Engine Lighting and sound.

Wednesday, 17Aug2022

After constant tweaking and fault-finding to find every tiny rattle and tap, I got all of the turbines, drive shafts and bearings running smoothly. It was time to add the lighting and sound effects.

I’ve spent some considerable time building a big set of studio speakers into the nacelles, along with a very large sub-woofer mounted facing forward, directly behind the pilot seat on the firewall. I have two amplifiers and an 80-amp power supply, running them all. My good friend James Mouat, (Of my Iron Man suit electronics fame) has been hard at work mixing sound and tweaking code. The result is a magnificently realistic sounding engine startup, to full idle. The sound is clean, filled with multi-layered windings, base and resonance.

Most impressive.

LED strip lighting has been added to each thruster exhaust, with power cables now routed through to the maintenance crawlspace, accessible through a manhole in the belly of the fuselage, behind the cockpit.

James is now in the process of building a small PCB with Arduino and Bluetooth connection, for control of the turbine motor, lights and sound. Next visit, we will wire it all in and start the process of tidying up and securing all the cabling.