Big Project, Small Scale Part 3

After making really great progress until October, I had to put this little project on hold for a little while.

Hitting a bit of a wall and hanging other things that needed my attention, the models sat in limbo for a few months. I had gotten the point with the tank that I finished everything I was comfortable making, so it was a good excuse to put it down.

After seeing the HK Tank with working headlights and chromed, I let life get in the way.

Last month I finally upgraded my workspace so I would have a little more room and did a test. I had enough space to see if I could even get the effect I was going for. With focus and camera height being the big parts I slapped together this little test to see if it would even deliver, even a little on what these machines would. Look like. It did.

This little test give me the confidence I needed to get back to work. The first thing I needed to fix was the tail lights on the Aerial. The lighting kit came with 1.8mm lights and I was worried to the point I was going to destroy the kit trying to make them work. Then I found 1mm leds which were prewired.

after I wired them up and tested them for fit and to see how they would look. I couldn’t have been happier.

I quickly set to get the wired in and fit the aerial HK together, completely, for the first time since starting this project last August.

So it was time to face it the part of this project that has terrified me the most.

Soldering the circuit board.
After the initial mishap and the small size of the boards, I have been building this up in my head for months. After a YouTube tutorial and the first resister was on, the fear disapated and I got to work.

Since the Aerial HK was the more challenging, with the more lights and tighter fit in the body I decided to attack that one first.

With some minor exceptions, cooking a searchlight and the like. Here’s how it came out.

I still have some work on getting the fron search lights to more accurately match the film as the kit has these huge glass “eyes” and it really gives away that this is a model. I drilled out the pieces And painted them but it needs a little more work.

With all that done I moved on to the far easier Tank head.

A little chrome to finish off the Aerial Hunter…

And that brings us up to date on this project.

My next steps are to detail the paint and to get the Aerial HK on some strings so it can “Fly” on camera. It’s starting to really come together and it has me excited.