Grymn Flier - II

A word of warning.

Never. EVER. Feed a work in progress model after midnight*. They multiply...

So my small flotilla of Grymn Fliers are taking shape...

Each of them has twin rotors, a magnetised mount for a forrad under-nose weapon mount, and a fixed mount at the rear for a fying base.

Still to do:

• Landing system - Skids or wheels? I'm thinking skids for simplicity - there are two moulded holes in the cockpit sides that would work to put helicopter style skids into probably made from bent/soldered brass rod. Landing gear will need to be quite high to prevent the nose weaon from grounding, also quite wide to allow the nose weapon to turn. I'm hoping this will be a 'good thing' and it will lend the flier a feel of a flying insect and add to its small, one man, light fragile nature.
• Weapon system - I'm hoping some 15mm Old crow single weapon mounts will scale ok the 25mm ones i have are way too big! This will mean i can mount a small cannon or a missile pack or even a comms package to the front.
• Tail fin - I'm struggling to get a shape for this that I like. As there are twin rotors (which would rotate in opposite directions) there is no need for a long tail with a stabilising rotor. So a simple directional fin will suffice. It will need to project rearwards to balance out the bulk of the cockpit forwards, but I'm not going to add a rigid tail. I'm thinking something that looks like it would be at home on a modern day microlight would be ideal. Its also somewhere to add a squad/vehicle identifying marks.

For those of you that are curious I have a couple of pics showing scale.

The only figure scifi figure I have easy access to is a Hasslefree Grymn Trooper (centre) for which these fliers are designed. That's a little over 22mm tall and I think fits the cockpit comfortably.

The two other figures here are from Wyrdd and Rackham, they are in the 32-35mm+ size. I think these cockpits would be tight and small for something of the GW Space Marine size. I think other more slender 28mm scaled figures would be OK but a little tight - emphasising the 'light' nature of the craft.

The cockpits would accommodate 2 x 15mm figures side by side or even behind the other. I shall be painting the cockpit glass so have made no attempt to model an interior.

Hope that helps.

More soon...


* Rumour suggests that getting them wet or exposing them to day light may also be a bad idea.

Old Crow Modular Vehicles

I bought these modular vehicles from Old Crow some time ago.

... and finally got around to assembling them ...


Each section is preassembled and has a pair of magnets in it to locate them together. They are going to be utility trucks that house all the necessary equipment to deploy the fliers and three of them will tow the mobile landing pads. The forth is going to tow a generator.

Wheels have been left off for now to aid painting.

Grymn Flier - I

I made three of these mobile landing pads some years ago. They were my first tentative venture into laser cutting.

I always intended for the mobile landing pads to be like forward deployed mobile bases from which to operate small one-man (grymn) recon and light support fliers.

Initially I had hoped to use the long awaited and fabled Hasslefree Grymn Grav Bike to operate from these bases.

When it became clear that the Grav Bike had been abandoned and Hasslefree had prototyped a new Flier I hoped this one would be commercially available, but it wasn't to be.

So finally I thought that a8 years of waiting and begging was probably enough time and I should do something about it.  After hunting for suitable commerical fliersand getting recommendations from a few forums (fora?) I decided the only thing to do was to build it myself.

Aims

• One man crew
• Lightly armed - nose gun or maybe a small missile pod.
• Highly manoeverable
• Clean panels to match the feel of the Old Crow 25mm vehicles these will be towed by. No rivets, skulls or other Gothic nonsense here.
• VTOL - lift fans / rotors
• Small enough to both land on and be shipped by the mobile landing pad.

I liked what I did with the rotors on the Grymn Flier that I painted as a diorama a few years ago, so I thought I'd do something similar.

Parts List

Rotors/Fans from Zinge Industries:

Revell Pocket Snap Kit - Jedi StarFighter

 

Old crow weapon mounts

Progress

So far I have this...

 
I'm pretty happy with this prototype but still figuring out how to do a short stubby tail fin and landing gear. I have three to make in total.

Mobile Landing Pad - Revisited

Those of you who have been following my blog for some time might well remember my first foray into laser cutting. The idea was to build some modular vehicles based on Old Crow 25mm resin vehicle chassis. As a starting point I designed a mobile helipad and had a couple of prototypes cut.

Soon afterwards I was contacted by Dave Adams who is also an old crow nut and I sent him one of the prototypes. At this point I should apologise to Dave as it has taken me an inordinately long time to post the following pictures of his work and also to thank him. I think the pictures are wonderful and really made me smile when I saw how well his model has turned out.

 

  Thank you Dave!

Modular Vehicles X

I got my first ever laser cut model in the post this morning hot from the cutter at Fenris Games. I couldn't recommend Ian (Geronimo) at Fenris highly enough!

This kit is the Mobile Landing Pad that I've shown here before.

I designed this to split into A4 sized sheets so that postage is simple and cheap.

Each flat A4 sheet contains 3 full kits.

I have rubbed one with boot polish so that in this picture you can see both the cut outlines and the engraved detail.

One Mobile Helipad Kit.

Well I was like a little boy in a sweet shop and I couldn't resist doing a test assembly!

The quality of the engraved detail is superb, crisp, accurate and fine!  The full cuts do leave a little burr on the edges requiring a light sanding when they are removed from the sprue, but this wasn't a significant problem.

The model took me about 30 minutes to fully assemble, and that was with the assistance of my 9 year old son.

I discovered a couple of minor issues with the geometry - the holes for the magnets to affix it to the chassis are a little large - thats mostly because the laser burns away around 0.2 mm of material and I had already drawn the holes 0.2 oversize, so I shall reduce this so that the magnets are a better fit. Also you may notice the front of the cab isn't as good a fit as it should be so I'll fix that too.. Other than that I am really happy with this.

