ha'!

EDIT: There was a grammatical error in the title. The subject noun beghwIj ("my deflector") should not have preceded the predicate verb QapHa' ("malfunctions"), so I fixed it. I also made the verb QapHa' into QapHa'taH ("is malfunctioning"), since the malfunction is ongoing. Also there is an error in the lower callout in the photo. I copied and pasted from Bing to MSPaint. Apparently due to different coding between Bing and the pIqaD font I have loaded, the pIqaD came out different. Fortunately, most of us (myself included) can't read it. Of course, now that this happened, I'll have to learn how to read Klingon in pIqaD.

KBoP Part 21: Completed! And at Wonderfest 2013

There are more pictures of this model at Modelers Miniatures and Magic.

Here's a bit of video I shot at Wonderfest of the finished KBoP to show the lighting effects. Doesn't quite show all the lighting but I'll post more later. I was shocked when it won Gold in the Vehicles category and Best Round 2 Model Kit Adult Division. I knew darned well what things were wrong with this build--maybe they're minor but there are plenty of defects. I guess the fact that it's a Klingon ship let me get away with things that would be unacceptable on a Federation ship.

Halleluia! Blogger and YouTube are talking to each other again, so I can embed my video. It's always the kids who get hurt when the parents can't get along. Here's another short video showing all of the lighting effects. In Deutschland ist dieses Video möglich gesperrt wegen des Urheberrechts der Musik. Sie ist Beethovens Symphonie Nr. 7, zweiter Satz. (I really like Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, especially the second movement, and it sounds a lot better than what the video camera recorded: my breathing and air conditioner noise.)

Here's a longer video that shows all the lighting effects along with my boring narration where I explain the things I did with this model.

As I said, I'll take more pictures and video and add them to this blog post in the next few days. I actually finished this model on Saturday morning in my room at the Crowne Plaza upstairs from Wonderfest, and what photos I took were of other people's stuff.

KBoP Part 20

Quick update as I am frantically trying to get this done before leaving tomorrow to go to Wonderfest.
Here's the wings on. No disruptor cannons yet so it can't go "Pew, pew, pew!"

I have painted lots of KBoPs already. I don't need another one with red wings on the underside. Besides, that's a Romulan thing. Klingons' favorite color is green. Okay, red if it's spilling out of humans, but I mean ship colors.








The blank side of the landing gear doors will show, and Round 2 put nothing on them except ejector pin marks. So I hollowed them out a bit and added styrene detail before painting and weathering.

KBoP Part 19

I put the wings on. I notice a slight asymmetry in the fit, but at this point I'm not going to do anything about it. A side effect of installing lighting is it makes construction a real pain and correcting fit issues becomes more trouble than normal.

There are some kind of vent-looking things on either side of the top of the engine deck. The recessed detail looked a little plain, so I dressed it up with photoetched parts on both sides. (From the spares box--it's 1/700 ship ladders.)

Finally, all of the lighting is soldered together. Here I have one 9V battery powering all of the lighting at once, and hooray! everything still works. I have yet to route some of the fiber optic, then carefully close up the hull halves. Then all that's left to do on this bird is finish up the outside.

KBoP Part 18

Last Sunday was Model Day with Jim Pugliese and Eric Longstreet of the Collective at Jim's house. Got a little done on it up to that point and that day, though most of it since last post has been electrical work and not much to look at. I've got the command pod closed up now, and no light leaks so far. The wires to supply electricity to the model come in through the two objects on the starboard side. See the second pic--hard to see because that part is in shadow, but if you know the Klingon Bird of Prey, then you know what I'm talking about. They seem like a likely function is power couplings when on the ground.

Unfortunately, after last Sunday I realized how close Wonderfest is--it's the weekend of May 18-19! Yikes! Between freaking out over that sudden realization and the fact that I had a gazillion other things to do, I got absolutely nothing done on it till this evening. And what I got done was ungluing the lower part of the command pod, which wasn't fitting right, reattaching it, and puttying the seam. But the closing up of the hull has commenced.

Also stopped by Steve Neill's hangout. This evening was the first time the hangout was in operation, and I guess it's a work in progress for everyone to figure out how this technology works. I participated as best I could with no mic or webcam, which is to say little at all, though I shared one of these pics. We'll see more of how it works on coming Sundays.

