Papercraft: The Chickenhawk takes flight

Nearly done!

The Chickenhawk Gunship is nearly finished! I just have to add rivets on the remaining flat surfaces and then she’s ready for some paint!

All the photos I’ve taken at this stage are in the gallery, but here are some interesting or new parts which I haven’t posted about before:

Breaks apart for easy storage

I’ve already told you I magnetised the engine mounts, but I just ripped off and magnetised the rear turret last night as well, since otherwise it wouldn’t fit in my figure case! Here’s a tip: planning these sorts of things really helps, so you can put magnets on the inside of the build rather than trying to drill counter-sunk holes in your build (and inevitably drilling too deep and going straight through, which I did twice out of six holes).

Missile pod

Since I settled on the Marauder Destroyer weapons load, I needed to put 8 hunter-killer missiles on the gunship. I originally was going to just sling them under the winglets on hardpoints, but they looked a little exposed there, so I instead built box-launchers for them. Magnets (of course) prevent the missiles from falling out.

Underside Detailing

This part wasn’t really planned, and just sort of grew out of the parts I had. I really wanted to use the Stormraven thrusters, and they just happened to fit nicely here, but stuck out the bottom. So, I built a plasticard box between them and stuck the ventral airlock hatch – a Predator sponson hatch – in between the thrusters. The part to the right of it is the Dragonforge Flight Stand connector thing.

Landing Gear!

And finally, the landing gear. In the end, I settled for simple, permanently-down landing gear (which does look like it could retract, but of course doesn’t) using plasticard sheets and tubing. I originally had grandiose dreams of building magnetised landing gear wells so I could swap out between up and down landing gear, but in the end realised that no-one would really notice, and I couldn’t be bothered, and just wanted to finish the damn build. Hence, these.

Done!

So finally, the build is done – well, nearly, I have to do rivets (probably using the PVA-glue-drop method since I’m too lazy to cut and glue a hundred tiny bits of plasticard rod) – and I’m ready to start painting it. My planned colour scheme is a dark grey, with lots of scratches and weathered areas, but I’ll have to see how I go.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *