Monday, March 15, 2010

WIP Zeppelin Part 2.

Welcome to part two of my foray into the world of IG airships. Today I will be showing WIP of the control deck and cabin. I wanted my WWI airships to have a feel about them of being pulled from a pulp adventure a little more than from real life. To this end I am making a cabin large enough to have two souls within. The Airship Captain and his First Gunner.
The airships hull is going to be from the super cool Valkyrie model from Games Workshop (ltd). The Cabin is built from sheet stock and will wide enough to handle two, non-based figures. The armorplas windows will be extended out at about a 25-30* angle towards the roof to allow for greater visibility. the rails for the windows will be added in a future post. (once I have figured out what i want to do with it!). I then placed heavy I beams within to help reinforce the hull of the airship. The exterior will receive a riveted look, much like my tanks. where the Valkyrie is a sleeker vessel with inset rivets, I will be building over that and extending the rivet heads to the surface (much like on my tanks) Though it will not be as clean visually as aircraft armor, it will set very well in the army I have been working on.
The interior was set with a GW wagon wheel and various other "gubbins" that I had in my bits box to help make the interior look suitably archaic with wheels and levers instead of clean panels (those are only on the como gear at the back of the cabin.) I will be adding magnets on the interior walls and under the nose hatch so I can switch out armaments depending on which Valkyrie I bring to the fight. Pictured to the left is my las cannon nose mounting. I am also building Multi-laser and twin-las mountings as well. Most of this stuff isn't to bad once you have it figured out, but when you make 3 of everything, it does become a bit tedious at times.
The multiple-launch- rocket pods from the Valk kit are being set aside for something a little cooler and a little older.
The mounting system for the sides of the cabin area are being made of a girder style material available from Plastruct. I then added connectors and magnets for the girders so I could easily remove them if I needed to for the las cannon mountings (Which I am not sure how I want to make them just yet)
The last picture here is the MLRP that I will be using for my Zeppelins. It is simply constructed from 2 Havoc Missile Launchers from the CSM vehicle upgrade sprue.
This system is perfect for me since I am making 3 of these guys. After I finally get this project done, I doubt I will be returning to make more in the near future.
The Bigger Missiles that come with the Valkyrie kit will be used (after they have been magnetized) and that will allow for all weapon systems other than the twin Las cannons that are part of the Vendetta weapon systems. I could mount them on the wings kinda like the MLRPs but they are not a "deadfire" system like I consider the MLRP to be. I am hoping to make a crew mounted fitting on the outside of the cabin to accommodate additional crewmen for the targeting and firing of these weapons. (get the idea that I want there to be some expectation of "reasonability" in my designs. and I already know that you think zeppelins can not go fast and therefor its impossible to use them in place of Valkyries. to you sir I say "Bully!" A fast vehicle can also go 6" and still fire everything. (the smooth ride of an airship is perfect for the stabilization of the weapon systems) the armor value is reasonable and since I don't use hydrogen for the airbags or thermite for my paint, I should be fine there too. But I am planning on adding JTO rockets to the side on the rare turn I may have to go faster than 12" in my Valkyrie. I don't plan on it much, but for my erstwhile opponents, I would hate to have them felt cheated somehow...

1 comment:

  1. Looks good so far and it sounds reasonable. I will be watching this project...

    ReplyDelete