Amerigo Vespucci by DanielD - OcCre - 1:100

[Bill97]

Daniel how is your build coming a long?  Not seen a photo in a while since you completed all the yards. Hope all is well. I am spending time perfecting my main crane. I had it up but was not totally satisfied with how the machinery looked so I took it back down. Such is the life when you attempt to change what the instructions direct. 

[DanielD]

6 hours ago, Bill97 said:

Daniel how is your build coming a long?  Not seen a photo in a while since you completed all the yards. Hope all is well. I am spending time perfecting my main crane. I had it up but was not totally satisfied with how the machinery looked so I took it back down. Such is the life when you attempt to change what the instructions direct. 

Hi Bill, visual progress is slow for me right now as I’m doing the rigging for the bow. I’m learning how to do furled sails so have a bit of a leaning curve to overcome. I’m also having to “make my own sails” again as the ones supplied in the kit are way too thick to fold up without looking out of place. I’m using tea bag paper, very thin but ultra strong, then make the sail stitching to simulate panels, then stain the sail so it doesn’t look too white, then sew in the rope the runs around the entire sale which allows me to have attachment points for the rigging. Also, each end point that secures to a pin in a normal ship has the special AV storage at the base of each mast, so I planned for all that and it’s tedious work getting the lines tied correctly. I have a few more lines to go to finish the bow sails, so I’ll add a new photo soon.

[Bill97]

Great Daniel. Will be eager to see your results. I have made my own sails for most of my builds. I have a couple furled sail videos I use if interested. I am still way behind you on my AV.  Still working on all the deck fittings. Like you discovered I wish I had put LEDs on the crane. Would add them but don’t know of a way to get current to them. 

[DanielD]

Good afternoon mates, it’s been some time since my last update. Progress on my AV has been slow as I’m learning how to make furled sails. I have completed the sails at the bow. Now on to the fore mast sails.

 

 

[clearway]

sublime😁

[Bill97]

Daniel I see you decided to add LEDs to this. How did you do it after the fact?  I should have read all the way through your build before I finished running all my wiring. I would like to add the two lights here on my deck lighting circuit but have no idea how to access the circuit without destroying something. 

[DanielD]

3 hours ago, Bill97 said:

Daniel I see you decided to add LEDs to this. How did you do it after the fact?  I should have read all the way through your build before I finished running all my wiring. I would like to add the two lights here on my deck lighting circuit but have no idea how to access the circuit without destroying something. 

Bill, yes, I added these lights after I did all the initial planing and wiring and after closing up the hull. My mistake for sure as I believe them to be very beneficial to the deck lighting. Oh well, it was an easy fix. I drilled the upright dowels out to accommodate the wires for the new LEDs. Then added a hole in the deck under the uprights. Still to this day I have not glued down my bridge building as it’s just stuck to the deck with 3 or 4 dowel pins, so I just fished a wire through the new holes up into the floor under the bridge. Made the connections to the bridge wires, pushed them back inside the hull, and connected the new LEDs. When the bridge lights come on, in my case along with the deck lights, so do the new LEDs in that structure. I hope this helps.

[Bill97]

Yes it does Daniel, thanks. Unfortunately I have glued down the bridge. Wonder if I could pry it loose without too much damage. My interior bridge lights are connected to my cabin light circuits with the diode.  Will need to study this to see if this is going to be possible. I also like your light on the crane. 

[DanielD]

35 minutes ago, Bill97 said:

Yes it does Daniel, thanks. Unfortunately I have glued down the bridge. Wonder if I could pry it loose without too much damage. My interior bridge lights are connected to my cabin light circuits with the diode.  Will need to study this to see if this is going to be possible. I also like your light on the crane. 

I have not had the nerve to glue any of the deck equipment down yet. I made everything set in custom hole placement with conical shaped dowels so the pieces fit snugly on the deck and don’t move. My plan is to eventually glue it all down (or not) incase I need to get under them for some reason.

[Bill97]

Daniel does that include all the little metal doo dads that go all over the deck. Some are big enough to drill a hole in the bottom with a metal drill bit. Some are too small or to flat. I have them all glued in place as well. Wish I had employed your idea. That is brilliant!  

