Starship Modeler - Madman Lighting's Space Battleship Lighting Kit Preview

By John Beaulieu - images & text © 2012

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Scale: N/A - fits 1/700 and larger Yamato hulls.

Parts: Delux-24 Circuit card with pushbutton, a length of fiber optics, a string of four white LEDs, an LED bundle for the main and sub engines and an LED bundle for the Wave Montion gun.

Instructions: Instructional CD/ Catalogue. Further instructions are available on Madman Lighting's website

MSRP: $64.95 USD (~$64.11 CAN/ € 51.66 EUR) available from Starship Modeler

Overall Rating: 9 An easy to use kit that is small enough to fit in smaller Starblazer kits, and gives you some great light effects!

I've never had much exposure to Starblazers. I saw the kits for sale but I never gave the series much thought.

[Yamato Lighting kit]

^ Control board

Image: Engine light bundles

Image: Wave motion gun bundle

Image: Bright whites

Image: Engine bundle, lit

Image: Wave motion gun, building

Image: Full power

Video: See it in action on YouTube

All that changed after seeing the 2010 Space Battleship Yamato movie. No sooner were the credits rolling that I went out and ordered the new 1/500 release of the ship. It's a beautiful kit, but it begs to be lit up!

While I can slap together a basic lighting system with ease, there are some things that are just beyond my skill level, namely creating the wave motion gun effect. Thankfully, Madman Lighting has put together a complete lighting rig for the Yamato.

What You Get

The kit comes with Madman's Delux-24 board (packaged in an anti-static bag), a length of fiber optics for supplemental lighting, a string of four white LEDs, a two stage rig for the 'wave motion gun', a "fire" pushbutton to activate the effect and two orange/red LED pairs to simulate the pulsing engines. One pair is connected to a fiber optic bundle to light the sub engines, and the other is for the main engine. Rounding out the package is an instructional CD/ catalogue.

In Action

No soldering experience is needed, but you will need a wire-wrapping tool (or similar). After perusing the instructions and learning which pins on the Delux-24 were positive and negative, I put power to the system to see what I got. The four white LEDs glow with a steady intensity and the engine lights have a slight pulsing effect. The real show stealer is the wave motion gun! The way Madman designed this is quite ingenious; to keep the size of the rig to a minimum, the buildup stage is made up of a ring of fiber optic strands around the fire LED. When you push the fire button, there is an eight second "buildup" stage followed by an 18 second "firing" stage.

Conclusions

The real beauty of this kit is that it's small enough that you can fit in the hull of your kit and just have the power and push button leads running to your base. It will probably even fit in the 1/700 kit (it fits in the 1/700 WWII Yamato hull). This is a must have for any Space Battleship Yamato fan!

Many thanks to John's wallet for providing the review samples. Manufacturers and retailers, interested in getting your wares reviewed and publicized on a site averaging 6000+ readers a day? Contact us!