After priming the cockpit details with stynlyrez white some of the instruments were covered with micromask.  Then the interior was painted a turquoise color (check out some photos, that's really the color) and the masks removed.  Then the instruments were dabbed with thin black paint, drybrushed with light gray, and given a drop of clear.

Next up is the ejection seat, which was primed, painted, and then drybrushed to bring out details.  Almost forgot the headrest!

It does indeed Spencer.

Like I said I have some practice to put in before going anywhere near my refit and my compressor has a 3litre tank.

Well! I got home to find a very large box waiting for me and this one is all down to my Eleanor as she spent a fortune whilst we were in Turkey and she kept going on at me to get this model and here it is.

Even the box is huge and definately bigger than the refit box.



Going to be a fun "wee" build.

Thanks for the replies folks.

Was looking at the kit over the weekend and I have decided to go with a 10mm (can go smaller if required to a 8mm rod) brass rod which is on it's way. As you probably know in the lower hull piece there is a section sandwiched between two hull braces and it's about 20mm wide so my thought is to get a shaped piece of wood epoxied in there with a pre-drilled 10mm hole and that's my mounting point sorted methinks.

Well! that's the plan anyway but no doubt it will probably change. I just need to get the Aztec masks now and I'll be good to go. The 10mm gives me plenty of room (I hope) to get all the wiring down through it and into the eventual base. I will have the Tena board in the base so less room taken up inside the kit.

Can't wait to get started.

Am I right in that the box says 8 cubic feet per minute? I can see it's a HVLP, but that seems like quite a lot.
Is that when it's full open? What kind of compressor are you using?

but some other stuff came up...



...What were those reasons you ask?
Well, the system of using 5 buttons with resistors and sending the voltages through 1 wire into the arduino using a headphone connector is kind of junk. I should have thought of a batter system like a bluetooth remote or something. The problem i face is that the resistor values can shift resulting in the arduino not recognizing buttons anymore. and the headphone jack has a little wiggle room in the length resulting in a possibility that you place the ship wrongly and therefore don't get the connection of the 3rd wire (so power and ground work, but no buttons) or even sporadic signals (such as pressing button 2 and getting action of button 1)

However i can reprogram the arduino, so if i think of a better system that still would work with 1 analog input wire, then i can just implement that later, as the ship does not have to be changed for that. only the base. Which is a win for me.

Tell me about it, moving homes, marriage, having our daughter. And building a Marklin (scratch build electronics) railway project took me away from building my Defiant and Voyager.
When the parts are in, I'm starting a Ikea Duktig kitchen project (with Arduino of course) for my daughters birthday. Lights and sound  With an off-switch, so we don't go crazy!

My first project here, which needs to be rebuild, is my: USS Defiant
Which also has lost all pictures, I need to restore them soon.

I used a 3-wire 3.5 phone jack too, but instead of using 1 analog wire, I used another Arduino in the "base" for the switches.
That Arduino sent a simple command to the models Arduino using UART Tx only. You can sent as many different commands as you wish with this.
And, you can make this wireless using Xbee shields or something. Switches are being read using a MCP23017 port expander.

I also used an Adafruit Wave Shield, in the base for sound effects.


But, I had the very old Defiant version from the '90's, which doesn't fit at all.
Just after the base layer of paint (which was good), the new version came out. Bought that 1, salvaged the electronics and still need to rebuild the 2.0 version.


Anyway, I found the original picture from my Voyager post. For your own peace of mind, I thought it would be nice to share it again for you 
It was a simple sketch-up I made using Lego Technic building software, just to illustrate the idea.



Thanks for the praise, but you're the one who actually build it!

Mazzel!