KBoP Part 17

Studio model of Klingon Bird of Prey

Another mini-update.

Like I said, there needed to be more detail in other more visible parts of the ship, and one area that needed help was the shallow opening full of wiring or plumbing on the top rear of the command pod. At right, you see what I'm talking about on the real thing. I didn't attempt to recreate the studio model, but by the end you'll see what I did do to improve the detail on this area of the kit.

The kit detail is skimpy here, so I decided to cut it out and back up the hole with an insert loaded with detail.Cutting out the hole was pretty easy. As easy as Cortez burning his ships. No turning back now!

The plastic is pretty thick for the scale so I hogged out the surrounding area to make it look like a thin shell. I slopped on black paint in order to...








...transfer the impression of the opening to this sheet styrene backing. Actually, it's two layers cemented together. I held it in place to make it conform to the shape of the inside of the hull, and when it came out it was permanently formed into about the right shape.

Here's the blank styrene backing held in the opening.














I added wire, solder, and styrene shapes to fill in the area of the backing that would fit in the opening, painted it red-brown with a grimy black wash and dark yellow drybrushing.












Then installed it with 1-minute epoxy.



















And here's the prize in the box. It's jazzed up with a bit of fiber optic lighting.

KBoP Part 16

Another mini-update. The airlock chamber that exits through the top hatch in the forward hull is now installed. And populated. Er, Klingonated. There are two Klingons in there. In the first picture, there's a Klingon climbing the ladder. In the second, you can see another Klingon standing just inside the inner hatch. These are Tamiya 1/350 sailors (well, figures; the only thing that makes them sailors is that they are made to go with 1/350 ship models). I painted them to look like Klingons, which didn''t take much as they are two tenths of an inch tall, or 5mm. The guy on the ladder needed to be bent up a bit to get him to be in about the right pose.

You might also notice the floor texture in the top photo, and the light green color of the floor beyond the inner hatch in the lower photo. The texture is fine mesh superglued to a disk of styrene, and I chose the light color simply because otherwise you couldn't see a darn thing in there. Now it needs the hatch on top, the rest of the lighting installed, and the upper and lower hull halves to be glued together--with wires sticking out to connect to an external power supply.

KBoP Part 15

Just a quick update. I had an hour before bed to do some stuff I thought about to the airlock chamber under the hatch. It made sense for the interior door to have the same sort of control panel as the one at the top of the boarding ramp. So I made another one with 0.25mm fiber optic threaded through a tiny styrene polygon with holes drilled with a #80 bit. The control panel will connect to the same red, yellow, and green blinking LEDs as the other one. I also drilled out holes for lighting fixtures near the top of the chamber and threaded fiber optic through those, which will connect to warm white LEDs in the forward hull. I put it all together with 1-minute epoxy, plus a bit of styrene tubing to keep the control panel from wobbling. Then a bit of paint. It is going to be a pain to put this all together with fiber optic connecting parts in the top and bottom hull halves, but I will manage somehow.

KBoP Part 14

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

Did I say next time I'd finish the lighting and close her up? If I did, I lied again. Instead I've been ensuring that this project will go on longer than I hoped, by incorporating more detail that I had planned on.

I decided with all the detail packed into other areas of the ship, the forward hull needed some more attention. There's a hatch on top, which is used in ST:IV, and although the movie set is a poor match for the filming miniature (there is no way to reconcile the differences), there is a hatch on it too. At the size stated by Nilo Rodis, the hatch on the filming miniature is a lot bigger, but of course the set was built smaller. This is nothing unusual, since movie audiences aren't equipped to make precise size comparisons. Fans figure this stuff out later with screen grabs and CAD software and such.

The hatch is about a scale six feet in diameter on this model, pretty generous! The series of pictures at right shows how my approach to adding an open hatch and some interior detail evolved along the way. My first thought was to score around the inside of the raised ring to remove the hatch, in hopes of using it. I've tried this kind of thing before and it generally doesn't work, especially removing such a small part. At worst, it's good practice at precise cutting.


Here's the opened hatch, and as you can see, the raised ring was damaged by the cutting.

My first thought was to re-establish the raised ring, and build up a round airlock, using this vinyl hex tubing. Where'd I get it? It's the rod that you twist to operate miniblinds.

