No game night this week as Al had to work, or at least that’s what he tells us, although we have another D&D session tonight. From the sound of what happened to the party last week, with all the characters getting very drunk and setting fire to the inn, it could be a very interesting night. I’ve also had to spend a few nights away this week for work, enjoying or should that really be enduring a trip to London that has meant I haven’t had much time for hobby.
However on the hobby front I’ve got the kitbash bug again and I’ve made a start on building an Ork flyer. Not something I have in my existing army and I wanted to do something a bit different, although I’m now beginning to realise how big a job I have taken on. As the theme of my army is about the grots taking over I wanted the flyer to be something of a cross between a bomber and a ground attack aircraft. But the key change needed to be that it had a proper bomb bay, as opposed to mounting the bombs on the wings, although I may well add more bombs to the wings just for giggles. I wanted something that could take four big bombs and four medium bombs and in the end I settled on a rotary contraption to hold them all. I went for this as it gave me the most compact, and interesting build I could come up with and I’m hoping it makes the changes I need to make to the fuselage manageable.
To accommodate this bomb bay what I’ve done is cut the standard fuselage into three sections. The noise and tail sections will be built up as standard and the centre section will be widened so that it is the same width as the bombs on the rack. I will then build a new section to join this to the tail with the bombs housed in that section. It all looked straight forward on paper.
But in practice it’s proving to be quite a fiddly job. I’ve had to make quite a few changes to the noise cone as the mount has now changed and it was originally pointing down a very strange angle. Not a complicated job but one that took quite a bit of trial and error. I’m also working on closing up each section with plasti card to get everything looking neat. For the noise and tail it is mainly about tidying things up and give me some good surfaces to attach new bits to. For the centre section it’s a more complicated, or it might be me making it more complicated. The plan is to get these sections fitting properly and then I can cut them down the centre and add new sections to get the width I want for the final build. That way I know that everything will line up properly and I can work on how I fill in the gaps.
My plan is to add a scratch built Gatling gun under the noise and then to add some high mounted engines to the rear, all very A10 Warthog style, and inspired by the build Greg (@3dgreg) currently working on. What sort of grot rigger would I be if I didn’t steal and idea or two. There are a few other things that I’d like to change such as the angle of the wings but I’ll work on getting the fuselage right before I move on to anything else. There’s been quite a lot of trial and error so far and I think that it’s likely to carry on in that vein which will mean this isn’t going to be a quick a build, but it should be a fun build.
All this kit bashing has meant that I haven’t picked up a paint brush, other than the one I use for mek pack, so the Esher are suffering so I’m really going to have to try and get back into painting mode. Although my mind is buzzing with new kit bash ideas so that might be quite a challenge but I’m trying to hold back on doing to many things until the new Codex comes out. From the rumours I’ve seen it should be out by the end of September which I would imagine will tie in with the release of some new kits. Now I’ve no idea what these might be but as the Buggy hasn’t had a new kit since I think third edition I’m hoping we will get something new here. So I don’t want to do any conversions in case shiny syndrome renders them redundant with a new kit release.
That’s it for this week. We have a D&D session tonight which I’m really looking forward to and am also hoping to get some good hobby time in this week. Not sure if that will be painting or kit bashing but I’ll have something new for next week. Until then enjoy yourselves and I hope to catch you all again next week.
