Worked on my antenna today

Today I tried to extend the range of the Vex antenna. Its really short like 12 inches long and means when I use the Vex transmitter I have to be atleast 12 feet away. Here is how I had it wired up.

The vex is the yellow box with the short antenna I had wrapped around the frame.

So next I soldered on about 3 foot of 22 gauge wire onto the Vex antenna. Then I put that antenna into a clear tube and zip tied it around in the circle as high up as possible in the droid. Doing a before and after test I gained about 5-12 extra feet of distance. But to safely operate him I still need to be around 15-20 feet away from the droid. Oh well I gained 5 something feet. I'll take it until I can replace this Vex system later on.

Painting My Tinted Dome

I finally got around to painting my tinted dome. I got burnt out on part building for a while and now getting back in action. Here's how I got this done. I believe this entire droid is about 9 months old and most of it is aluminum. I just love a black R2. I noticed at the last Con about 1 in 10 people liked this over the other droids. I'd hear things like "Wow! a black R2". You don't see this kind of droid often and its pretty rare.

Now that my HPs are here its time to get to work on all of my domes. I need to trace the panels from the styrene dome onto the tinted dome so I know exactly where the panels are.

First I put the styrene dome over the tinted dome so I know where to put the masking tape. I'm going to paint the inside of the dome so its easy to wipe off the dome. This is quite time consuming as I used blue tape and pin strippng tape from an automotive shop.

I'm doing this in sections so I taped the inside and decided to paint the pie panels in the next stage.

All of the sections not masked are going to be painted black. I used no primer just straight black paint, with 3 light layers. I forgot to use magnets to some areas to hold it very tight to the dome.

This black trash can is turned out pretty cool! I need to get her a skirt soon. There are a few areas of the paint in the dome that needs to be removed, overspray. I don't know if that's possible using a paint thinner might wreck it. I'm going to wait for the paint to cure another week until I do some tests to improve it.

After I touch up the paint I have the PSI and logics to install. I also have a clear radar eye to replace this eye and clear Holoprojectors coming in the near future. Then I have the electronic brains to ponder over how to do that. I also need to install the JEDI control system and get this droid running around.