I wasn't too happy with how that was going so I made a replacement ring from brass tubing. To do this, I jury-rigged a lathe. I chucked the brass tubing in my drill press and ran it down into a hole of matching diameter I drilled in a wood block clamped to the table. I ran the tubing into the hole a distance equal to the width I wanted for the ring. This way the wood block provided a steady support so I could use the tip of a #10 blade as a parting tool. I turned on the drill press, a neat little curlicue of brass came off, and into the hole dropped this neat little brass ring. Well, not perfectly neat: I deburred it with a sharp #11 blade.

I also made a replacement for the hatch, shown here on my fingertip with the original. I used the same diameter brass tubing to punch out a disc of sheet styrene. The original hatch also has a small disk-shaped projection near the edge. I reproduced this with a thin slice of styrene rod, which I glued in place over a hole I drilled, which helped with locating the little disc properly and will provide an attachment point for the hatch. I recall Panther tanks had a hatch that went up a little on a vertical shaft near the edge and then rotated out of the way. This hatch will open that way.

I forgot to mention, there's another ring of brass tubing inside the aforementioned one. It gives more detail and provides a ledge to support the hatch when it's closed. At right is the hatch in the closed position. I just wanted to verify it would fit; it was pretty tight.




Here's how I ended up using the bit from the miniblind. I hollowed out a hatch using my drill press as a crude milling machine and scribed a slot around this opening for a sliding door which won't be needed as the door will be shown open. Then I cut the piece to length and shaped the top to the inside curve of the forward hull where it will go, filed out a slot for a photoetched ladder, which I folded and superglued in place, and primered the whole thing.

Next time: I'll finish up with the hatch and maybe one or two other detailing goodies on the forward hull, then get all the lighting installed and close this baby up. I hope.

KBoP Part 13

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

Here are some progress pics of the Klingon Bird of Prey. I did take a bit of a break from it--I never completely stopped but the work slowed down for a while. I'm nearly ready to close up the hull, stick on the wings, and do the finish work on it that you do after you already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Speaking of light, here's the red and amber lighting for the torpedo emitter (and navigational deflector?). Paint needs some touch-up.

 Here's the wiring for that lighting. I was originally going to add nine small red LEDs to light up the ring around the torpedo emitter, and had them all soldered up, but try as I might could not fit them in. So there are three ultra-bright red LEDs, plus the amber one in the middle. Plus limiting resistors so it can run on 9VDC. All packed in epoxy.

I used the technique promoted most famously by Don Matthys of Don's Light and Magic to glaze the windows in the lower front command hull, but used 5 minute epoxy, which is pretty viscous, so it didn't fill the windows completely. His method is to tape over the outside of the opening and pour in clear resin. Here I tried a variation on the technique: I cut out holes in the tape, painted in there (to repair damage to the paint job and to seal the tape better). Then I smeared in clear epoxy from the outside. It worked better but the result wasn't perfect.

I couldn't resist: The detail along the trailing edge of the wing sticks out on the kit, but on the filming model it's recessed. So I hogged out the detail and replaced it with strips of Evergreen corrugated siding. You can see the LEDs and fiber optic in there, too. The LEDs are those Christmas lights I mentioned before that consist of warm white SMTs on lacquered wire with a blob of clear resin on each one. I drilled out a hole in the resin for the 1mm fiber optic and inserted it with epoxy. Then sealed the light in for better transmission with repeated coats of Metallizer alumiinum plate and Future.



Here's the new trailing edge. Sorry about the focus. You get the idea.

Lastly, here's a lighting test. What are those things, headlights? Navigational deflectors? I don't know; maybe I'll have to get the owner's manual now that it's out.


Next time: maybe I'll get the last of the lighting installed and close it up.

KBoP Part 12

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

Here's a demonstration of the lighting effects I've installed so far in the Klingon Bird of Prey. It's engine and warp core lighting, and lighting to a panel next to the door at the top of the entry ramp.

The first part I did was the the LED and fiber optic lighting for the panel next to the door at the top of the entry ramp. (Actually, it required rework recently. My soldering is just awful, and it was working intermittently. Now it's fixed.) The green and yellow ones are flashing LEDs and they're in parallel. The red one is in series with them, so if either of them lights, it should light too. Problem right now is that the 9V battery powering so much lighting it can't quite keep up with the load, so there's only enough current to light the red LED when both the green and yellow LEDs are lit. There's a single strand of 0.25mm fiber optic coming out of the top of each LED to illuminate the panel next to the door at the top of the boarding ramp. Neither you nor I understand the significance of these flashing lights, but I assure you they are perfectly intelligible to Klingons.

