A few months prior to getting into X wing, I had decided that I wanted to relive my childhood youth and picked up some FineMolds Star Wars models (an X and Y wing to be specific). But seeing as I really didn't know what I was doing when I was 10 years old, I basically had no experience with how to model or how to paint. About 90% of the way through my Y wing, I decided that I was going to repaint my X wing miniatures... and then it took over a year to finish the last 10%, and I haven't even started on the X wing.

In the 2 years that I've been painting my X wings now, I've gotten quite a bit better (or at least I like to think I have). I've actually repainted my first 2 repaints, and am planning on repainting a few more (but with so much untouched, who has the time?). Some of these have been posted in various forums before, and some have never been posted. While even my most recent repaints are still not as good as some other folks here, I thought I'd share where I was vs. where I am today as a motivation to those just starting out in the repaints... and to not be discouraged if your first repaint didn't come out as well as you would like.

You can find numerous photos of each individual ship here: http://ledhangar.imgur.com/all/#2

Wedge, Tycho, Corran, and a StealthX repaint. Corran I just finished this weekend, Tycho was done a few months ago (along with my Tycho A wing), the StealthX is the second oldest surviving repaint, while the original Wedge no longer exists, but this version was painted about a year ago.

Gold Squadron, Gold Squadron, and "Red Jammer." The Y in the back of the picture IS the oldest remaining repaint that I have, and it needs to go. The other two were done at the same time about a year ago. Red Jammer is quite washed out in this picture, but there are better pictures of him in my album.

Tycho, Prototype, and Green Squadron. The Greenie was done about a month or two after wave 2 came out, and was just a recoloring (the only ship I've repainted without spraying it with a base coat first). The Prototype was completed about a week before Rebel Aces was announced. Tycho was done at the same time as his X wing.

Not a repaint, but a lighting mod. I've done 3 iterations to finally get it to a point where I'm "happy" with it. But I'll probably never be "done" with it. Word of advice, don't attempt it!

My own interpretation of a Blue and Dagger. These were both painted (and magnetized) pretty much immediately after W3 launched. The Dagger was done about a month after the Blue. I did these paint schemes as I wanted to, not really paying attention to any canon paint job. The dagger is still one of my favorite schemes as when you look from the top, you ONLY see red, but when you flip it over, it because red/yellow. The blue has fallen out of favor recently.

These were painted last October at the same time, and I tried new (and different) techniques for the base coat on both of them. Like the B wings, the paint scheme was my own idea. And I was planning (at that time at least) to paint all 8 Z95's in pairs of different colors (orange, purple, blue, green is what I was thinking). Sadly, the green on the second one doesn't look anywhere close to that good in real life. It kind of blends in with the gray.

This is painted after Corran's X wing scheme, and was completed right after the launch of W4.

And my lone Imperial repaint. It's still a WIP. My girlfriend wanted a ship painted for her, and when I showed her the TIE fighter from Rebels, she decided that was the ship. The only thing left to do is the inside of the other wing, so from this picture, it looks complete. The lines look very clean and crisp in person, and I'm kinda sad at how crappy they look in the picture.

And the whole fleet together!

I'm extremely satisfied with how my most recent repaint (Corran Horn X Wing) came out. But as you can tell from the progression, it took quite a few ships to get to that point. Once again, there are multiple pictures of each ship in my album, including the original two X wings that have since been painted over.

Well done, all! And hats-off for the Rebels TIE... I am too daunted by the prospect to attempt; you pull it off well.

Here are a few close ups of my most recent repaint - Corran Horn's X Wing:

I have touched up the engine intakes since taking these pictures as I realized they're much whiter than anything around them. Here is the reference picture I was painting to:

Great Job !

Love your Falcon with the light up engines.

And your repaints are coming along very nicely.

All the best,

Barry.

So not quite a repaint (at least not yet), but I'm almost done with my light up CR-90 - I'm playing an epic game next Thursday, so I have 7 days to finish it up. This is probably the last time that I'm going to have it opened up since I just finished up all the electronics, so I figured I'd share the progress, and if anyone has any questions I can take a picture prior to closing her up.

Here she is with the two halfs just pressed against each other. While there's a slight gap between the two in this picture, with pressure it closes up completely, so once it gets glued together it shouldn't have a gap. Note the switch under where the radar dish goes.

