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Aliens Dropship and APC


Kallisti

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Ahh indeed they are!

Oh well never mind I've already scratch built them...

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You can also see the pylons have been added on this one and are undergoing insertion (ooo makes you eyes water!)

Thanks Smiffy

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This is looking more and more impressive. The bay interior looks great!

I dunno if this would help for the pilots but I've been able to get around nasty fogged Klear on my train tracks by misting it with IPA. Fog went and didn't return. I know flat base isn't the same, but maybe worth a try before stripping it all? The other thing that *might* work would be another dark wash, since it should suck into the matte areas and stick there.

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Been a good day today, my second and last holiday for now from work, back to the grind tomorrow. Been fantastic bit of weather for it as well. out in the garden yesterday and today was extra good as I finally got round to driving 6 miles down the road to visit the REME Museum in Arborfield Barracks. The vehicle hall was superb with a lovely Scammell, CrARRV, Samson, Stalwart the works. Got loads of photos for future reference whn I build my Samson and CrAARV :)

Anyway back to Aliens... The missile pods have come together finally all ready to take the missiles!

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I've tried taking pics without the flash as it bounces back to fiercely from the white plastic card.

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Quite a bit of scratch building there... I think that when this is complete I will build myself a nice simple Spitfire OOB as a break from flipping plastic card!!! :)

The missiles themselves have received several coats of white primer spray and I've test fitted some cocktail sticks into the ports to see how things fit. It must be said, there is more space in there than I'd like, however it is acceptable - at least considering what I've put myself through!!!

I really need to start putting together some of these sub-assemblies in the near future! I spend all the time flitting form one little bit to the next its actually hard to see overall progress even though a lot of time has been spent so far. I'm guessing (and hoping) that it will all fall into place as time goes on and the sub-assembiles become less sub and more erm... not sure how to finish that sentence without skating into double-entedre territory!

Next: The APC bay gets attached to the main body! OMG!!!

Favourite line from Bishop:

I may be synthetic but I'm not stupid!

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Quite a bit of scratch building there... I think that when this is complete I will build myself a nice simple Spitfire OOB as a break from flipping plastic card!!! :)

I know exactly what you mean!!!. I'm OOB for the rest of the year!!

Those missile bays really are the dogs dangly bits - superb.

D

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So after my comment yesterday I thought it was time to start putting things together - gulp! Does anyone else feel some sense of trepidation? You spend ages building the little bits and piece almost as if you are putting off the actual main assembly just in case you make a mistake? I found the same thing with my Challenger Diorama last year. I spent so long faffing about with little details that I lost sight of the main build for a while.

Anyway after a test fit of the APC bay into the main body I realised there was a Grand Canyon-like gap around the joint, so I slipped some shims of plastic card aroudnt he outside of the bay

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Then when that was dry, this evening I did the unthinkable - I GLUED THE BAY IN!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!!!! The WORLD WILL END!!!

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Well maybe not... Bit of filler around the edges some of which is going to be a bit of a bugger to sand back but it was necessary.

So I'm on a roll now and then look what I did!!!!

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Yes the cockpit seems to have got itself assembled as well! I'm rather chuffed with that, it looks appropriately busy and crowded. Finally tonight the missile pds ahve gone into the otehr room to get primed up ready for their Olive Drab. They will get their missiles AFTER they've been fully painted. Also started on the engine intakes as well. Seems weird to start building new bits having spent so much time on just three main areas so far lol!

As an aside, I thought I'd share my new musical purchase which has been keeping me company over the last few days...Transatlantic Whirld Tour 2010 No its not an Amazon shill! This is a prog rock "supergroup" who produce an album every few years and in this live triple CD set they play ONLY 6 tracks! Three of around 30 minutes and one of 80 minutes!!! It struck me that the old school prog bands from the 70s must be GREEN with envy that a modern band can produce a single track of 80 minutes when they were forced to split 4 sub 20 minute tracks across 4 sides of a double album - although I've never liked Tales from the Topographic Oceans (thats from Yes) or in The case of Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick they had to split the one 40 minute track over two sides. Funnily enough Thick as a Brick is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week! Damn I feel old!

Anyway, enough of my blatherings I'm sure you're not really interested ;)

Oh finally, someone sent me this link to Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Pn-Gxt9H0 to a 3hour long "Making of Aliens"!!! Never seen it before and so far only got 2 hours into it. Might take in a bit more before going to bed :)

Edited by Kallisti
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and the fun continues...

