In more paint matching madness, I found a match to the interior paint for the TA-4 and again found a commercial match to the FS#… this time a Dulux product, which is a copy-cat of a Resene colour…. which is a long explanation for the fact that I now have the correct interior colour!
Amazingly this new paint is very close to the paint I had matched by eye from my visits to the real jet! So, a quick splash of paint around the interior to see what it looks like, and I am very happy with it!
I promise I will post photos of the paint soon…
Next project on the workbench is the right hand “Wedge” panel. I have the backplate in place, with most switches in place and wired, now it is time for the machined and engraved faceplate. I have the plastic cut to shape and painted black, I am just working on the CAD drawings for the engraving. The new CNC machine at work is pretty good at engraving, and has some really nice “D Bits” with tiny cutting surfaces (one of them is around 0.25mm across the end!) which are ideal for engraving panels 🙂
Once the panel is done, next job is making some dual colour flood lights to light up the cockpit, and panel. I am not going to be adding back lighting to my panels, as all the panels I have done up till now are not able to be lit, so instead I will be adding soft flood lighting in the cockpit, switchable between red and warm white. Eventually I want to control the lighting from software, so that I can detect if it is daytime and switch on the white lighting to make the cockpit appear to be naturally lit 🙂 I have toyed with the idea of mounting red white and blue spots above the cockpit, and by varying the brightness of each, provide environmental lighting to match the time of day… but this is only a “rainy day” project at this point 🙂