Wednesday 30 November 2016

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...


Nicely moulded and very few parts in the Pegasus kit...

Testing out the pair of LEDs in the "head"...
I built up the fragile neck with Evergreen strip after installing the LED wiring.
The wiring for the green LEDs in the body of the craft...
I ran the wires down the support stand, through the display base and under an









upturned microwave dish.
Whoops! A microwave dish for the stable base. It was fun painting the "Earth" in 1950's style.
 
 
 
 
 



 
 

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