I did a similiar thing for the recharging cord. It's a micro USB charging cable that I sliced open. I'm probably going to solder some alligator clips on the other half in order to make the recharge disconnection easy and secure.

And for the most interesting picture - here it is with the top half taken off. The battery is that nice large black cylinder, which I got from http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Portable-Lipstick-External-Motorola/dp/B00N7B2LD8/ref=sr_1_16?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1440129094&sr=1-16&keywords=aukey

The bottom 9 engines are all soldered together and the top 2 are on the top half. But they're all wired in parallel.

Still to complete:

Solder the bottom half connections to the top half

Solder the switch to the second half of the USB cable to actually provide power

Solder the 11 LEDs

Start dremeling 6 of the remaining engines

Finish dremeling 3 of the other remaining engines (I only have 2 completely done - they're very boring)

Reassemble the two halves

Reassemble the engines

Reassemble all of the add ons

Fix the few small details I broke while handling it over the past year

The CR-90 has basically been on the workbench since it came out. Mostly just sitting there not making progress - I haven't been too motivated to finish it. But with the Raider out, and my group wanting to play epic, it finally has a use! By my math, the battery is a 3000mAh, and I should be pulling 220mA... So, if it's actually the capacity it states, the lights should work for 13.6hrs - long enough for an entire tourney! Let me know if anyone wants more details or pictures of specifics - my goal is to have it reassembled by the end of the weekend, and I'll assemble the engines as I finish them. That way if I don't finish in time, at least the body is all set and secure, and it just looks funny without all of the engines.

Slight update. I've finished the internal wiring, but I'm leaving the ship unglued for now, just in case. The first engine is installed! I had to do some more dremeling to make it look good, and I had to add a diffuser, which I was hoping to get away without doing. I used my go to milk gallon plastic in order to accomplish that, and I installed it right before the last tip. Sadly, this provided a leak path for the light, so I had to add some white putty around it, which meant it had to be painted up, so I might as well do a custom paint job. It actually also allows me to hide one of the boo boos that happened awhile ago. I knocked over my glue, and two of the engines got soaked (including the one pictured), so the detail got melted away a bit. Not a big deal since I can put them in the inside and hide them. Plus the repaint helped quite a bit too.

Note that the LEDs are going to actually be dimmer than they are shown here. The resistors are sized the current of 11 LEDs, not 1. As such I'm actually pumping almost the full 5V through for the pictures, instead of the 2V (red) / 3.2V (blue) that they're supposed to receive.

So, slight hiccup last night. As I said, the lights shouldn't be quite that bright since it was wired for 11 LEDs not 1. So I blew out the red LED. Oh well, not that big of a deal. But it did force me to finish up the electronics today, so now all I have left to do is to tear apart, reassemble, and paint 10 engines.

So now I'm going to let it go through an entire battery charge (should be all night theoretically) to make sure all of the electronics are good before going after the engines again.

Since so much of my free time has gone to this recently, I wanted to take some time (as some paint dries) to talk about the labor of love, known as my CR-90, “Stingray.”

When the CR-90 was first launched, I had no plans to buy one since I didn’t really see the point of a one sided epic game. But within a month, I ended up winning one at a local event. I had already discussed lighting the GR-75 Transport, but hadn’t quite finished up with my YT-1300 at the time, so I skipped straight over the Transport, and immediately started work on the CR-90. Over the past 16 months, it’s been sitting in various states of disarray, until the launch of the Raider finally kicked me into high gear to finish it.

Sadly, I can’t seem to find the all of the various pictures I took of it during disassembly, so I’ll just have to describe the steps for the early parts. Tearing it apart was actually relatively easy, though it was very scary. All 11 engines easily break free by just forcing them up/down. The ship splits into two and is relatively easy to find the parting line, I didn’t realize that there were 4 pieces glued onto the sides though (the hammerhead, and the round bits in front on the engine on either side), but they actually snapped off as I stressed the two halves of the ship. The ship itself is held together with half a dozen or so pegs glued together, which I understand is different than the Raider (which reportedly is held together with tabs). Consist pressure while slowly opening the gap breaks it apart without any damage to the exterior.

From there, the center 3 engines have a two part support system, which easily falls apart with stress again, and the outer engines have a support system that is connected via a square peg, also easy to remove. However, I couldn’t for the life of me separate the two halves of these supports. I ended up having to use my Dremel to eat away at the support columns holding them together. This was a pain, especially since the plastic would rather melt than actually get cut.

