Moebius - Viper mk2

[olcabour]

Improving the cockpit

Overall, I found the cockpit is reasonably well detailed. And with some improvements, and a good paintjob, upgrade photoetched will be superfluous.

In fact, it essentially lacks a good set of round dials. I marked the locations and drilled the plastic with different diameters bits and drills on the Dremel.











At that moment, I was not decided to light the model, and I did not perforate completely. My intention was, before paint them, to put a drop of white at the bottom of each dial to highlighted them.
With the lighting, I did break through all dials with the dremel.
With a thin bit, I also drilled the tiny buttons, but I drift a little and they are not very straight...





I hollowed the sides to allow the light scattered from the led that will be installed behind the dashboard.





Before installing the LED, I applied the base color of the cockpit : primer and base of light gray Tamiya xf66.




2 wires are added behind the headrest. I thought it was the ejection handles, but it looks like hoses.




I get back on the non-aligned buttons, widened the hole and covered it with a small tab where the buttons were redone.
At the same time, I filled an edge damaged during drilling dials.




Then I finish to paint the cockpit. All dials and screens are covered from the back with a thin sheet of clear plastic (frosted with sandpaper to limit the direct light).
I first tried to fill a dial with humbrol klear, and this is to avoid as solvents attack the paint. Then tried Microscale krystal klear, but that seemed a little opaque even after curing. So I swithed to frosted clear plastic tab.
I also use a small strip of white plastic card (not painted) will reflector in the center column between the legs of the driver, in order to clarify the three dials.











The dials are then painted with different colors clear paints (Tamiya or Gunze).



The two screens images (Dradis) were captures found on the web, printed on transparent decal paper and protected by a layer of microscale liquid decal film.