Many years ago, when Sterling was strong against the US Dollar, I remember being able to buy Games Workshop stuff in America at a cheaper converted price than in the UK.
So while I was here in the US, I visited a nice big independant games store to have a look around. However, as of right now, August 2017, with Sterling worth a paltry US$1.33, the cost of the new Space Marine Codex is US$50 which works out at £38.80 when it is £30 in Blighty.
I did not even look at the price of other stuff.
While over here in the USA, we went to see Valerian. The Fifth Element is a great Luc Besson film and I hoped that he would bring the same fun and vision to Valerian.
Unfortunately that was not the case, it started quite well with a potted history of the how the space station came to exist, the alien races were very imaginative. The trouble is that these aliens did not feature in much more of the film.
The movie universe and the special effects were brilliant, masterful, a pleasure to behold. The story was all over the place. Whole scenes seemed to be unnecessary and in a number of cases, just confusing. Half way through the movie, I had forgotten what they had to do to save whatever they had to save. Overall, great to look at, but no substance.
Anyway, Bladerunner 2049 and Thor: Ragnarok are coming soon.
I am currently in the good old USA having a bit of a break. Spending some time in Idaho and then heading off to California. Not a paint brush in sight and no purchases planned!
I am done with the lights, they took much longer than I thought to complete.
In the engine area, I have built the first of the control panels with a switch to operate the lights.
And it all works!
I may have gone over the top now as I have added even more LEDs.
I decided that some more internal lighting was required, just a few here and there.
It is now a bit of a wiring nightmare, I had to drill loads more holes in the hull to allow the wires to run all around the ship.
I have made things difficult for myself as I have to allow some of the LEDs and wire above the deck when it is glued down.
I decided to add some lights to the transporter.
I had to drill loads of holes to pass the wiring through, I also found the limitations of using pre-fused LEDs which was a bit annoying as I had to created several separate parallel circuits.
The lights are mostly on the outside as running wires into the interior was a bit too much to deal with on a first attempt as using LEDs.
They do all work, I just needed to make the battery compartment removable. I also need to hope that none of the wiring or LEDs fail in the future as it will not be possible to access them again without removing the deck and that is not going to happen.
Some magnets have been added to the underneath of the hull and now the landing gear will stay in place.
This gives me the height I need to construct a decent boarding ramp that will run between the rear struts and into to middle of the hull.