Finally, the last bit to disassemble are the engines themselves. I slipped in a knife in the parting line (which is actually on the underside of the engine for most of it) and pried them apart from the rear. The diffuser is glued onto the pair, and just popped off of one as they separated. This was by far the most nerve wrecking part of the tear apart, though it could be just because I had to do it 11 times.

Now that all of the Corvette is disassembled, I had create some routings for the wires to light the engines. 7 of the 11 were easy to do, the outside 4 could go through the exterior supports – once the insides were all emptied via the magic of a dremel. And the middle row can go through the two part support system it has… Well, at least after it’s been cleaned up as well. I left the square pegs untouched for alignment (and gluing) purposes, but hollowed them out in order to route the wires. The center 4 engines though didn’t have a good method to do it. I ended up blinding drilling from both directions and hoping and praying that I didn’t go too far, but thankfully I was successful at opening up a small channel for all of the wires to the main body.

I already had RGB LEDs laying around, along with solid wire (which if I was to do this again, I would use 24gauge or something much smaller – the wires took up a lot more space than expected), but I needed to come up with power source, and an on/off method. My initial plan was to fully utilize my RGB LEDs and run 4 wires to each engine, each positive on a separate switch for 3 switches total. This would allow me to light it up at blue, red, green, purple, yellow, teal, or white! However, this didn’t quite end up making the final cut. Instead, I wired up the blue and red, and used a 3 way switch to allow for either of those colors to be activated, but not at the same time. Oh well, not quite as cool, but in all honesty, how often would I use something besides blue or red?

Looking for a power source though was another big problem. The way I saw it, I could either put a rechargeable battery in there, or I could make it easy to change the batteries. I needed to supply 3.2V for the blue, and I needed a minimum of 1000mAh capacity. The 11 LEDs would draw .22A, and I would want it to last at least a full 3 hours, and there’s typically about a 20-30% transmission loss, so a 1000mAh capacity would really be more like 700mAh, and 3hrs would draw 660mAh. The 3hr figure was so it would last a full game.

I originally was thinking about using CR2032 and lining them up in the hammerhead for removal from the left/right cover, which would have to be magnetized. However, I would have to use 6 of them (3 sets in parallel of 2 in series) in order to get the required capacity. And I really didn’t want to burn through 6 of them a game, plus I would have had to have made a custom carrier, and I’m still not positive if they would fit in that area.

This left me with AA batteries. While two of them could fit through the length of the ship, I never came up with a good idea on where to place the third. I wasn’t really considering these as a rechargeable option (though I guess I don’t see why not), but they could easily provide the capacity and voltage needed, if I could package the 3 ^rd one. So, I started looking for alternate power sources.

I fixated for a while on finding a cellphone external battery pack, but I couldn’t find one that didn’t have an on/off button, or that would fit anywhere within the ship. At this point, I pretty much gave up on the project, and several months went by without any progress. Finally, I came across (in a service station in Canada of all places) an Aukey Lipstick cell phone backup. This looked to be the perfect solution: 5V power supply, 1000mA discharge max, 3000mAh capacity, and most important of all, no on/off switch. They wanted 20 CAD for it, but I wasn’t convinced it would fit, so I didn’t buy it at the time. But I did come home and find it on Amazon, and confirmed that the diameter was PERFECT to fit lengthwise in the ship.

From there, all of my electrical problems were solved, and I just had to execute the work. I used Green stuff to hold the switch in place underneath the radar dish (which is such a tight fit that I actually had to remove the reinforcement along the underside of the radar dish), and packaged the two resistors in the pods to the left/right – I figured I’d give them a bit more air to circulate around them to hopefully not melt anything.

Note – soldering 36 wires (12 x3) in the space right in front of the engine is NOT fun. Nor does it package well, especially when there’s a switch above it, and resistors to the left/right of it, and a battery in front of it. I staggered them a bit, but didn’t quite get the ship to close completely as it is. However, the gap is only about 1mm and looks more like a panel line than anything else. The battery I slid as far forward as it would go, but it doesn’t actually fit through the neck of the Corvette, so it didn’t leave much space behind it to work. 9 of the engines are all soldered together, while the center top two don’t join the circuit until the resistor, allowing me to leave some slack in there to work with the two halves separate, and then join them together.

