A trip to the model shop can be dangerous! The purpose of the visit was to buy a younger member of the household a model and to encourage said member to put the model together. Of course the kid in me led to this kit coming home as well.

This is a photo of one of those Japanese miniatures, closer to N scale than HO, and certainly not big enough to hang on a 4mm layout. This SHADO Mobile was the inspiration for the SHADO Stryker. The Mobile units hunt those organ snatching aliens when they actually manage to make it to earth.

The aircraft portion of Skydiver! I had a tin of paint in this color so it seemed natural to paint the Stryker in something resembling this scheme.

Electrics are being added to the model. I used double sided sticky tape to hold these dual encapsulated LEDs in place while the leads and a suitable resistor were soldered together.

The each LED is a dual white unit with a forward voltage of five volts. A pair of these LEDs in series, with a 49 ohm resistor, and 12 volts, could light your way down a country path at night. These particular LEDs measure 2mm X 2mm X 10mm and are very useful items in locomotives as well. They are designed for lighting cell phone displays…

I use epoxy for all those critical joints, nothing beats it for strength, especially for dissimilar non-porous materials…

An electrical continuity check…

This vehicle just looks TOUGH. Some of the obvious Stryker detail parts have been left off, Alps printed SHADO decals have been added, with some other photo etched bits for finer detail. A bit of weathering also helps make this vehicle look like it means business.

The shed master had hired a smaller alien to help keep the train spotters out, now the damn things are breeding! That’s the aliens breeding, not the train spotters. Not to worry, SHADO is on the scene, that Alien is history…