Project Thunderhawk update 7/19

You know what I dislike the most about working on one of Pataroch's templates? The level of details on it! I'm not saying he's done a bad job with details in his templates, or that the detail is a problem. No, something quit different. The sheer amount of detail he puts in his templates is staggering compared to most other scratch build templates out there. As an example, look at the diagram showing the construction of the pilot deck:

Breakdown for assembling the pilot deck of the scratch built Thunderhawk

 That lists 40 separate components to build that deck. So whats the big deal right? Well, here's the thing. Most of those components are in turn made of several pieces. Like the center console between the pilot seats. One component. That is made out of 6 pieces. The pilot seats? 12 pieces each. The computer console behind the pilot seats? 16 pieces.

So yeah, you have times where you can work on these for several hours and get everything assembled.... on only have like 3 small sections built. It's a bit disheartening at times. That being said I have been working on the project today and gotten some work completed on it.

I finished building the canopy cover. Now I'm sure you're saying "Wait, what? I thought you built that a while ago." Well, yes sort of. See if you look closely at this new image you can see that I'm put in the clear plastic planes for the canopy. It's a solid part so I count that as building. I had to wait until I got the primer on the piece and decided to go one step further and put down the base coat for the piece. The Thunderhawk is going to join my Blood Raven army so it got the maroon color needed for that.

Got the pilot station glued in and am now working on painting the pilot deck.

Here is the ceiling of the Embarkation deck. Here is where that level of detail comment came from earlier. Everyone of those boxes are made using at least 3 pieces of styrene each. And then there's the piping between many of the boxes. Oh and I had to pass the wires for the LEDs though the pipes too. Yeah.... lot of work. Not a lot to really show for the effort.

I've been working on other stuff besides just the pilots and  ceiling of the embarkation deck for this bird though.

inside left wall of the scratch built Thunderhhawk

 

 

 

This is the inside left wall of the Thunderhawk's embarkation deck. There's not a lot to say about it that you can't see from the pictures themselves so I'll just let the picture speak for itself, you know being worth 1000 words and all that. The ribbed cables I'm using are from Dragon Forge Designs.

I've also started working on the engines. Well one part of one engine. See the model uses a series of 6 half-tube sections around the engines. One of the top of the wings, one on the bottom and then 2 along the bottom of the main hull. Here is my current state of progress on this point:

Yeah... lots of small parts and sections. The capping on each end is a section of "House siding" paneling from Ever Green plastics wrapped around the end of the half tube and glued in place. I needed to use clamps to hold the piece down long enough for the glue to set because my hand would start to cramp after a couple minutes while still failing to hold the piece in place properly. Once that was glued down I went back with smaller strips of 1mm thick styrene and then glued those down along the edge of the siding piece. It gives a rather nice mechanical look to carry the idea that this is a working machine I think.

The piping isn't even half done yet and it still a lot of experimenting as I go so I've had to start over several times. The center pipe running along the back of the tube was accomplished by cutting strips of .01mm thick styrene, gluing down one edge of it to the pipe and then rolling it around the pipe and gluing it down once I had reached the desired thickness.


Remember when I posted this a couple days ago?

Well I got some work done on the thruster nozzle that attaches to this part, buuuuuut I'm not all that thrilled with the end result so far:

It's just... so plain, There's nothing there. So working on that. The catch is I'm trying to accomplish fixing this with out ordering anything right now. See Plastruct is crap at filling orders. Last time I ordered it took me 5 weeks to get my order and when I got it in there was mold on it. They also require a $50 minimum for private orders, but they only supply 1/19th of their entire catalog to distributors like Hobby Town. So... yeah. I have one maybe worked out:

Basically there is a raised edge along the outer perimeter of the panel. It adds some to the piece, I'm just not totally sure it works well enough. Any thoughts from anyone else?