1/72 Scale Aircraft Hangar

Might just go down to the local train station and scrape some off the ground and smear it all over the place.

Here is the size of the LED. As you can see it's about a square 1/4 inch. There is an adhesive backing which a come in use, but what I'm really trying to wrap my noodle around is how to mount it in something that will look like a scale light fixture with a suitable shade.



Here is the LED held, in a 3" Xacto clamp, balancing on my upstairs bathroom sink, in the dark. Throws a good bit of light, no? Like I said before, I have four of these for the hangar and if I space them out correctly, they should cover the interior just fine. Incidentally, the color of the LED is Cool White. This replicates warehouse lighting better than the Warm White LED, white has a yellow tinge to it.

Ah, you have the rectangular type - I was expecting the 'tubular' or maybe 'grain of wheat' style.
I reckon that, once mounted on a truss or cross-beam, you could make a 'lamp shade' out of card or foil, hiding the LED up in the top of the shade. It should then cast a 'pool' of light like the real thing, and the 'shade' will help to conceal the shape of the LED and its mount.
It should really look good when it's all lit up - looking forward to seeing it.

That should look pretty slick Jim.


Geo

I like it.

OK fella's although I have not posted in a bit, I have been busy. Busy trying to figure out how to integrate the LED's into the hangar build and still make it look somewhat real. A big part of that is hiding the wires and the LED's themselves. I purchased and experimented with various style and materials of tubing. The brass rectangular tubing matched all my self imposed criteria, except when I brought it home and test fitted it to the roof framing I deemed it too heavy. I could just see it sagging the framing and eventually warping the roof, it is after all just a glorified paper model. So at that point I had to consider the styrene (white) or ABS plastic (grey) options. I bought test pieces of both and am leaning towards the ABS as I may leave it unpainted and the grey seems more realistic and saves me an extra step of painting.

With the conduit for the wires and hide for the LED pretty much straightened out I had to figure out how to get the light from the LED within out of the conduit in an efficient and realistic manner. The only option I could imagine was fiber optics. So I hit the web and found a product called "Solid Core Side Glow" from TheFiberOpticStore.com. It seemed like a simple to use, inexpensive product that even a novice like myself can be comfortable with, oh and I found out after it arrived that it is in fact not glass! Who knew? Anyway, without boring you with the full range of merits this product offers, you can just watch a review of the product at the bottom of the page here:

Solid Core Side Glow ~ Combo 1

So I picked up the cheapest sample pack I could and it looks as though the thickest one (5 mm) will work just fine.



The idea here is to form the end of a short length of this into something akin to the end of a very large industrial light bulb. To do this I secured a short length of this into a drill chuck and while it was spinning, worked on rounding the end with file and emery boards. Below you see the result in a rough form as I'm still just testing. One thing I discovered at this point was the material was not homogeneous throughout. Surrounding the "rubber-like" core is a clear sheath of thin glossy plastic material. (It can just be made out in the picture below.) I assume this sheath is what gives the material it's side glow capabilities. Anyway, below you see the finished test lighting fixture. The LED was fed into the opposite end of the grey ABS rectangular tube until it reached the opposite end. Then the rounded nub of fiber optics was inserted into a 3/16" drill hole, snuggly, so it "pins" the LED against the opposite, interior wall (nothing permanent yet).



Below you see the test set-up activated and throwing light through the SCSG fiber optic "cable" (my finder is blocking any light leakage out of the end of the conduit).



Below is a picture of just the diode throwing light as a comparison with the above. Pretty close huh?



Well mi amigos unless you have a better suggestion I think I will be going with some version of this setup. The next issue will be how to mount the conduits to the roof support structure (tricky) and forming the shades and possibly the "drop down stalk". Better start eating fish to power those brain cells! Stay tuned!

Good stuff Jim. It should look the biz when installed and all lit up.

I hope! Well that's the plan anyway Terry...

It may not look like much, but with any luck this mess will fit nicely into the roof supports and serve the dual purpose of hiding the wires to the LED'S and as the bases for the four lights ( see the 4 holes). Since it weaves in and out of the roof support structure I have to do the tricky job of gluing it together AFTER it's in place! Also, I may end up painting it black...thoughts?

Looking good so far!

Very clever solution Jim

Looks like that will work out real nice Jim

Thanks guys!

Here it is installed in the roof structure, though not glued together.

That should work well Jim. When the roof is in place, and the conduits in shadow, and with the lamps' glare masking the upper areas, it should really look the biz.
Looking forward to seeing the effect, especially the 'night time' look.

OK, back with you again. The main thrust of the work that I have been doing since I left you has been painting the roof. Specifically, painting the roof to look like this:



This is an aerial view of the Cradle of Aviation Museum near my house. It incorporates into it's design some of the original hangars from the old AAC/AAF/USAF base of Mitchel Field. A little internet digging turned up this little gem as to what the colors once were:



And in the end this is what I ended up with:



Honestly, I'm not sure I like the way it came out. In my mad search to find colors that matched I used a water color marker for the black (which accounts for the vertical streakiness due to color overlap) and an acrylic artist paint for the yellow (yellow ochre thinned with water to varying degrees of success, hence the splotches). There is still a bit of touchup work to be done as there are some slight overlaps and the white of the base paper shows through in a few places, but essentially it is done...

...at least that is what I tell myself about half the times I walk in and look at it. It's seems my old friend procrastination has reared his ugly head again and I can't make heads or tales out of what I've done! Seriously my emotions run from: Get a replacement and start over because it looks like shite, to not bad Jim, it looks like an old weather beaten old roof and with a touch-up here and there will look even better so just move on!

What do you guys think? Any words of advise or suggestions? Sorry the pictures are not the best...

Looking good.

Agreed. The hanger on the top right has a degree of streaks in black. Maybe another coat across the grain and we'll call it aged.


Geo

Good advise Geo, but that may be harder done than said. The roof is corrugated and I'm not sure I can work against the grain... Will have to investigate.

Looks good to me. Maybe go over the black with water colour or Indian ink, applied with a broad brush (#5 or larger) and do a wash over the yellow ?