Lights! Sound! Smoke!

I really wanted this build to stand out from the rest so I thought I would add a few things that would do just that. The first was - lights. I studied the plans and the hundreds of screen grabs from the movie and decided to add lights in a number of places. I chose to light the cabin, navigation lights, a spot light and a light atop the mast. I wanted to keep everything with the boat self contained so I made sure when I purchased the lights they could be run off a 9volt battery. This wasn't a problem as many miniature lights are in that range. I ran the wiring towards the back of the boat where there was a hatch. The hatch was designed to be access to the R/C equipment but my build isn't R/C so it was the perfect place for my switch and battery box. In order to make the hatch removable I mounted a couple of magnets to it.

The lights alone really help bring the boat to life but it wasn't enough for me - I wanted more. The smoke stack is so prominent on the deck that I thought it would be neat to have it functional. I figured this wouldn't be too hard to do since most model railroads can accomplish this. I remembered seeing a small smoke unit in the Micro Mark catalog and after taking a look at it I was sure it would be just the right size.

I only had one small problem - it needed at least 12volts to function. This meant I would have to have it run off a DC Transformer. Glancing over the reference photos I noticed a round plate on the back of the transom and it gave me an idea - it was the perfect place to hide a transformer jack!

I was able to mount the smoke unit under the deck and then I soldered together some brass tubing to recreate the stack.

Now, I could have stopped there but I just wasn't ready to. I had to have - sound! My first thought was to rip the guts out of one of those recordable greeting cards but I came across something better. I found a small electronic board that can record and playback two 20 second clips and the best part - it was cheap! Only $8.00!

I was able to get it from a place called Electronics123, they have a bunch of cheap electronic boards and accessories. If you have the time check out their site. For the speaker I mounted it out of sight inside the cabin and then mounted the board in the hatch. For one of the clips I chose to include the sound of the engine and for the other I felt there was nothing more fitting than Roy Scheider saying, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."