Building my Asteroid Base, Part V

I got a lot of work done last night. However that was complete negated by my own hand when I started adding design changes. I added a few elements that then needed to be glued and or painted. Then having to wait for them to dry is the longest step. While waiting for the paint to dry, I did manage to get the LED lighting done. With LED lighting kits, it is super simple. Almost as simple as plugging in a light.

Here are the pics:

 The crater was too clean. It's easy to add debris and clutter, but the X-Wing game really needs a level flat surface to play on. So my compromise was to add rocks and sand into the rim along the walls. After lining the walls with sand and rocks. I soaked it in white glue from a spray bottle. Then turned up the heat and put a fan directly on the table.

I had always intended to have an entrance to the crater, but forgot about it. A hot wire foam cutter took care of that pretty quick. Some more brown paint and it's almost as far along as the rest of the crater.

 Once the white glued dried(which took awhile), I went back and and painted over the sand and rocks with the base color. I watered down the paint a lot as I needed it to flow into the nooks and crannys. The cost of that is a long drying time, even with the fan. So the dry brushing will have to wait till tonight.

Here is a close up of one of the entrances and my newly painted debris.

 Another thing I started working on while all this drying was going on, was the LED lights.I bought 2 "miniatures kit" from http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/. Each kit somes with a battery lead, switch and 5 LED lights. LED's require resistors, but these come already attached. All you have to do is twist the wires together.

 I ran all 5 LED's in parallel. Then just taped every thing to the roof of my Hanger Bays. The battery is heavy, I will have to put more tape on it as it keeps dropping.

The junction of all the wires I just covered with Electrical tape. It really couldn't be simpler.

Power on!

 The Rebels won't need to work in the dark

Red 5 launching

The last part I got done yesterday was to start painting the Hanger Bays

I could have easily gone into diorama mode detailing out the bases, but I had to restrain myself. As it was, my friend Lou decided that wasn't good enough and started adding details anyway. Lou is an incredible scratch builder. It didn't take him long to come up with a few visual improvements.

2 Build days left!

Xin