Also lit in part with fiber optic is the warp core. I say "in part" because the hole the fiber optics pass through is a bit oversized and the red and blue LEDs are right above it. As with the other LEDs, I drilled holes into them and stuck fiber optic in with one-minute epoxy. I am given to understand that cyanoacrylate glue is destructive to fiber optic. Because my supply of fiber optic is low, I have not yet verified this, even though I love destructive testing. By the way, you can safely drill holes pretty deeply into LEDs since they are mostly clear acrylic lens. The actual diode that lights up is tiny and you can see from looking at the side that it's near the bottom.

You can see the blue and red illumination of the warp core is flickering. This is because the two blue LEDs and one red LED are in series, respectively, with two flickering yellow LEDs that I scavenged from LED candles I bought at the dollar store, three for a dollar. The yellow LEDs provide part of the glow for the upper and lower sections of the engine. I think the flickering is a cool effect and is prominent in onscreen appearances of the Klingon Bird of Prey.

Another reason for the flickering yellow LEDs is to supplement the main illumination for the engine provided by 12 warm white LEDs. My initial impression of the engine lighting effect watching Star Trek III was that it was a pulsing effect. I happened to find a pretty cool string of mini Christmas lights at Walmart, which has 36 surface mount warm white LEDs on lacquered wire, with a battery power supply that has three settings: steady on, blink, and phase. The phase setting slowly ramps up, then back down again, which is pretty much the effect I wanted, except that it goes all the way off, which I didn't want it to do. That's one reason I supplement it with the flickering yellow LEDs.

The string of warm white LEDs is wrapped around a couple pieces of popsicle stick. I understand they're called iced lollies elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The warm white LEDs and their effects board are supposed to be powered by three AA batteries. Instead the effects board will get 5V from a 78L05 voltage regulator, which is how it's breadboarded right now. I figured the LEDs and the effects board were probably engineered with at least enough factor of safety that they could handle 5V, and indeed they can, so a 78L05 voltage regulator is dropping the 9V down to 5V. This way, the lighting can all run from a single 9VDC power supply, which makes it simpler and prevents circuits from getting the wrong voltage. The 78L05 is big enough for the job since the effects module is only drawing about 60mA.

I've stripped the lacquer off the ends of the wires of the remaining warm white LEDs and stuck them into the breadboard in series with a resistor to test out the planned interior lighting and navigation lights. Actually, it won't require all the remaining LEDs, just about a dozen of them. These LEDs are all in parallel sharing one limiting resistor--I guess in violation of conventional wisdom, but I won't get into the issues here. I already installed 1.0mm fiber optic in the wings for the headlights--the KBoP Owners' Manual calls them something else, but they sure look like headlights to me.

There are a few bits of lighting to add to this. A red LED will light up the two vents under the front of the main hull, and the navigational deflector/torpedo launcher needs lighting, but all that will be constant lighting. So it's not too much more work, and I'll be able to close up the hull.

Next time: more progress, some of it according to plan...

KBoP, Part 11

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

With the end of the Fall semester and the holidays, I was a bit distracted from this project. And I was kind of sick of it and started preparation for some other projects, like a 1/35 Sd.Kfz.6 halftrack and scratchbuilding a 1/1400 scale Golden Gate Bridge. But on New Year's Day I got back to work on the Klingon Bird of Prey. I did it because I thought I ought to, but once I was at it my heart leapt with joy. This is a fun project!

I've finished boxing in the landing gear bays and detailing and painting them, but they'll have lighting in them before the hull is closed up. I've also been starting the painting of the exterior. I'm not trying to replicate any particular filming miniature or onscreen KBoP, just making it look good to my eye with a layered brush job. The painting/weathering style is partly based on armor modeling, and partly on railroad modeling, since those are the two types of modeling with the most extreme weathering. I want to make this ship look like the Klingons would never have come up with the idea of a car wash.

Here is the engine lighting effect with the mini Christmas lights temporarily installed.
Here is the lighting effect of the panel next to the door at the top of the boarding ramp. It's lit with 0.25mm fiber optic, and a small board of LEDs I soldered up. Green and yellow are in parallel and flash, and a red LED is in series with them so it lights up if either of the others does. The flashing LEDs have nearly the same frequency and go in and out of phase, which gives the effect a little visual interest.