In order to feed the three wires through to each pod, I twisted them together, though this caused a headache to solder them all in the end. It might have been easier to just mess with feeding them through one at a time, but I was having issues getting through the tight areas and the bends doing it that way. The LEDs were easy enough to solder on, but if I was to do it again, I wouldn’t have had them as far away as I did. And that was because of stupidity / laziness. I didn’t strip the ends of the wires prior to feeding them through, and my pliers wouldn’t get in closer to strip them afterward, the model was in the way. As it is, it works, but if they were further back, I feel like it’d look even better.

The final bit of electronics to be done was to actually hook up the battery, and to create a cable to charge the battery. Since there was enough room to run two cables alongside of the battery, I elected to point it towards the bridge, allowing some breathing room away from all of the solders and the switches and whatnot. Being that this is an USB device, I cut two cables in the middle, and removed the data transfer wires, leaving just the power and ground wires remaining. For the circuit set, they immediately pulled a U turn and ran back to the back of the ship. The charging cable I looped around in the hammerhead section in order to provide some extra length to pull out of the ship when needed. The second cable was cut open to give me a hookup to connect to. For ease of use, I soldered some alligator clips onto it. Note the cables in the CR-90 are just raw cables. They are accessed by removing the turbo laser on the underside.

The last bit of modeling to be done is to make the opening for the light to shine through. This meant cutting off the end of the engine, which was easy. But it also meant hollowing out the exhaust port, which is a PITA, and the second reason I took a long hiatus from this project. Using a Dremel, I slowly cut down from the backside until I had removed enough material that you could see through the exhaust ports. From there, I took a barrel sander tool on the dremel to widen it to be the full width of the engine pod. Finally, I painfully cut out each exhaust port with a hobby knife in order to provide a clean view through it. Each engine probably took about 30 minutes, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t that bad, but I always lacked the motivation to do it 11 times.

In order to prevent the light from shining through everywhere, I lined each engine half with Aluminum foil tape, and then tried my best to cover up the seams as well once they were put back together. I actually didn’t glue the two halves together, the tape itself held them tight. However, between having the LEDs so far forward, and just the fact that they were LEDs, I ended up having to put a diffuser between the engine pod and the exhaust port. So I went with my usual material, plastic milk cartons. This is a technique I used to great success on my YT-1300, and I still love using it. But the problem with it is that the sides also light up. This meant if left untreated, I had a ring of light between the engine pod and the exhaust port.

In order to address that, I covered it up with some white modeling putty. This did the job well, but forced me into painting the engines. And since it was going to be obvious where I painted and where I didn’t, it forced me to paint the entire ship. I elected for a dark gray / blue scheme, because I figured I might as well be different! But as long as I’m painting the engines, and I have them unassembled, I might as well put some work into the details, so I chose to highlight the piping in bronze, and I chose a few other things to highlight in green and gold, along with adding a blue stripe to each engine.

But now of course the rest of the ship needs to be painted as well. So I busted out the airbrush to provide a nice uniform base coat to the ship, and then the masking tape in order to get some clean lines on the blue. And of course, I need to paint the wires bronze on the ship as well! This part is still a WIP, and probably will be for a while (once I finish getting it painted, then I’ll need to start adding some chips in the blue and base coats), but that’s okay.

The final step is to glue the 11 engines back on the ship. Each one is annoying because you got to make sure that it’s aligned properly, and I didn’t want to use too much glue, just in case something went wrong with an LED I want to be able to break the engine back off and fix it. Sadly, this didn't quite go according to plan. In order to get the engines all pointed correctly and straight, I ended up having to use some green stuff. So, once again, just another step that needs to now be taken care of. Note, 4 of the 11 engines are mirror images of the other 7. I never noticed that until I went to reassemble it all.

So there you have it, my 16 month (and counting) journey through lighting my CR-90, “Stingray.” Why the name you ask? Well, it’s a Corvette, and Corvettes are Stingrays, and I work in the auto industry, so I felt obligated. One of the things of the painting to do list that’s going to happen sooner than later (I’ve already cut out the stencil) is to paint the name onto the side.