APC bay now fitted, gaps filled and sanded and looking pretty good! Some of the major pieces for the main body now attached so I thought a bit of a test fit was in order:

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The missile pods are only pushed into place on the brass rods I added, but they've been primed and ready for colour and then missiles! Under the front "wings" I've added more "Metal Sheeting" plasticard to complete the area where the forward missile racks will be. as you can see in this unfortunately blurry picture:

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and finally for now, the larger missiles have been painted up:

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There will be a bit of a hiatus over the weekend as I'll be in Cosford. I'll have the Starfury and Firefly with me on the IPMS Farnborough stand, come and say hello!

Edited by Kallisti
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Saw one of these complete with APC at the Cosford show, looked really nice

Yes I spent some time talking with the guy who owned it and photographing it. It was actually the die cast KIT version, ie it was die cast but in kit form, so it had folding missile pods and other working features. Got some very useful photos of the rear landing leg which is very poorly represented in my kit but was able to see how to improve it. It was very nice and VERY heavy as well haha The APC was neat as well and had movinggun turrets which was rather cool. Funnily enough my resin APC felt heavier than the die cast one!

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So after a fun day at Cosford and some very useful extra research material, we get back to work. First thigns first, the Cosford model showed me some extra detail on the rear landing leg:

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which shows two extra oleo pistons at the front of the leg and on the landing pad itself, connected to the rear foot "flap". You can see here the diagram from the instructions showing a very poorly detailed leg and struts

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So some drilling, scribing and scratch building produces this set of ocmponents:

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which consisit of the landing foot with some extra lumps built up to match the other model, "Y" shaped strut with some scribing done to give it more texture, a torsion beam which has had its middle drilled out, but sadly is shown on the Cosford model to be a straight strut with some girder detail. Next is the outer and inner tubes of the piston for the foot. I'll be back making the forward oleo piston tomorrow.

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Some good progress there. Love the rocket pods. B)

With all this Aliens goodness going on, I must admit, I dug out the Halcyon Sulaco from the deepest depths of the stash the other day. I really shouldn't start yet another kit though, should I? :wicked:

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ONLY if you post a Work in Progress thread!!!

Gowan, you know you want to :)

Yesterday the postman brought me my 1:35 APC kit, mmm that has promise for the future :D Someone on ebay was selling the 1:35 figures that were done for it - they wanted £550 for the set. My credit card looked awfully tempting at that point but fortunately sanity prevailed!

I've been building since the weekend but haven't got round to posting yet. I'll make a progress update later or tomorrow.

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ONLY if you post a Work in Progress thread!!!

Gowan, you know you want to :)

Yesterday the postman brought me my 1:35 APC kit, mmm that has promise for the future :D Someone on ebay was selling the 1:35 figures that were done for it - they wanted £550 for the set. My credit card looked awfully tempting at that point but fortunately sanity prevailed!

The AEF ones? I was watching a couple of those myself. :D I've got a few of the Marines, as well as some of the Alien warrior figures, already. I got them back when they were originally released and plan to do a little dio with the APC inside the nest. :mg:

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Well as promised here is today's update. First lets pick up from the previous update where I was working on the rear leg. This is the foot with the new oleo-like piston holding up the back of the foot:

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Then when the other components are added it starts to really take shape:

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There is still one more piston to add at the front of the "Y" frame, but that will have to wait until the leg is attached to the plate that fixes it to the main body. You can see the plastic card bracket to the left of the leg. This photo also shows off the reshaped strut.

So that done, I started looking at the front legs. The first thing I realised is that the undercarriage doors are missing. You can see them here

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and here

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So needless to say I built them from plastic card, using the inserts that the undercarriage lets slot into as the patterns

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The inserts slot into holes underneth the nose and so I cut a narrow slot at the front that the new doors will fit into

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The front legs built up pretty strightforward for once, so no detailing required there. Since there are no wheels, there aren't even any brake lines to add! So this leaves us with several interesting subcomponents now built...

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so that means the time has come to attach the cockpit assembly and the forward missile pylons

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As you can see the cockpit canopy and headlight transparencies have been attached. The fit of the cockpit to the body was pretty rope, a bit of filler and some milliput sorted that out

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This was a truly shocking gap!