[DanielD]

1 hour ago, Bill97 said:

Daniel does that include all the little metal doo dads that go all over the deck. Some are big enough to drill a hole in the bottom with a metal drill bit. Some are too small or to flat. I have them all glued in place as well. Wish I had employed your idea. That is brilliant!  

Bill, I have managed to add a wire or dowel to the bottom of most everything so that the parts stick into the deck. The flat pieces, if I could I soldered a pin to the bottom so that it would still fit into a hole. Some smaller things are glued in, but most everything can still be removed at this point.

[Bill97]

The soldering of the pin on the flat pieces is/was a fantastic idea I had not thought of but will surly use now. I could use your plan and tap into the wiring in the bridge for the two lights on the risers, that would be the closest, but if I do turning them on might require an interesting light display. To have the deck lights on as well as the two new lights on the risers will require one of the two port hole cabin switches to be on.  If one of the two porthole circuits is not turned on the two new lights on the risers would not come on if I tap into the bridge.  

[Bill97]

Daniel this was your reply when we were talking about the spots to illuminate the masts. 

 

Bill, there is nothing that says the resistor has to be next to the LED, meaning, the resistor can be inside the hull and a wire from one end of the resistor goes to the LED. In my setup, I ran a series scenario with the LEDs, meaning one resistor then the LEDs are run one after the other in series. This type of wiring does have a draw back, for the same reason Christmas lights are wired in parallel now days, if one bulb goes out, they all do. That aside, the resistor is inside the hull making for less hardware in the box.

 

I don’t like how big my light boxes needed to be in order to house a 5mm LED and a resistor. Do I understand that you put one resistor on the positive wire below the deck and then ran the wires to the boxes with no additional resistors?  Also did you use 3 or 5 mm LED’s?  If I wire it like this you say if one bulb goes out the other 3 or 4 will also go out?  If in the future a bulb would go out would it just be a matter of determining which one failed and replacing it?  
 

 

[DanielD]

Hi Bill, sometimes electronics can be fudged a little, resisters are not precise, voltage drops are not always consistent, etc. Below is a circuit that fudges a little but works great, with one side effect, you will have to turn up the voltage a little to get the brightness you desire. Not too much, and no where close to overload the resister. So, I placed a resister inside the hull on a positive lead, the other side of the resister goes a max of three LEDs while the negative lead goes to the negative side of the same LEDs. This circuit is called parallel, which means that if one LED goes out (unlikely) the others are still connected and work fine.

 

I used 3mm high intensity LEDs for this circuit, 3 LEDs for one resistor. This allowed me to make very small boxes to house the LED as each box only holds just the LED (no resistor).

 

Hope this helps.

Edited 12 hours ago by DanielD

[Bill97]

Yes Daniel this will help a lot. I noticed on your’s you have two wires coming through the deck for each mast. One on each side at the fore, main, and mizzen. That is how you are able to power 6 LEDs at each mast (3 each).  I only have one wire at each so I will be limited to a max of 3 LEDs at each mast. Wonder in this schematic if I could use 5mm LEDs instead of 3mm in order to get the max light possible?

 

Thanks so much again. 
 

Bill

Edited 3 hours ago by Bill97

[DanielD]

1 hour ago, Bill97 said:

Yes Daniel this will help a lot. I noticed on your’s you have two wires coming through the deck for each mast. One on each side at the fore, main, and mizzen. That is how you are able to power 6 LEDs at each mast (3 each).  I only have one wire at each so I will be limited to a max of 3 LEDs at each mast. Wonder in this schematic if I could use 5mm LEDs instead of 3mm in order to get the max light possible?

 

Thanks so much again. 
 

Bill

Yes, I planned my wiring layout with this in mind. There is another option, I just did not have the parts on hand. Currently you are using 1/4 watt resisters as they are very small and easy to hide. To run 4-6 LEDs on the same circuit off a single resister you can use 1/2 watt resistor of the same value. These resistors slightly larger but would still easily find inside the hull but are able to handle more current without over heating.