And like any good project, here’s my list of lessons learned. 1) Use the smallest wires possible. This might take some actual calculations/work to ensure that the current and resistance isn’t going to heat up the wire too much, but using oversized wires was just unnecessary and complicated things. 2) I ended up breaking off all 4 lasers from the mid-section due to all the handling the ship took. I’m not quite sure what the lesson learned is, but now I need to drill them out a bit in order to replace them. I tried just gluing something on to the end, but it wouldn’t hold. 3) Do all of a single step in 1 sitting. And by that I mean do all 11 engines at once, whether it is hollowing out the exhaust ports, or painting it or whatever… There are differences in my 11 because I did them at different times with different strategies and whatnot. 4) Have a full plan ready. This is actually kind of difficult to do – I didn’t know what options I’d have for batteries before I tore it all apart, but by not having a plan in place, I lost all motivation to continue.

The only things left are paint related. Not only do I have to paint the green stuff, but when painting the engines, I didn't paint the back on them since I thought it was fully covered, but it turns out that they're just 80% covered, so I have some light gray there to paint. I also have to paint the blue stripes on the right side, and airbrush the name on. And then some detail painting and paint chips. But it's at least to the point where it can be flown and look really cool.

Here is the interior of one of the engine pods.

And the final product (less the painting details mentioned above)

Heh. Didn't realize that I never posted the "finished" CR-90 to here. I'll have to take some pictures to share and finalize my story on the conversion process.

In the meantime, I completed my first modification. As many of you know on this forum, I'm a huge fan of A wings. So when I saw them in the Rebels TV show, with their slight differences, I decided I needed to make my own. And go figure, in between modding it and repainting it, Hera got her own A wing with an unique (but slightly ugly) paint scheme. So after wavering between repainting it in her scheme, Sabine's, or a generic Phoenix Squadron's, I decided a slight compromise was in order. I really liked Hera's scheme, but not so much the colors, the beige/gray was so Blah. So I replaced it with the Phoenix white/blue - after all, she's IS Phoenix leader. So I cut off the end of the engines, and glued them back on flush to the body, shaped out some plasticard to fit behind the new engines, and used some more thin plasticard to extend the body of the A wing. And the result:

I still have some small detail work to do to finish her up, but I'm quite pleased with how she came out, and I'm excited to give her a spin tonight. The only question becomes - which A wing do I bench? Or perhaps I run a 4 A wing list.

Edit: Scheme for those who aren't familiar with the ship:

I woud be happy with those paint jobs. I really do intend to at least try painting.

nice werk!

Really nice job on the TIE. they're all good but that one really looks great.

Still need to post those CR-90 finished pictures... I should take some at some point. In the mean time, I randomly decided to finally tear apart a GR-75 this weekend. I'm not 100% sure what my plan for it is, but I'm working through it as I go. I haven't seen anyone else take it apart yet, so I figured I'd share some pictures of how it came apart in case anyone else is interested

So, first the underside is in multiple pieces. Each side has the bottom hull plating, along with the gray "side" piece. The hull piece has pegs that slot into the bottom half of the main ship, and the side piece is notched around those same pegs. You can easily see all of that in the picture below. These came out relatively easily just by pulling and rocking the hull plating. One of the side pieces broke at one of the notches, but it easily glued right back in place and isn't noticable at all.

That was easy. The same can't be said about splitting the clam shell in half. There are 7 pegs that glue the two halves together. It was relatively easy for me to pry apart the single one in the rear by just using simple tools. I attempted to work around the side and pop each one out, but that wasn't working. I damaged the top hull in several locations using it as a fulcrum to separate the two halves, and even in the locations that I didn't do any damage, I was getting great separation but it wasn't actually breaking the two apart. I ended up using a scope to find where the individual pegs were (though hopefully with these pictures you won't need a scope), and then used a mini-hack saw to saw them in half - which still required a decent amount of separation of the two halves in order to allow the saw to fit through (and not cut the actual ship). And I don't have a picture of it, but the three engines just wiggle loose.

So, while I haven't fully figured out what I'm doing with it, I have decided that per usual, I need to light the engines. After several failed attempts at making it work, I think I've finally found a solution - I have applied aluminum tape to the inside of the engine cone (I figure I don't really care if it's shiny when the light's not on since it should always be on!), and routed some fiber optic cables surrounded in heat shrink tubing through the rear of the engine. There's JUST enough space to make it work - and since my drilling was slightly off, I have a small bit to patch up. But the results are looking promising!

I was also thinking about putting some fiber optics in the sides of the ship, but looking at source pictures, I can't seem to find any of them that have any lights on the sides. What are your thoughts to that?

