Canopies & Cockpits

Now that the fuselage is done on the outside its time to move in. I ran the fiber optics into the cockpit and under the R2 unit. After drilling 20 or so holes into the instrument panel I ran a fiber optic into each hole. A good lesson I learned while doing this is that fiber optics and Cyanoacrylate glue DO NOT mix. The fiber becomes brittle and just cracks when the glue is setting and so I wound up having to re-do it. It's better to set the fiber in place with either epoxy or hot glue.

Time for more "kitbashing" to fill up the cockpit. I used alot of parts from airplanes and some photoetched tank parts. By molding alot of the parts I was able to make multiple copies and repeat certain ones. I didn't really follow the original model I just made it look functional.

The canopy was the tricky part. It took alot of patience to get the shape just right. I started by making a mock-up in thick paper. When I was happy with it I used the paper as a guide to cut the styrene. To avoid the glare from the lights during shooting the original models didn't have any windows. I decided not to include "glass" either because I liked the way it looked.