Hello again. Today I will describe how I prepared the fuselage for the installation of the electronics.
First thing I did before doing anything with the kit was to test the set delivered by Richard. Therefore I placed all components on a big desk and connected everything to the main board. The test was successful and all components worked as supposed to.
Next thing was to find the right place for the main board in the fuselage.
Due to the fact that the Lancaster fuselage is illuminated inside and has a lot of windows the back-office isn’t a good place for the main board and all the cabling.
So the only option is the bomb-bay. The bay of the normal version is big enough to house the electronics with the only disadvantage that it has to be closed then.
The problem is, that the Dambuster bomb-bay has limited space and is open in the middle. I solved the problem by grinding
a big quadratic hole in the roof of the rear bomb-bay:
I grinded it as deep as possible taking care not to grind too deep. But everything went fine no grinding through the roof:
Next was to test-fit the main-board in the
bomb-bay roof. For this I attached some plugs to the upper- and underside of the main-board to simulate maximum height.
This was then fitted and the rear bomb-bay-cover attached to find out if there is enough space:
Final check with cover installed:
So this first mayor challenge was mastered!
Next thing was to find out the best way to guide the cables in the fuselage.
It is necessary to hide them since the crew-entrance-door is open.
There are several cables running to the rear of the fuselage:
Big currency-cables to the tailwheel (they will be guided through the big tailwheel into the base-plate)
4 cables to the 2 tail-lights
2 cables to the entrance-door light
Since the Lancaster has a floor going to the
rear the idea was to hide the cabling underneath it.
Therefore I had to prepare the floor, the bulkheads and the fuselage-halfs to make enough space for the cables:
Also the ribs in the fuselage halfs were grinded away as much as possible.
Last thing to prepare was the fitting of the rear lights. There are 2 lights at the far rear below the turret which are illuminated.
I went the extra mile and drilled them out without destroying the housing of them.
First I cut away the „lights“ off their housings.
Then I taped the fuselage-halfs together at the rear and drilled a hole in each of the housings.
Last thing was to glue a piece of stretched clear sprue in each hole. This all was a little bit fiddly but it worked:
With this step the preparation of the fuselage was finished.
In the next post I will show you how and where I installed the lights in the fuselage
and how I implemented the cables to the rear of the model. Then you will also see some pictures of the illumination working. Have a nice Sunday and are you soon!