Almost there

Interiors done, ready for for final assembly of the fuselage and then we will see what gap filling is required above the cockpit and below the passenger compartment.

I see a grey helicopter and I want to paint it black

..but I cant. At least, not yet.

I finished filling the gaps and then re-doing the intentional gaps between the panels, theb sanded down the Milliput so that it is hopefully smooth enough that it will blend in with the resin once painted. Spent a little while trying to hot water bend the landing gear into the right shape as well as the passenger compartment floor on both halves. It looks straight now but I guess I will find out when I try to glue it together.

However, I've decided I want to paint the interior and the easiest way to do that is to paint it before glueing the two halves of the fuselage together. This is complicated by the fact that the two points where the parts join will both have gaps that need to be filled and sanded, which would make a mess of a primer coat if I put one down.

So Ive primed only the interior for now, which I will paint tomorrow. Then I can perform the necessary putty work and sand it, mask off the interior and prime the rest of the LARC..

Breaking the habit of a lifetime!

I recently backed the Kore Aeronautics kickstarter for their L.A.R.C aircraft so I could use it in my small Capital force for Warzone (it makes a pretty good counts-as Emancipator). This KS had a very fast turn around of just a few months and when it arrived yesterday I decided that no, I would not put this in my hobby closet to be built 'later' just like all my other KS rewards sitting in said closet.

I would build it right now!

Er..

Despite the number of parts, actually building the LARC Talon is pretty easy. The tricky part is the cleaning of the parts prior to assembly, and some parts will need to be straightened in hot water. The landing gear / skids and the back piece that connects the rear half of the passenger compartment and the tail (part 3, below) will both need it.

It seems the easiest way to build it is to attach the 1s and 2s together to make a front and rear sub assembly. Then attach part 3 and do your best to line things up, then the tail .

Several hours of sanding later to make the curves of the fuselage match up.. it looks pretty good even when loosely assembled and held together with blu tack! Of course, next step is gap filling followed by even more sanding..

Finishing up some other things..

How many panels is enough? Always one more than you have!

Progress! I burned through another sheet of plasticard (okay, two) but made some exterior panels, as well as some small vertical panels for the ends of the corridors..

This gave me the level of interior detail I was hoping for, without protruding too much from the walls to make model movement difficult (of course, the actual rooms themselves is another story). I painted them up and fitted them in place, then followed Tom Schadle's colour scheme for the Warsenal Cosmica terrain - more or less - since the base colour of orange and white is what Antenocitis use on their own pre-coloured Forward Base set.

..and here it is, finally finished!

The horse lives!

With a new pressure switch fitted, my compressor is up and running again so this weekend was spent catching up on those Antenocitis Workshop corridor detail pieces. I havent glued the parts together yet as I will do another weathering pass.. and maybe add some more white, since these panels were supposed to BE white, but ended up a light grey.

But all things considered I am pretty happy with it so far, and will create similar panels for the front and back walls of the habitat.

Back on the horse.. and then it died

So after a long time of ruefully eyeing up my Silhouette Portrait (which has been buried under a pile of hobby clutter for the last six months) I was finally motivated to break it out by the release of the Antenocitis Workshop "Forward Base" terrain, which I wanted to use on my Mars table for Warzone.

It arrived and was moderately fancy (not as shiny as the Cosmica stuff from Warsenal, but not as expensive, either.. so it just comes out ahead!) but the large flat colours give the terrain an overly simple look that doesn't suit Warzone. So with the Portrait literally dusted off, I got to work on some interior and exterior panel designs. Three sheets of 10 thou plasticard later, and I have these (left side is before punching out the cut away parts)

..which combine to make one of these!

..which goes here!

I was all set to prime and paint these interior panels and then when I started up my airbrush, the compressor died. I'm not confident I can get the desired level of smoothness if I paint these by hand, so for now I will have to continue making panels while I wait for the replacement pressure switch to arrive for the compressor.

Fudge! I was really hoping to finish off those corridor sections quickly.