Next time: more lighting...

KBoP Part 10

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

Here's a bit of progress since last week. I put the landing gear bay back in with a lighting module. You can't really see it in this picture, so I'll discuss it in a future post. The lighting uses LEDs and fiber optic to make a console next to the door have blinking lights.

What you see at right is the band around the engine recess, which is like that going around the outer part of the hull. I settled on making it from Evergreeen styrene shapes.

Here is the lower glowing engine part, made from the bottom of the clear kit part, plexiglas, and styrene strips. I keep some of that Plastruct cement with the orange label that works on any combination of styrene, ABS, and acrylic. It barely attacks acrylic compared to styrene, but it does the job.

KBoP Part 9

Previously on Klingon Bird of Prey...

Here's a little update since I got back to work after a couple weeks away from it. The glowing engine part will have the separation between the upper and lower halves, so here it's being cut in half using a razor saw.

Here's a view of into the engine area on the studio model. (For a higher resolution version of this and other pictures of the KBoP studio model, check out Modelers Miniatures and Magic  and enter "Klingon Bird of Prey studio model" in the search box.) As you can see, the band of dentil molding (what else should I call it?) between the upper and lower hull also extends into the engine area. Notice too, this determines the vertical positions of the glowing engine parts.

Here's the band of dentil molding I made to fit into the engine recess. It's Evergreen styrene: 3/16" channel with strips of corrugated siding.* Not a perfect match but close. To create the opening for the band, I cut the part flush using a router. This separation band will create a bit of a problem: modelers who modify the clear part to add the separation invariably end up with the separation too high and the gap too narrow. My modification will have to compromise elsewhere so the gap comes out in the right place. Part of the problem is the lower hull on the kit isn't deep enough in the first place.

*I had tried to cast a copy of the kit detail by pressing part 3 or 4 into modeling clay and pouring polyurethane resin in there, but it came out foamy and was thus unusable. Maybe my resin is past its shelf life.

KBoP, Part 8

Okay, last time I said there would be lighting in my next post. As Kirk told Maltz, "I lied."

Actually, I've been designing and testing lighting, as you might guess from the breadboard visible in this picture, but this post is about exterior improvements to the upper hull. At right you see where the old detail is removed and partly replaced. I forgot to take a "before" picture, so the next picture shows the same area on my old AMT KBoP.

I built when it first came out in the '90s. The engine deck has this raised structure with a trapezoidal recess in it that looks like a docking port. Maybe it's a port for transferring power or fuel. If it's for transferring power, it'd be like the PTO on a farm tractor, and the KBoP does have some similarity to a farm tractor. But I digress...

One thing that bugs me about the AMT kit is the molded in tubing detail on either side of the raised structure. If the tubing were tight against the hull, it wouldn't matter, but it isn't, as you can see in this studio model photo. It's minor perhaps, but it bugs me, so I'm fixing it. About an hour to remove the old detail and putty and sand, and about an hour to add new detail.

Klingon Bird of Prey, continued (Part 7)

Since last time... This scratchbuilt stuff needed a coat of paint to pull it together, so here's a look at it. The main interior color is Polly Scale Panzer Red-Brown with a wash of Grimy Black and dry brushed with their Panzer Dark Yellow mixed with white. Of all the paints I've used, Polly Scale acrylics are about my favorite for brushing. This dull brick red fits into the Klingon palette of colors, and it contrasts with the green that will be the predominant exterior color. The warp core is Testors Gunmetal acrylic.

Klingon Bird of Prey, continued (Part 6)

It's been a while since the last post, but I've been a-workin' on it.











Let's back up a bit. Here's how it looked earlier this evening.

Klingon Bird of Prey Revisited (Part 5)

Since last time I've been adding detail to the whole area of the boarding ramp and lnading gear. Here's a view of the underside showing the new ramp.

Another view of the ramp. Maybe you can see the cool tread pattern. No?

How about now?

Okay, you can definitely see the tread pattern here! I did it by cutting Evergreen scribed sheet. Some has grooves with .025" spacing and some .020" spacing. The finer spaced sheet I cut on an angle so the ends of the grooves would line up with the wider spaced grooves of the center strip.