Thunderhawk WIP

This is my WIP Thunderhawk. I got it off ebay,(its kind of a rescue). Small backstory-- I had one of the original metal Thunderhawks from GW mailorder. I new a guy who owned a hobby store where we played and he had four of them. I bought one in trade and then after a decade sold it on ebay. I then used the funds to buy this one. I like this one because its bigger, constructed better, and looks leaner than the older one. It just has far more spacemarine feel to it.

THe kid that had it before me didn't get very far with it. But he did manage to get glue in a few hard to fix places and glue things in the wrong spots. At anyrate, I had reservations about putting this thing together for so long because it is soooo big! I have no where to put it... nowhere to store it... and no way to carry it to and from...

But I have been off work for some time now and had a completely free weekend. What you see in the pics is the result. I went crazy with magnets, and I'm not sure this can legally fly on an airliner anymore. I came across a pack of super N50 disc magnets and decided to use them to put the wings on the body. THEY STOW!!! Then I just kept going. The attack wings, the canards, the nose weapons, even the tail comes off and stows. I even put magnets in the pilot seats so I could paint them. Then I got the cool idea to put a plasma storm battery on the magnetic nose mounts, and then, why not one on each side!!!!

I have to stop at some point and start painting this thing. If any one has any suggestions for painting black highlights on a black ship. I'm all ears. I can't decide if I want to highlight with blue/grays or straight shades of grey. All of my stuff is pre-heresy DarkAngels black. When we started playing, it was with rogue trader and you all remember the color pic of the legion spacemarines. THe Dark Angels were black and had the red stripe down the Mk. 6 helm. I thought that looked awesome and ran with it. And I've never seen a reason to change. GW's rewritting of the fluff over the years has pissed me off, but thats a rant for someother time. But also on that note, I really like the additions to their histories over the years. I'm a big fan of Chapter Commanders Astelan's account of what happened to Caliban to Chaplain Boreas and how it has affected the first and second companies agendas in the novels.