it begins. (DIY Halo-style vehicles - FLYER)

[Nostromo]

Just a problem originating from my own fluff.

The faction that uses the flyers never had tanks - and the flyers date back to the time they raided the planet with the intention to take control of the young colony. No need for tanks when the victim is not supposed to have weapons heavier than a hunting rifle.

But the raiders have light ground vehicles -> bullfrog / Tauros

They are by coincidence pretty similar to Elysians, so maybe I could use that doctrine for that sub-faction.

 

It would make very little sense if the Aircraft could carry the heavy vehicles of the until-recently-mortal-enemies.

When the flyer was designed, there were no other regiments. Sort of... 22nd century design from earth, but even while there were tanks used then, the flyer was not used on earth and explicitly designed for a single mission - planetary invasion of lightly armed forces from orbit (nothing that was required at that time). And since then (80 years prior to 40k present), the invaders could not build new flyers (lack of industrial capabilities).

 

Solution: cargo containers or bullfrog light attack vehicles.

So essentially a very aggressive chinock.

 

Hm... using a cockpit from another model sounds like the right direction, but is still far from easy.

The first challenge is to measure the internal dimensions- but that should be pretty easy since I can do that on the computer with the 3D model.

Finding a model with a cockpit that fits in is harder - as long as we talk about a plastic set.

But... it should not be that hard to find a paper model with a cockpit. Maybe a BSG Raptor. Should be easy enough to scale up or down to fit in the flyer (working title: condor).

[Nostromo]

It may look like i did almost nothing since the last update. Actually, it was mostly try&error on behalf of the cockpit.

As profane as it may look... the hardest part was to make the whole module fit in the already completed cockpit. Just punishment for getting carried away and not thinking ahead.

So, here is an intermediate stage of the cockpit. I wonder if the seat is large enough... For scale purpose with the pilots legs.

The whole section needs to be completed and painted before i put it in the hull from behind.

After scaling the Pelican down to a length of aproximately 30 cm, the cockpit is definitely too small for two pilots.

But the whole thing is still just big enough to serve as a valkyrie (for example) - the passenger compartment is about the same size as a rhinos rear compartment, so it should still be sufficient for 10 men.

i have completed the level-0 structure of the wings - just the right wing on the foto. Needs magnets...

And for reference, a screenshot from pepakura where i tinkered the parts together from the borrowed 3D STL-model

[Nostromo]

Interlude:

 

The corridor did not get shorter, no matter how often he walked it. The stains of dried blood that told of men that had died two weeks ago had again become fewer where the maintenance crew had wiped them away. At least 20 more yards of now almost clean corridor since he walked the corridor almost 4 hours ago. It had been a first relief when the blood had finally dried, reducing the breath taking stench of blood from overwhelming to merely disgusting.

And while more witnesses of dead soldiers of both sides had fallen victim to a division of mops, LF Major McKeon had fought a completely different kind of battle in a conference room.

For the second time in less than half a year, mortal enemies began to turn into allies due to necessity. First, when the Liberation Forces and the Heimatverteidigung that had fought each other for decades had almost been extinguished within hours by an assault of yellow-armoured giants. What was spared of the opposing forces had been pressed into military service to fight on battlefields far away from their homeworld. They had to bury animosities quickly - and even more, they had to learn to cooperate before the meat grinder would leave nothing that could coperate any more. Common and superior enemies served well to speed up the process and losses of human life and material decreased. The loss rate decreased much faster than the new masters hoped and expected - after all, HV and LF had only been taken along on the interstellar tour to serve as cannon fodder for more valuable imperial regiments.

 

Until two weeks ago, when all Utgardians of HF and LF struck and seized control of Mercury-54-R. Time pressed - on one side were the Utgardians that trained combat in an off-world environment. On the other side the imperial navy officers that would sooner or later realize how well trained the Utgardian neo barbarians really were and what they trained for was not city fight, but combat in the constricted room on a space ship.

 

Since then, Mercury-54-R drifted through space while Utgardians and imperial survivors negotiated the terms of coexistence on the ship.

And again, the obstacles that result from ideology needed to be overcome. The situation escalated a few times with some quite dire results. Dozens of stubborn imperial crew members had been thrown though airlocks, but the majority of the navy personnell that survived the initial mutiny joined the Utgardians. An agreement with two of the most remarkable and disturbing beings on the ship seemed to get into reach - one that was referred to as "navigator" and never left it's sealed hermitage and the inhuman "astropath" .

