Hakuheisen: Eye lighting

I decided early on that I wanted this kit to have LED lights, and so I’ve added some to the head already and am planning to add some to the thrusters. (The tough part of adding LEDs to the thrusters is that the thrusters are too shallow… So I had to hollow them out a bit.) I’ll light the back thrusters and the leg thrusters, and that’ll be it for LEDs. I had considered lighting every little camera eye on the thing, plus the weapons and the overboost, but I decided that would be too difficult. I want to keep this project relatively simple, but I also want the end result to be really cool… So I must find the proper balance.

The LEDs in the head are surface-mount LEDs, the 0603 type. They’re small enough to fit almost anywhere. They’re wired together with magnet wire from Radio Shack – it’s a type of wire that has insulation painted-on, which means it’s thinner than equivalent jacketed wire. They’re wired to the outside using 30 AWG stranded Teflon wire, which is my usual choice for wiring in model projects, as it’s quite thin and very resilient.