Matt Dika
La Crete, Alberta, Canada
Matt did a brilliant job of lighting AMT’s 1/1400 scale “Star Trek” USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C. After painting a black backing to prevent light from shining through the plastic, he sprayed a blue-silver over the black to make it more reflective. On the seams, he mixed black into epoxy to seal light there, too. He explains further: “In the saucer and drive section of the model, I use LED trees that have five white lights. The warp engines each have two LEDs per engine, one red and one blue. They run on 12 volts, and the system plugs into the wall; each section runs on its own circuit. The deflector dish has the same blue LED as the warp engines. The only difference is that I took apart a flashlight and harvested the chrome reflector, which I installed just behind the clear blue deflector. A blue LED in the middle gave the dish a real nice glow!”