I have completed the C-18S “Magic by Moonlight”! The aircraft was mounted to the base. I ran the wiring thru the support tube and attached the wires to a connector at the rear of the base. This allows me to use the AC adapter that has a switch on it or I can hook up a 9V battery to illuminate the aircraft. The nameplate was then affixed to the base. I used two styrene rods coated with acrylic gel and used cotton balls stretched and wrapped around the rods. These were then shaped to create the smoke trails used in the stunts. This completes the display.
The kit itself is a nice kit with only some minor sections requiring putty. The kit decals worked very well and conformed to the surface perfectly. The instructions seemed to be laid out well. However due to the logistical assembly with the lights I had to attach the wings and tail section to half of the fuselage and attach the other half afterwards. I ended up using the following to create the lighted effect:
1 pico LED warm white for the instrument panel
12 pico LED’s in cool white for the wings, cowls, tail lights and cabin. Tail lights also used two 0.5mm fiber optic line.
1 pico red and 1 pico green for the wingtip lights. These were attached to two 0.5mm fiber optic lines.
2 pico flashing red for the fuselage
2 3.0mm LED’s in cool white for the nose lights
So there are a total of 19 LED’s and 8” of 0.5mm fiber optic lines. All the wiring was routed to the tail section and soldered in parallel then two wires run thru the mounting rod to the connector at the rear of the display base.
I really enjoyed building this and I really like how it turned out. Thank you for following along and hope you enjoyed this build. Happy Modeling!
Check out all the photos and details from start to finish in my build log at https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-c-18s-magic-by-moonlight/
6 attached images. Click to enlarge.