So things have progressed quite a long way! I'm now waiting for some 8mm acrylic rod to arrive so that I can look at where I will be mounting the dropship. I think I know where I'll put the rod - there is a large gap behind the APC bay and forward of the rear leg, so this would be an ideal place to drill a hole to take a supporting rod. I bought some 5mm acrylic rods but they are too flexible, so I looked at the largest drill I have and that is 8mm so thats what I've gone for this time!

I'll have to start work on the base soon!

What do you expect us to use man, harsh language?

Edited by Kallisti
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Last update for a few days as I have to go away due to family circumstances.

Engine intakes have been assembled and the ramp has had its retraction mechanism attached.

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Looking further forward to mounting the dropship on the diorama base I realised I need to add a counterweight as the rod that will support the dropship will enter the main body behind the APC bay and in front of the rear landing leg. This point is quite a distance behind the current centre of gravity, so the counterweight is needed to fix that. So I used some of the lead shot I bought a few weeks ago for the Hawker Hunter model

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Then attention moved to the base itself. Since my idea is to capture the landing and dust off moment, I'mm have a piece of the landing pad and a bit of the landscape. As usual, my supply of old cheap picture frames comes in handy and along with the trusty claycrete, balsa wood formers for the rocks, some plastic strip for the landing pad foundation and we have this

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On top of the landing pad foundation, I'll use some of my old reliable metal mesh from the Meccano spares box:

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So now its just a matter of waiting for the claycrete to dry, which is likely to take several days now. That leave time for the acrylic rod and brass tube to arrive that will be used to create the stand. I forgot to order these before. I'm using 8mm clear acrylic rod and inside the dropship I'll have a length of 9mm brass tube for it to slot into. This will be sealed inside the body using araldite to give it a good strong support since the dropship does weight a not inconsequential amount!

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So after a weekend spent driving up to Scotland and back, it was great to be able to sit down at the workbench again and keep things ticking over.

First off, I sadly appear to have lost the very tiny part 88 which is supposed to represent the multi-barrel end of big gun in the nose of the dropship. THe person who I bought this kit of very kindly included a note explaining where to find this part as it is probably the smallest part in the kit. That was very useful of him but then it appears I must have removed it from the sprue at some point in the last month and a bit and subsequently lost it. Sigh...

So I'll have to scratch build a replacement!!!

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It wasn't very difficult - its just a small ring cut from a scrap piece of 4mm plastic tube I've used in numerous other places on the model, with some filler in the hole and when it was partly dry I pushed a needle in 6 times to make holes for the barrels! You can also see in that photo that the front landing gear has been attached, but the doors haven't yet. I'm going to leave those off until its painted.

Next, the rear landing leg is finally assembled with the extra oleo added at the "front of the main strut

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and finally in this update, the large fins have been added to the rear. I took the opportunity to reshape the leading edges to give them a more aerodynamic profile as the original mouldings were just rectangular slabs. You can see them in this test fit of all the components:

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I'm now a bit stuck until the 8mm acrylic rod and 9mm brass tube arrive to fix the mounting of the dropship to the base. I can't complete assembly as I need access to the internals to fit the pieces, so I can't start painting yet. I've still got some more work to do on the base however, but I'll need to take it outside to spray it properly and sadly I lost the whole Easter weekend :(

Burke: This is a multi-million dollar installation. He can't make that kind of decision. He's just a grunt!

Burke: [to Hicks] Uh, no offense.

Hicks: None taken.

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The base and dropship are looking really good.

A quick question: are you using PVA to fix the lead in place? If so there have been quite a few reports from the model railway folks that you can get an adverse reaction where the mix swells some time after assembly. I've not had this happen myself but there's quite a lot of discussion about it. It seems to be mainly in metal-bodied locos and happens to certain people, so it might be a brand of glue thing.

More in this thread.

HTH,

Will

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Thats interesting, although they seem to be talking about "Liguid Lead" a lot so don't know what that is. In theory there is space for this to expand into, its not in a totally sealed space, one end is open and also the whole block isn't totally full.

Thanks for letting me know about it though, I'll keep an eye on it over time and see what happens. Thankfully since its plastic it will have a bit more flex than metal (I hope!)

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As far as I know "liquid lead" is really fine lead shot. It would have a much higher surface area for any reaction to take place on than normal shot, which might explain why it's caused more problems? I'm sure it'll be fine, I just saw the picture and thought forewarned was forearmed :)

Will

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