However, with the exception of a few low ranking lieutenants, the whole imperial officer corps either died from bullets or after being blown out of an airlock.

Even worse and an outright desaster was the unfaltering resistance of the mechanically enhanced engineering corps of the ship that fought the Utgardians with literally religius zeal. By now, McKeon had learned that those engineers had indeed ben part of a religious community that revered machines as divine entities.

Now, even while the ability to navigate with the help of the navigator and the astropath appeared to be realistic, maintenance and even operation of most of the ships systems would still be off-limit.

 

This would be a problem that could still lead to disaster. Supplies on the vessel would last for years - but that would be of little good without the ability to go somewhere with a ship that would fall apart over time.

The imperial personnell proved to be of no help with anything beyond pulling a lever or pushing a trigger. So all hope lay on the shoulders of utgardian engineers that had the herculean task to reverse engineer imperial technology.

 

If they would succeed, the next major problem needed to be solved: How to survive in the long turn in a galaxy where literally  everybody would hunt them down? A problem that was not exactly reduced by the fact that the ship bore enough weapons to destroy dozens of solar systems - but without the means to use those weapons. Mercury-54-R was meant to resupply battle ships and to support strike forces and not to fight itself.

 

In the meantime, in memoriam of the destroyed homeworld, Mercury-54-R was renamed to "Utgard", making all that lived there "Utgardians".

Edited November 4, 2019 by Nostromo

[Nostromo]

job, corona and what else...

finally almost visible progress on the pelican/condor (valkyrie/vendetta).

Alas, the progress is not really impressive - since it was almost all about try&error building the cockpit interior. This is the 4th take... and now i will leave it as it is and just paint it.

With my construction related restrictions i need to completely finish it before i can continue with the hull.

Well, what i also do at the moment is working on the second layer of the hull. In this stage, it is far too edgy and reminds of a F-117 which i intend to change with additional layers to round it and to add more details.

But... this is PURE Try&Error for each and any part.

Draw. Cut out. Position, measure... Change.

Repeat.

But at least, when the second layer is complete, i can scan the parts and recycle the shapes for the third layer.

This will definitely remain the only flyer.

Just too large. But it is not even really larger than a valkyrie... and will have removable (and pivotable... the Pelican from Halo is a VTOL after all) wings.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your Pelican looks promising.

[duz_]

Long time no post but glad to see progress on the flyer looks great! When does it get painted :D

[Nostromo]

Long time no post but glad to see progress on the flyer looks great! When does it get painted

Yes, that took extremely long. But i also let myself get distracted by building on another long term (terrain) project.

Every time i crash against an extremely annoying task (that requires a completely new approach, research, new materials or whatever), the temptation to switch to another one of the interrupted projects gets overwhelming.

 

judging from how much time passed between a similar stage in building the tanks and painting.... i say... september 2021

 

 

 

Now that sounds like a massive number of parallel projects - but it is not THAT bad.

• Pelican
• Bullfrog light armored vehicle (missing main weapon and paintjob)
• next tank chassis (cutting out parts, very early)
• Infantry painting (still testing color schemes for the first sub faction)
• Terrain piece (mid of building, mix of techniques).

so... enough to switch when frustration surpasses fun, but not too much so i do not get totally lost.

And even while it is not popular here, every few months i write another couple of paragraphs for the fluff.

[Nostromo]

A little progress on the pelican.

This stage is extremely work-intensive.

The level-0 structure is getting a second layer to round and even the whole structure and a third layer to add details.

Some of those details can already be seen next to the cockpit window - this gives an impression how the whole thing will eventually look like.

But damn, boys... that was so much drawing and try&error since the last photos...

And much more to come.

But i like the result

[Nostromo]

More details on the surface. Rear section still only loosely placed - and this time also with the rear thrusters.

It looks larger eac time i put it together for a photo...

[GreenScorpion]

Looking really nice, you are taking DIY far with such amazing results :)
I know the effort is high, but you can certainly be proud of what you are achieving already, as those details truly look amazing.

[Raziel-TX]

Holy smokes this is awesome.  Great job!

[Nostromo]

"That is not dead which can eternal lie"

It feels like project necromancy - but actually the intermediate progress was just nothing worth showing.

...And to be honest, there were weeks of inactivity. Partly due to day-job-workload, partly due to motivation.

