The Nautilus Part 5: Lights
I’ve learned something over the past several days: whatever skill at soldering I once had — gleaned through lessons from my father and repair schools whilst in the Navy — has all been lost. While soldering these simple connections for this model I cursed a lot, burned even more, and even completely cooked an LED from the inside out. I finally got the wiring and lights hooked up and into the model, but it wasn’t a fun process. I either need to practice this skill, or I need to start buying pre-wired lighting kits.
The setup is simple, though, and that probably saved my sanity and the structural integrity of Nautilus (structural integrity generally fails when something is punted across the room). One green LED for the bridge, with a resistor on the positive lead to drop the voltage, and two strips of the LED tape to light the main lounge. Photo time…
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- All of the wiring and lighting that has to be crammed into the space. You can make out the grating in the top of the lounge in the top of the sub.
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- Nine volt battery clipped to everything, making sure it all works.
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- The LED tape is — as the name suggests — self-adhesive. I stuck it to the bottom of the upper most deck, and ran some CA glue along the edges to make sure it stays put.
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- Everything installed, decks glued into place and testing the lights. Glad they still work, because there’s no way to access them without major surgery.
