Holy hell that is bright!

Seems like the reactors are running hot!

I need some advice for materials to use to fuzz and cloud the light a bit. Pointers? I'll be putting it inside the removable circular cowling caps.

This is theory only, untested, but easy and costs nothing to try. I think maybe you could use a plastic pop bottle, cut engine sized circles, sand them a bit to roughen them up, and put them inside the engine nozzles. It should diffuse the light a bit. At the very least you can try it with simple sticky tape to see if it works.

For my gozanti lighting mod I carefully ground the back of the engine caps off (what's on the inside of the ship normally) and filled the caps with low-temp hot glue. It's my favorite fix for light diffusion issues, not something most people think of but it works great.

Current progress on this...

I had to do some reorganizing inside. It's a little bit of a dogs dinner in there but it allows the outside to look gorgeous. The switch is smaller now, having resoldered a different one in after a superglue fusing accident, and the dish has been relocated. I never liked the old "tacked on the side" position anyway. Im not sure if the structures on the side - ribbed for her pleasure - are shield generators or coolant vents? If they're the latter, some colour will be required.

As usual, constructive crits warmly welcomed.

Awesome lighting. The paint job is pretty excellent too!

If you're still working on the lighting, there are several things you can do to adjust it. First, I'm assuming that you're using resistors to drop it down to the 3.0V-3.2V range that the Blue LEDs require. If so, consider scaling to a larger resistor, they operate just fine at lower voltages than 3.0V (as in try 2.8V or 2.7V, though realize that the lower you go with a full charge, the sooner they will cut off completely when the battery starts to get low). The second thing you can do is to use a diffuser of some kind. Zealux has already mentioned hot glue, but you can also use milk carton plastic - they both have their places and uses. You can even stack multiple ones if you have the space to dim the light as well. Finally, you can mess with the LED placement. Pulling it further back from the engines will provide a more uniformed light appearance, which can help reduce the bright spot. Actually, one last thing, you might want to consider swapping for a larger LED (depending on what size you're using already). These hobby LEDs all pretty much put out the same light, but the smaller you go the more concentrated it is. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing depending on the situation. The larger the LED, the more diffused the light is to begin with, and while most of that is wasted in these applications, it can help with the overly bright issue.

5 hours ago, Khyros said:

If so, consider scaling to a larger resistor, they operate just fine at lower voltages than 3.0V

I believe I currently have them at 2.6V should my calculations be correct. Upped from a 100 to a 120 ohm resistor.

5 hours ago, Khyros said:

The second thing you can do is to use a diffuser of some kind.

Honestly the intense light dropped off as soon as i put the cowlings back on. Perhaps limiting the spread helped somewhat. I am borrowing a glue gun tomorrow though...

5 hours ago, Khyros said:

Actually, one last thing, you might want to consider swapping for a larger LED

I'm using 5mm superbright display panel grade LEDs. Wanted to get quality right first time haha.

I do massively appreciate the guiding hand here!

Eyeing up my VCX next...

6 hours ago, ge0rd1eb4lls said:

Honestly the intense light dropped off as soon as i put the cowlings back on. Perhaps limiting the spread helped somewhat. I am borrowing a glue gun tomorrow though...

2

1

Pardon the somewhat off topic question, but about the glue gun, is hot glue safe to use on these models? I was considering using some to make an engine glow a little more 3D that what I can do with paint alone.

4 hours ago, Kazimir said:

Pardon the somewhat off topic question, but about the glue gun, is hot glue safe to use on these models? I was considering using some to make an engine glow a little more 3D that what I can do with paint alone.

Yup, hot glue is fine on FFG plastic.

16 hours ago, ge0rd1eb4lls said:

I believe I currently have them at 2.6V should my calculations be correct. Upped from a 100 to a 120 ohm resistor.

Honestly the intense light dropped off as soon as i put the cowlings back on. Perhaps limiting the spread helped somewhat. I am borrowing a glue gun tomorrow though...

I'm using 5mm superbright display panel grade LEDs. Wanted to get quality right first time haha.

I do massively appreciate the guiding hand here!

Eyeing up my VCX next...

Cool. To confirm, it sounds like you're running from a 7.4V Drone battery, and running the LEDs in series? The math behind it is V=IR, the LEDs pull 20mA. If they're in series, then your circuit is running 20mA total and 2 LEDs at 2.6V = 5.2V drop from the LEDs. 120ohm * .02A = 2.4V drop over the resistor, sizing the battery to be 7.6V. The other way to run it would be in parallel pulling 40mA. 120ohm * .04 = 4.8V, and each LED drops 2.6V = 7.4V... Note - of these two methods, running in series doubles the life of the battery. But thus far I'm the only person I know that uses drone batteries, and I use the 3.7V variety, so I just want to make sure you're sizing your resistor properly - nothing sucks more than putting the model all back together just to have the LED burn out an hour later. If you're not going to put any type of diffuser on it at all, make sure that it's perfectly centered (well, assuming you're OCD about things like I am).

Feel free to read through my thread if you're still a bit nervous about the electronics or the modding. I put together a beginners guide to LEDs here

and a few posts later, I detail out my generic modeling process. The start of the thread also follows my progress on the VCX-100 itself.

I look forward to seeing the VCX!

4 hours ago, Khyros said:

*Many discussions and advice points*

The power supply is a 9V battery. The forward current on the LEDs is actually 25mA not 20, my mistake. And the LEDs are 3.1V, not 2.7 as the calculated running voltage was... but that's not really a biggie as running them lower does absolutely no harm. Like I need them brighter anyway!

The VCX was a ******* to get apart, took ages to figure out where all the seams were!