Puzzlebrains

Apolgies if anyone feels this is inappropriate to mention here.While any donations *would* be appreciated, I am not posting to beg for money but I am feeling a bit drained at the moment and think it would be nice to share a positive moment for a change:

I am going to be taking part in the Screwball Rally 2019, which is a 5 day event travelling around northern Europe with a crowd of silly people in fancy dress, having bought a vehicle for under £500 and transforming the vehicle with fancy dress too.

Our team has a Star Trek theme, with a Starfleet crew consisting of consisting of Captain Berk, Doctor “Boner” McCoy, Engineering Office Smutty and Science Officer Shpock. As you can see from the photos, we have been transforming the original Berlingo into a kind of Trek-authentic “spaceship” – at least as near as we can get while keeping within budget and staying road-legal.

We’ve also got an old tablet, which (as a non-Trekkie) I’ve been informed how it should roughly look as I program it into an LCARS PADD device. I’ll be doing lots more animations and interface building for it as we progress. Largely it will be for playing soundbites through the external speakers. Getting hold of decent quality royalty-free sound clips is proving a little tricky but we’ve got some more to build in, as well as other general theme designs (red/blue alert levels and the like). As the techie, I have been designated Science Officer, so I am Shpock. Well that's logical.

The Screwball Rally link is: https://www.screwballrally.co.uk/

The Fundraising link is: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundra ... Id=1030664

More work in the transformation of the Berlingo into a space ship. The roofbox is becoming a shuttle, with its own engine nacelles. This will be enhanced and there will be lights (camera! action!) both inside and out as well as further (more major) modifications.

As Technical Office Schpock, I got some "Vulcan" ears, sold as such. Only I'm guessing they were some leftover "pixie" ears for 8 year olds, because I can't cram them on. Never mind, I hope to get some more that fit from a fancy dress shop somewhere.

I have made a start in programming the old tablet into an "LCARS PADD" - I am told it's pretty faithful to the theme but I am just copying what I have been shown as a general guide. There's a lot more to do, but it will be able to play lots of sound clips through external speakers to help with the theme, and hopefully encourage donations.

Ow!

Haha sounds brilliant. I do hope you will have your dilithium crystals ready to go so that you can make the most of the warp factor as you go round Europe in your Berlingo? You definitely need to address the ear situation, though...

A Berlingo with a roofbox with a couple of pipes stuck on isn't much of a spaceship, is it? No, well we were always going to be going bigger. Thats just the "shuttle". For the main Enterprise, We have a plastic patio table for a saucer section, and two large pipes for the main engines. Fitted on nicely, they're also wired up so we have flashy leading lights at the front ends, and the rear ends are actually brake lights. It's hard to get royalty-free sound files of decent quality but we have some so far and they can now play from the LCARS PADD to the external speakers. That should be either fun enough or annoying enough to get some more donations. Next stage is more lights and wiring, tidying up those wires, cleaning up and decorating. Then space trials, and we're off!

Are we going to be ready to head out to the final frontier on our 5 day mission? Well hopefully. Everything is all going well at the moment, we've got more lighting with interior and exterior all wired up. First space trials have been great, we took her to Herne Bay car show event as a fundraising trip, and she performed really well. Notwithstanding, Berk has ordered another mechanical review and all seems good, Smutty reports "the engines really CAN take it" and the cooling system has been drained, refilled and bled and tested.

A real launch into the cold, void of darkness

Wow, a lot of hard work has gone into that! Looks great!

Very impressive - Have a great time!!

So, what we need to know is... did the Star Ship Berlingo make it round the route? How did it go? I see you raised a very impressive total for charity, well done!

Thanks for posting this Bunnylump. The original posts were while I was away with very limited internet access so I am grateful to catch up on it.