About this Blog

This is about the combination of two interests, Radio Control vehicles and Science Fiction models. This blog documents my science fiction spaceship and radio controlled vehicle projects.

Sunday, 5 January 2020

Push Lights AKA eliptical vessel heads

I have mentioned these push lights many times in a few project build posts but never shown a picture of one. Well a question on the RPF forum prompted a little further explanation of what exactly they are.

I get them from my local Hardware store, in this case in Western Australia the store is a Bunnings.
They come in two sizes the larger shown below in the packaging is 115mm across the dome part not including the outer rim. The smaller one comes two to a packet and are 80mm across the dome.





They are molded from a hard styrene and you can see that to use them as a communications dish there is a side that needs to be cut away. They can be easily disassembled by removing some screws on the back.

I have used the surrounds as well as the dome part on a few models. In fact the top of the Resilient has one of the small sized surrounds in front of the antennae array. You can see the round shape to the left of the light blue piece on the top spine below.


 I have used one of the larger domes and their surround cut in half on the back of the as yet unfinished Moon Bus project.




And once again a smaller dome was used for the communications dish.


They are relatively cheap to buy and provide some useful shapes. I have even used the led lights that are contained within them on a model.

Be wary though of a cheaper and nastier version made of poly propylene a type of plastic that cannot be glued painted or sanded so is of no value to a modeller. These tend to have a black surround.

Thanks for looking.
More soon...

1 comment:

  1. I have found that the stands from the 1/1000 scale Star Trek kits make good radar dishes and vessel heads. Also they are sold in a three pack of just the stands.

    ReplyDelete

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