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Project Notes

#582 Schnellboot

Building the Bronco NB5004 1/350 German S-100 Class Schnellboot with a dockside diorama with LED effects.

Build

Here’s a quick demo..

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Notes

I picked up the Bronco NB5004 1/350 German S-100 Class Schnellboot from an aliexpress seller as pretty much a cheap impulse buy.

I turned out to be a lovely kit - even at 1:350, it is quite detailed, with a nice set of photoetch included.

The Kit

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Kit Build

The basic build is quite straight-forward, with the only fiddly bit being the photo-etch.

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Paint Scheme

Part Recommended Paint Used
propeller Tamiya X-12 Vallejo 70.878 old gold
deck surface Dark grey FS26187 Vallejo 70.870 Medium Sea Grey
deck surface (wood) Gunze H-11 Humbrol 110
upper hull Light Grey FS16515 Vallejo 70.990 Light Grey
lower hull Tamiya XF-9 Vallejo 70.985 Hull Red

Diorama Base

The diorama base is imaginary dock scene. I was mainly interested in trying the idea of a split waterline display. It came together in a fairly ad-hoc manner, and I suspect my scale might be a bit off!

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The Electronics

Some simple USB-powered electronics provide LED effects:

  • two white LEDs for the lamp posts on the dock
  • an LM324 running two triangle-wave oscillators
    • the oscillators use the same components, but are not phase-locked, so they will drift over time (adding variety to the display)
  • oscillators drive green and blue “under water” LEDs

Breadboard

Schematic

Testing the oscillators on a breadboard:

Breadboard Build

The final build uses a USB adapter module and the oscillator circuits are constructed “dead bug” style on the LM324 chip

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Credits and References

About LEAP#582 scale modelsCraftLEDOscillators
Project Source on GitHub Project Gallery Return to the LEAP Catalog

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

LEAP is just my personal collection of projects. Two main themes have emerged in recent years, sometimes combined:

  • electronics - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting
  • scale modelling - I caught the bug after deciding to build a Harrier during covid to demonstrate an electronic jet engine simulation. Let the fun begin..
To be honest, I haven't quite figured out if these two interests belong in the same GitHub repo or not. But for now - they are all here!

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics and scale modelling podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know (or send a PR!). See the individual projects for credits where due.