The Voyage Home- Star Trek Museum in Riverside installed a new interactive bridge console for people to enjoy. Photo by Sam McIntosh.

A cacophony of sound will be emanating from the Voyage Home – Star Trek Museum in Riverside this weekend.

Whether you’re a fan of Star Trek or just love pressing a lot of buttons, the new bridge console can be fascinating, as museum board member Mike Meinders describes, “We have adults come in here, and I had a whole family in here the other day and it was going like crazy. I mean they were hitting every button, every light they could make work, and you could hear the little kids going, ‘It’s my turn!’ And they were sharing so that’s good, I didn’t want to hear any fights on it.”

Meinders built this new console, a replica from the USS Enterprise bridge of the original Star Trek television series. Meinders is an electrician, but building this console proved to be a challenge in electronics for him, “The wiring on that side looks like a bowl of spaghetti exploded, and the O.C.D. on this side kicked in so everything is straight angles and neat, tidy.” It was a learning process for Meinders as 15 pistol and raygun sounds were installed in the board and 10 of them worked.

This console is replacing a former model that was over three decades old. Meinders says he’s proud of how the new bridge turned out, but he plans to make some further improvements after this weekend’s Trekfest. The KCII Big Red Radio will be broadcasting live from Trekfest this Saturday as part of the KCII Summer Town Tour.