Thanks guys!
I did some more work today, and I will say this, this sucker almost defeated me today! Everything that can go wrong, practically did. My control box got completely screwed up, I made a mistake with my design and I split a chunk of wood off, but I worked around it.
The first thing I did was worked on the audio. I was looking for something inexpensive and easy to work with, so I got these audio discs from Build-A-Bear (the same one I used on my Jawa), they're about $8 each. But this time I messed around with it. I removed the push button and soldered a momentary on/off button from Radio Shack. It actually works pretty good, you'll see later in the video.
I bought 3, 2 for separate blaster sounds and 1 for an engine sound. The only thing that sucks is you only get about 10 seconds, so the engine sound was cut short. The blaster ones are perfect.
Here's the button that I mounted to a plug, these go on top of the piloting sticks.
I mounted the speakers to the inside of the control column. I also used schedule 40 PVC for the handles.
Here's a view with the column nearly complete.
Here's the control panel lit up. I managed to get a broken oil gauge from the local auto parts store and back lit it with a white LED. I also added 2 lighted switches, one controls the red LEDs and the other the blue. I added another momentary on/off switch, this one controls the engine sound. The two switches below the yellow lights control the yellow lights and oil gauge and the other controls some red LEDs on the side of the bed.
Here's a video of how everything works. All the LEDs are powered by a 9V battery, the sound is controlled separately by the internal batteries of each disc. The pilot control handles move forward and back.
Star Wars Desert Skiff Bed.MPG - YouTube
I think tomorrow I wil start painting, it's pretty much ready for paint, save a few minor touch-ups and detail work.
My son and daughter loved this, they played with those switches for half the day. My son kept pretending he was taking off and landing, it was priceless and makes this all worth while.