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“Another short stage in which a deck panel is assembled and the final warp engine field grill reflector is added to your portside warp nacelle.“

Contents

Parts

Materials: All of the non-electrical parts in this stage are plastic.

Build

Fitting Field Grill Deflectors

Step A

Slide the white Warp Engine Field Grill Rear Reflector 2 inside the blue Warp Engine Field Grill Rear Reflector 1, as shown:

Retrieve your port Warp Nacelle assembly from the previous stage. Slide this Reflector assembly into the space at the rear of the nacelle.

My reflector assembly did not just drop in like the instructions show. The upper navigation light LED is in the way:

To make space for this reflector, I first carefully cut away this small ‘collar’ of heat-shrink tubing around the LED using my hobby knife and some tweezers:

Next, I made sure the LED itself was seated into the housing as far as it would go. My round-nose tweezers worked great for pushing the LED down:

Then, I gently bent the leads of the LED down towards the wiring until it was as low as possible:

Finally, since the base of this LED was now exposed, I did not want the flashing light to be visible through my warp grilles. This was solved by covering the LED with a small piece of black electrical tape:

With the wiring of the LED now moved out of the way, the Warp Engine Field Grill Rear Reflector popped right into place without any trouble:

Make sure this reflector assembly is even with the two side reflectors, as shown. If not, you may need to make more space for it. If this reflector sticks up at all, it may cause trouble when we try to complete the warp nacelle in the coming stages:

Assembling and Installing Deck Panel U3-20

Step B

Carefully remove six (6) Escape Pod Covers, three (3) Clear Windows and four (4) Dark Windows from their sprues and fit them into the back of Deck Panel U3-20, as shown.

Reminder: I sanded all of these windows down already. See The Windows page for more details:

As before, I used pieces of black electrical tape behind the Escape Pod Covers and Dark Windows to reduce light leak:

As I was assembling this panel, I found that the Reflector Panel we are about to install does not hold the windows in place all that well. To help keep everything where it should be, I used one of my spare Clear Stickers (from Stage 47 and Stage 49) to secure all of the center windows:

Fit Reflector Panel U3-20-A onto the back of Deck Panel U3-20, as shown:

Slide the LEDs on the yellow/black wires of the Deck Panel Lights cable into this notch of the Reflector Panel.

NOTE: The LED on the red/black wires of this cable will be used to light the Impulse Engine in a later stage:

Secure the Reflector Panel to the Deck Panel with three (3) BP screws.

This Reflector Panel fits very stiff over the posts of the Deck Panel. Before adding the screws, make sure these screw cutouts are fully seated:

We can test these new window lights by connecting the new Deck Panel Lights cable to the PCB and Battery Box:

From the outside, our new panel looks great! This panel will installed in upcoming stages:

Thoughts

That was another stage that just flew by! It also marks the end of Issue 13. While we have not been instructed to power the nacelle lighting yet, I did connect it to the PCB and Battery Box to see how it looked. Well, the white paint we have been adding to the reflectors (and the sanding I did to the warp grilles when I painted them) does help a lot, but I am still not quite satisfied. Therefore, I am actively working on replacement lighting setup that should really bring these nacelles to life. More to come…

Next Up

Stage 51 – Deck Panel U2-10, Windows/Lights, Escape Pod Covers, Nacelle Lower Frame