I had (and still have) two big issues I hope(d) to overcome.
First, I wanted ALL the lighing and cabeling to be self contained.
Second, I wanted the lighting to last as loooooong as possible.
To accomplish the first point I needed to find a lighting source that achieved several things at once. First, it had to be small. Obviously you can't put much into it if everything is taken up by either a large light, or it's power supply. Second, they needed to burn cool. I didn't want to be melting holes inside my fuselage when it was all glued together. Lastly, they needed to be shock proof - or at least as close to it as they could be.
LED's fit the bill perfectly on all counts.
The second issue was solved by the choice of lights in the first place. LEDs can last for years even being on continually. I never wanted to have to open up a perfectly sealed and painted kit to replace one stinking lightbulb so that was great.
But there was one caveat that I couldn't get around. I could not figure out a means to provide power and still have the entire apparatus self-contained. So I came up with (what I though was anyway!!!) a brilliant idea. Most modern military aircraft are set up to use an APU or ground auxilliary power unit at some point. So I found a grownd crew kit (By Hasegawa I think) that had just this very piece of equipment. I was able to use the actual cables from this little guy and attached their ends to a miniature phono plug - much like the type on the end of your walkman's headphones.
From here I still had to get power into the APU so it could be transferred to the plane as well. This was solved by drilling a small hole in the side of the APU and inserting a plug for a 110v power supply that gives 9v DC at 100mA. Perfect for what I needed.
The lightsheet uses a miniature transformer to step up the voltave to the several thousand volts needed to start the fluorecence in the sheet itself. This transformer is REALLY tiny, probably less than 3/4 of an inch square. It fit beautifully behind the cockpit just in fromnt of the forward wall of the bomb bay and also served a double purpose of nose weight for this model.
The LEDs were all selected (red, yellow, green, and blue) and soldered to a small blank circut board. Then, each was covered with a tiny bit of heat shrink tubing to a height about 1/2 inch above each bulb. the fibers from the cockpit were then directed to each corresponding light and held in place with a small but of CA (superglue).
The beauty of the way this all worked out is that you can choose to display the model without lights and the extra ground equipment, or you can add it if you choose. Since the connector between the APU and the aircraft can be separated as desired. You can also unplug the power jack from the backside of the APU and still use it without power.
I still wish I could find a way to get a good solid and super bright light source to the three landing struts for each of their lights. Perhaps surface mount LED technology will allow this now. It was after all over six years ago I started the plane you see above.
Bri~
"I may not fly with the eagles.....but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!"