An update on my GR-75. I have decided to use some fiber optics to simulate deck lights, the only source picture I can find reflecting that is here ( http://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/escape-from-hoth.png?5d8e28 ) but I was pretty much set on doing it anyways.

Anyways, I finished up the three engine pods, running three FO cables through each. By the time I actually glued them all in place, I was a bit disappointed with how it came out, but it was too late to do anything about it, plus I didn't really know what to do about it. My main complaint is that I can't seem to keep them centered facing forwards - I have thought about perhaps melting the end of them a bit, that might work... I'll have to test it out on something else first.

Using my trusty dremel, I managed to hollow out the engines on the top of the hull. At first I tried to use my standard milk carton diffuser (same strategy as on the CR90 and MF), but I knew that it wouldn't work on the exterior, and I was having an issue getting a good fit on the inside. So I decided to go back to hot glue - I haven't used it as a diffuser in a long while. At first I tried using it inside, but that failed - it was too difficult to control it. So then I switched to blocking off the inside and forcing the hot glue in from the outside, letting it cool, and then cleaning up the excess with a knife. This. Worked. GREAT! Since the glue isn't 100% uniform, it actually creates some swirl effect in the lighting so it's not all the same shade.

They discontinued the battery I used for the CR-90, but I don't think that would fit anyways. Looking around, I'm thinking I might use a 3.7V drone battery. The main problem with that though is the relatively small mAH (~700 instead of the ~3000 on the CR90). I might be able to fit two inside, in which case I can wire them in parallel to double the capacity, and with only using 5 LEDs instead of the 11 on the CR90, I should get similar run time from the two ships. But worst case, 700mAH should last about 5 hours anyways, and seeing as I still haven't even heard of an epic tourney, that should be long enough.

I haven't figured out where I want to put the switch and the recharge cables yet. The best I've come up with is kinda tucking them under the partial hull plating (perhaps I leave one "loose" so I can truly bury the switch/wires?). But I am definitely open to ideas if someone else has a better one.

An update on the GR-75. The electronics are 100% done. The only thing left prior to reassembling it all is to figure out where the recharge leads are going. I'm thinking that I might just put 2 leads sticking out 1/4'' or so and just alligator clip onto them. If I put it under the hull where the switch is, you wouldn't see them during play. The "problem" with that is that I actually have it on display, which would mean that it would have to be displayed without the bottom hull piece. Decisions.

Anyways. I did decide to wire up the sides with fiber optics, I have 4 on one side, and 4.5 on the other (the 5th is mostly hidden). I'm not going to lie, but adding the FOs may have just made the GR-75 more impressive looking (to me at least) than the CR-90.

As for the electronics, I am using a 3.7V 750mAh drone battery as the power source. It is taped in place towards the front of the hull. It is powering 4 blue LEDs and one warm white. 3 of the blues go to the top half of the hull, where they shine through the hot glue diffuser to illuminate the top engine lights. The 4th is connected to fiber optics to light to bottom 3 engines (3 cables each). The warm white obviously powers the side lights (9 cables total). I also used hot glue to secure the switch in place - I ended up having to wrap it with tape to prevent the glue from actually gluing the switch itself (instead of just the casing). Finally, there's a lowly resistor to drop from the 3.7V to 3.0V. And of course there are the two leads that are just dangling right now - they will find a home somewhere to recharge the battery.

As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, the switch to turn on/off the lights is hidden under one of the bottom hull plates. It is a snug fit, so I'm not planning on doing anything about it, but if need be down the road, I can add a magnet to hold it in place if it loosens. I'm thinking about the leads going above the blue container, and below the yellow one... There's a bit of space there directly to the bottom of the ship that should make it easy to drill out and permenatly attach a lead there.

Awesome Thread!!!

Your lighting is brilliant!!!

I've been staring at the tiny mounts on my GR75 for weeks wondering for to run the light down there. Did you manage to salvage the original plastic mounts, or are those cones just mounted on the cabling?

I managed to salvage the tabs. I'll take some pictures of that area when I get home, but basically for the two outer ones, I drilled straight in from the back of the tab, very slowly, and very delicately, and I still managed to mess it up a bit, nothing that a bit of paint doesn't cover up though. The center one was a PITA, requiring me to drill it in at an angle mounted in the ship and drill it from the engine back, meeting in the middle, making the tunnel large enough for the FOs, without going too far to create a hole.