MARTIAN WAR MACHINE
"WAR OF THE WORLDS"
In between constructing buildings I decided to complete this kit, kindly donated to me by good friend, Ed Roache. An iconic design from the 1953 George Pal version of "War of the Worlds", it was a pretty straight-forward operation, except for the addition of some lights to bring the model to life. I had an idea to incorporate a pulsating effect in the "head", however this was to prove troublesome, to say the least. The area is so small that I was only able to put in two flashing LEDs which seemed to work reasonably well in creating the effect I was looking for. Right at the very last stage of final construction, that of gluing the model to the base, one of the bulbs inexplicably failed and I was left with just the one red flashing LED - ah well, it still looks okay, just not as good as it should have been. Finding the correct copper colour for the craft was a trial as well. I finally settled on a $4.40 spray can from my local Bunnings shop, after first spending $16 on an incorrect can labelled as "Bronze/Copper" that turned out to be too dark. Anyway, just some photos of construction and the final result...
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| Nicely moulded and very few parts in the Pegasus kit... |
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| Testing out the pair of LEDs in the "head"... |
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| I built up the fragile neck with Evergreen strip after installing the LED wiring. |
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| The wiring for the green LEDs in the body of the craft... |
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| I ran the wires down the support stand, through the display base and under an |
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| upturned microwave dish. |
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| Whoops! A microwave dish for the stable base. It was fun painting the "Earth" in 1950's style. |