Motivation... those who tracked this project might remember that there is a little challenge related to the cockpit interior which needed to be completed before i could really go on with the hull.

The frustrating part here was that the interior needs to be painted - but that not much of it would be actually visible/recognisable from the outside. So it felt like a waste of time on a really sloppy and ugly paintjob.

But it turned out to be just enough.

With the cockpit glued in, i could finally assemble the Level-0 structure.

And i tell you... that turned out to be a real mess.

Have you ever tried to design a paper model? The shape is one thing - planing where to glue the parts together and to aniticipate where gluing gets really difficult is something different. In short... the fail was epic.

But since the plan is to cover the whole thing in at least 1, in some places up to 3 additional layers, the wide gaps can be hidden.

If i thought of myself as a real papercrafter, i could only hide, run, change my name and never return.

But i went on and added layers.

By now, 3/4 are covered with layer 1, 1/3 has layer 2 and 1/5 even has layer 3.

The last photo was a mockup with all parts loosely positioned.

This is no mockup any more...

[duz_]

Glad to see you back to it though! Still looking good :tu:

[GreenScorpion]

It is not the layers you need to put in that define the model, it is the look in the end ;)

[Nostromo]

Sometimes you think you have completed a phase - and then you realize that you are plain stupid. Later more on that...

I am currently working on the rear thrusters. Or... the layers 2, 3 and 4

Here you see one of the thrusters with applied layer one, a WIP of the layer 2 parts (right) and the almost completed layer 3 parts (below)

Much later, one thruster is almost completed with layer 3 completed on the left and the second thruster still with layer 1

looks nice enough.

And then i realized that this fancy detailled side is... the inside. Facing the hull *triplefacepalm*

Let's see what i can do with the outside. I would rather not build the whole things again.

They are still missing the jet nozzles. each 1-2 downwards and 1-2 backwards

1-2 because i realized that the first ones i did earlier are way too large. Even after downsizing.

With a casing around the downward nozzles i think i have space for once again downsized nozzles. On the rear i should be able to place 2 small ones.

To give you an impression on what size i am talking about:

upper row, left: the original (largest) nozzles.

next is the medium size and below that an almost done nozzle of the smalles size. Of those i will need 6 for the rear thrusters and maybe 4 more for the front thrusters (an the wings)

Each thruster consists of the 7 parts on the right.

... and i thought the wheels on the tanks were annoyingly tiny...

[Nostromo]

Rear thruster modules done, onwards to enhancing the front thruster modules.

Add magnets and call it a day.

I am almost satisfied with how they turned out - i got inconsequent here with design. The trouble is the rear section that now loos more "Tau" or "Eldar" than "human"

But i will remember that pattern when one day i turn to Eldar tanks.

[Nostromo]

Rear thrusters done - time for some progress on the front thruster/wing modules:

This time:

hinted-at weapons on the front thruster/wing modules

Still WIP and more greeblies to add.

[Nostromo]

Hull almost 40% done, but ready for a first few action shots.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Impressive work.

[GreenScorpion]

Looking good :)
Just out of curiosity, how big is it at the moment?

[Nostromo]

Looking good :)

Just out of curiosity, how big is it at the moment?

The wingspan is 27 cm, length is 32 cm.

 

So this Pelican is about half the size it would be if built in correct scale.

How big is a valkyrie model? I thought quite similar.

 

But a pelican is much more massive.

[Nostromo]

Again a few of those parts that take hours... and hours.... and even more hours.

Just that i realized that i did not take a photo yet of the really complicated part - well, next time. Spoiler: The rear hatch section.

I also do not have a "before"-photo... too late.

So i only can show everything else.

Fist, a WIP of surface details on the front-side.

The camera just does not show mercy - inaccuracies of half a mm look gigantic...

And another WIP of the not yet applied (cut out) parts for the rear-side and the lower rear...wings (?)

[duz_]

Oh wow impressive! I don't think I'd have the patience at all to do that!

[Nostromo]

The parts cut-out parts from the last photo are where they belong.

And, missing on the previous photos, the rear hatch.

A few more attempts, and i will have found the optimum approach for vents.

That almost-random-poligonal pattern looks more and more odd.

[GreenScorpion]

You are making good progress :)
I am certain you can write a book by now on how things work best or worse for this kind of model building. It certainly is inspirational work that you are doing here.

Keep up the good work :)