...and there was!

My finger prints are no longer recognizable.  Every time I attack styrene with my blade I seem to come off with more cuts than the plastic!  All good fun though :)

So with one foot down, and an ankle to connect it to the leg, I've been keen to get the other ankle and foot done.  They're getting there, but slowly.

One nice piece of progress though is the dome lighting kit I received from another builder Joymonkey (Paul Murphy) designed by Teeces (John V).

I met up with a couple of other builders for a weekend of soldering to get these together.  The last time I soldered was at school and from what I remember, the technique was more about burning holes in the desk than applying solder.  But will a bit of guidance I managed to do pretty alright...

I say that...

I lined up all the LED's in the first 2 rows and was then trimming the excess on the legs when catastrophe struck!  I managed to knock PCB away from the front bezel made several of the LED's pop out through the holes!  Because I needed to get the polarity right it was a very delicate operation trying to balance the LED's that were still in place while while pulling the ones out of place away with the bezel.

It was like surgery, but fortunately my skills and steady hand proved themselves and the 2 pieces came apart nicely.  I was able to breathe again.

Then, reaching for some tape, I knocked them all off the table.

No picture of me has received as many likes on Facebook as this one.

Still, I pressed undefeated while Brads R2 mocked me from the corner.


After a long day evening and early morning run of soldering, we had pretty much the whole thing working.

I would like to point out that by this point  I was very tired...

I wired it all up to test it and couldn't figure out why one of the PSI's was acting funny.  Looking at how it was plugged in to the rear logic display I realized I had plugged the set of 5 pins off set by 1 pin, so four where connected and all in the wrong place!

A good hearty laugh was had while I sorted it.  But still more problems.  Scratching my head, I looked at the PSI which was plugged in with an off set of 3 pins, so only 2 were plugged in!  After about 10 mins of laughing hard at my expense I plugged it all in correctly and had it working (with the exception of a couple of LED's the wrong way round that stayed lit which was easily fixed later)

Ta-da! It's a miracle it still works after what I put it all through.  Guess I need to make a home for it in the dome now!

In my excitement of having something for the dome, I went and ordered a few resin pieces for it.  Including the Logic Surrounds (for putting the lights in) and a Radar eye.  And while I was at it I bought a few details for the ankles, and shoulder hubs.  Even more gaps filled!

So for today's update, here's a nice finishing pic with a few details bluetacked on.

The Radar eye makes a huge difference!  Even in pink!  About the pink... I'm already in talks with a paint expert and plan to cover up the garish colour as soon as possible :)