p38jl:I modified the lights by cutting them from the battery holder, and stealing a push button switch from a wrecked VCR. The switch is epoxied in the body and next to the mounting bullet that extends into the belly of the Viper, when you tilt the Viper back on the stand, the bullet hits the switch and the engines light up...
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Sorry, needed to quote your post, but had to cut out a lotta the text over the pics and a couple pics to get it to load right. This is nothing that YOU did, Peter Three-Eight)
Nicely done, well-weathered version of that classic Space-Snake (Spake?) Looks typical of post-defeat Vipers, mechanically sound, but pretty beat up in looks...
The blue lighting in the engines really looks nice, that's the way to think outside the the box (literally, in this case) on Sci-Fi kit-lighting... I myself always hang onto every little bulb & LED I run across when I'm trashing eletronic items. I make a lotta use of minuature Christmas lights too... A standard nine-volt transistor battery powers a number of them, plus you can paint them to only expose a little square or dot of light in the right places. Downside is that they burn out and aren't replaceable easily... But your LEDs should last forever, as far as model-lifespans go..
Were you able to light the IP as well? From what I see in my kit, it looks like an option, but the panel doesn't look right when I compare it to what I recall (admittedly, it's from 30+ years ago) in my mind's eye and I've yet to fing a good shot(s) of a Snake'Pit... The central IP CRT was green-lit, right? Do you have any sources? My Viper Shadowbox won't allow anyone to see into the two Viper cockpits, but I wanna light them anyway... No, I wasn't able to light the IP, the nose/cockpit is a seperate piece, and would have required much more "engineering" than I was willing to pit into it to see it.. plus the canopy is not posable, so, it would have been lost in the closed canopy.
Also, what shade of gray did you use for overall "Colonial Grey"? I think that regular ol' Wal-Mart Grey Primer will be a close match, about every Viper I see is lit differently, making a CS (CS-Colonial Standard.. A play on FS-Federal Standard, get it?) shade a crap-shoot... The gray I used is Floquil Lettering Gray, i wanted to use a non Testors, Tamiya, etc, gray, and the LHS is selling out of Floquil, 1/2 off...so, score for me.. the Engines are based colored in the Grimy Black,, my new fav flat black.
I suppose one could rightly say that the Galactica's Snakes were reminicsient of late-war Luftwaffe aircraft, with paint being mixed and applied under a plethora of "field" conditions making it believeable to lack a standard color though... According to the "Battlestar Galactica" books, there were "Foundry Ships" in the Fleet that allowed the manufacture of new Vipers to replace the ones the Cylons picked off and that were lost through training accidents...
Hey, that opens another venue... What about a two-seat Viper Trainer? Anybody seen one? If not, and given that Galactica would have to recruit and train Warriors lost through combat and regular attrition-rates, and that they really couldn't jump from flying a shuttle to Viper, it would seem plausible at least, that there was a "TF-16" type of Viper...
Anyway, helluva good job... Sorry to ramble on like that...no prob on the ramble... ! 