As you can see from the first picture the home made hinges hold the flaps nicely horizontal, so no legs or struts will be required! I'm doubly pleased with this because as a couple of people pointed out that the legs looked like an afterthought (because they were!).

Helipad in its operational or Deployed state.

The hinges work nice and smoothly and stand neatly folded up. Whilst these hinges aren't going to be strong enough take too much abuse I reckon they are easily capable of taking handling in game allowing the model to be used both in its transit position and in its deployed position.

Helipad in its transit or stowed state.

So, all in all I am pleased with my first foray into making my own laser cut kit!

I'll get some paint on this in the next week or so (I need the temperature to increase somewhat so that I can get my airbrush running successfully) and I'll post pictures when I do.

As these are repeatable to cut I shall be selling kits if anyone wants one. Yes, you do need an Old Crow scout chassis to sit under it but I'm expecting my kit to be around the £2.50 mark and modular so there will be other variants of hulls to go on the chassis.

I'm not looking to make a fortune from this, mostly its case of making stuff I like and then if anyone else likes it too then covering my costs so I can make more.

Helipad trailer being towed.

The Mobile Helipad should be suitable for any small one man flier in 25mm scale - the landing pad area is 80mm in diameter.

Now all I need is for Hassle Free Miniatures to release one of its looooooong awaited Grymn fliers (either the attack flier I used a preview of for my DoD entry or the frankly stunning Grav Bike). or for Fenris to release its small flier.

As always comments very welcome.

Modular Vehicles VIII

This is a generic hull for the provider and its trailer (the scout vehicle chassis)

It is designed to be modular and a bit different to a slab sided lorry back. The two modules are designed to look similar and tie in with the look of the old crow style. I have tried to make these look less slab sided by sloping all four corners inwards whilst retaining vertical surfaces where the irises and end windows are.

This allows the modules to be removed from the chassis and grouped together (iris to iris or window to window) to make temporary camp structures such as this.

I can imagine this being a mobile hospital, a command HQ, a temporary laboratory or any number of other uses. If nothing else its either an objective in a scenario or some cover in a fire fight. This should allow quite a range of modular temporary structures to be created. Whilst each of these modules is a little small, they are completely mobile.

I think I shall modify the plates on the roofs so that they are all the same size and interchangeable, that way I can scribe one side with symbols such as red crosses, arrows and biohazard symbols. Then the buildings can be assembled either plain or with symbols showing - allowing the buildings to have multiple uses. Likewise I can make the Iris inserts double sided so that they can show open/closed Irises or blanked off walls.

My only regrets are that I haven't figured out how to make good double height structures without having slab-like vertical 'boxes'.

EDIT 21.01.10: Adjusted the module on the truck back to allow this:

 

As to sizes, the width of these modules is 46mm not huge but thats the width of the chassis. The larger modules are 92mm long to match the length of the trailer chassis.

Modular Vehicles VII

WIP pictures for crane modules for the provider transport.

 

I'm thinking that the crane arm itself might be a little bit chunky at this point but you get the idea. The design allows the platform of the crane to rotate and lock in place via magnets as does the up-down motion of the arm. I'm planning on using the same mechanism as I did on the variable pitch engines on the unfinished Drop ship. I still have the extending arm of the crane to design again which should lock in various locations through the use of magnets.

I wanted a crane so that if I had a a number of mobile Landing platforms then at least one of the trucks pulling them would be able to do recovery operations and load the fliers for transport. So the truck and trailer combination would look something like this.

I'm now itching to model up the Grymn flier to sit on the back of the trailer, but as the damned thing doesn't have a single straight line anywhere on it, and my only reference is currently glued to my DoD entry and covered in bubbles I might have to forgo that! besides its not cutting plasticard is it?

Comments always welcomed.

Modular Vehicles VI

This is a hull to convert the scout chassis into a smaller version of the provider truck. The flat bed is actually the same size as that on the main provider so the modules will be interchangeable.

And the completed landing pad with flaps down...

... and flaps up ...

I have modified the front of the landing pad so that its lower and offers less obstruction to landing on it, and enlarged the landing area somewhat and made the whole thing easier to model and fixed a couple of problems with getting the flaps to move easily without fouling.

I really should make some of these.... eventually.

EDIT 21.01.10
I think I may have to add outriggers/legs to the flaps to keep them up as the bracing under the flaps is an area i am concerned about. This is my current approach both to having the legs in use and then stowed in the vehicle.

Alternatively Slide supports from under the main hull. Like this:

 

While this is a more elegant solution it does mean that the main landing pad ends up getting much beefier and the multiple layers of plasticard along the hull edges will be difficult to model smoothly. It also means I wont get 3 kits per A4 sheet but just 2, so that will increase the cost.

I'll have to see what the test kit looks like when i get it back from the laser cutters.

Modular Vehicles V

Completed the Provider with a Medical station:

And the first pictures of a truck and trailer combination:

Hopefully what I am attempting to Achieve is a little clearer. It's certainly helping me to visualise and plan the builds better.

Modular Vehicles IV

A tiny update: I have refined the chassis so it's now a much more accurate copy of the Old Crow original ... improved the wheels so they are more accurate, and played around with textures and colours.

OK, so it's not modeling but I am having fun, and hopefully I am making all my mistakes in cyber-land not in plasticard! I've already figured out how to make the hinged sides for example.

Also some progress on the 'Truck' (or Provider Transport as Old Crow call it). The Big Yellow Box is to show where I intend to incorporate the modular loads for the truck.  Still some work to do here, but you can begin to see the detail of the raised panel areas on the rear of the truck which will allow me to play around with similar patterns on the scratch-built elements to keep them consistent with the Old Crow look.