Halcyon Aliens Dropship plus APC diorama WIP

[Boldman]

"...one-way elevator to Hell, goin' DOWWWWWNNN!!"

I present the legendary Aliens Dropship by Halcyon. I'm teaming this up with a resin APC by Gonzoid Models, sourced from Comet Miniatures. I'd love to get my hands on the Halcyon APC but its the wrong scale to work with the Dropship. My intention is to build a diorama of the "deploy and dust off" moment in the movie. The closes you get to see of this is screencapped here:

as the action switches from the dropship flying in over the complex to a close up of the ramp touching down and the APC deploying before switching back into the two shot shown above.

So here is the box and sprue shots:

Starting on the APC.

This is a big block of resin, quite roughly cast in solid but brittle resin. it looks like it was cast from a scratch-built master as you can still see some of the joins from the master in the cast resin. its taken quite a bit of cleaning up and a lot of sanding to get rid of a chunky mould line that ran around the uppser sides.

The wheels to had a lot of "flash" and were quite crudely finished. I've given them a good clean up and now they look sort-of presentable.

Problem is they are not a good representation of the original!

These wheels are two skinny and the treads are totally wrong. I'll have to see if there is anything I can do to make them more accurate.

In that screencap you can also see how inaccurate the main gun is. I'm alrady planning to drillout the barrels on the front cannon as the mouldings on these were essentially just blobs. you can see how they are supposed to look here:

Stay frosty!

 

[CDW]

Awesome ... great film .... will be a great diorama no doubt.

Aaaaaabsolutley badasss

 

[backonthecase]

Uuuuhhhhhhhhhh YUMMY!!!! One of my holy grail kits and an awesome movie. Watching this one for definite.!!

 

[papa 695]

Great idea and a great film will watch with interest Andrew

 

[homechild]

Looking forward to seeing this go together.

I'm sure you'll do a grand job but I'll be watching to see how it goes...it's the only way to be sure!

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Brilliant diorama and great to see something from such an amazing series of films. Almost to be expected with such specialist models as well that modifications will be required. I'm sure you will do it justice though and make a superb replica from it.

 

[mossiepilot]

I'll be watching this, no doubt.

I LOVE Aliens and can't wait to see this dio come together.

Tony

 

[phalinmegob]

oh well, there is one of my dio ideas for the future down the pan, you been reading my mind. i have the halcyon drop ship(purchased off skyraider)and was planning something very similar.cant wait see it finished.

 

[noble]

Andy i used to have this years ago and if i remember the dropship goes together very well, this will be a cool dio can't wait to seeit completed.

scott

 

[Boldman]

Thanks for your interest and enthusiasm - I'm looking forward to this built a lot. I've been digging into the background of the studio models and its really interesting, eg finding out that the APC is actually an ex-Heathrow aircraft tug in disguise one of these:

So progress is happening, but let me say I hate it when I can smell resin while sanding! Its not a good sign coz it means your mask is leaking and you could be breathing in that nasty shi**! This block of resin has needed a lot of sanding to get rid of the truly awful moulding lines. Its now been primed, filled and sanded a bit more.

There were several "gaps" and pits that needed filling - some of them appeared to be seams on the original master that didn't fit well.

The wheels got a good sanding as well. They are now much flatter than they were which makes them look more like the originals, but they are still too skinny by far. However I'm just going to live with that as I don't feel up to scratch building something this small. They've been painted up as you can see and look fine to me.

I've also painted the front turret and drilled out the cannon nozzles. As you can see from the previous pictures, these cannon seems to have some sort of star-like fitting in the muzzle, however at this scale I don't think I've got anything that can reproduce that look so it stays as it. I've added some bits to the main cannons to bulk out the barrel and add the plate on the upper surface that is visible, particularly this one which is of the RC model used in the movie

I'm about ready to give the main body its coat of Nato Green, stay tuned...

 

[AJay]

Very interesting build you've got going here. Loving it so far

 

[Boldman]

More done today: First off lets look at the main gun. I've added a couple of small plastic card shims to the outer sides of the barrels to give them more a more accurate shape. Plus that large block to attach it to the APC has to go!

So its beem removed and replace by a short strip of I beam girder that will sit nicely between the two rails cast intot he main body. It will also allow the gun to have a more "dynamic" angle.

Next, there is a funny "U" shaped casting on the top of the APC, visible here where its been sanded down a little

This appears to be a fitting for something but nothing was included in the kit. Looking at my research I discover that its a spotlight fitting which has a wire guard in front of it. This is visible here:

So lets start by scratch building the spotlight. Its little more than a rectangular block with a curved back edge with a light stuck in the front a bit like this:

and when painted up:

This shows the rear of the APC after its had a black wash

So for the wire guard to go over the front I've used some steel mesh I've got in the Meccano spares box along with some 10A fuse wire for the out frame to create this:

So also noticable in the vidcap above is the shackles on the front of the APC, so these were added with some fine wire:

More to come, including possibly fitting the wheels Gasp!!!

 

[papa 695]

Great work so far Andrew

 

[phalinmegob]

looking spot on so far mate.

 

[mobear]

Now its starting to look real good,all the hard work is paying off

mobear

 

[Boldman]

And so dear reader, we come to the end of Act 1: The APC.

Wheels on and set turning. This vehicle is 4 wheel steering, so I've set both sets of wheels in a turn. These are packed with milliput to give support to the axle joints.

You can see the spotlight and guard on the top of the APC - turned out quite well I'm pleased to say.

Its been given a black wash, but no further weathering for now. There will need to be more later, but I'll hold off until I can see it in context with the rest of the diorama before getting heavy on the weathering.

Well thats the easy bit done. Next: the Dropship. First task is goign to be opening up the bottom of the fuselage to create the bay for the APC. In the first picture above you can see the landing ramp behind the APC. I'm going to use this to mark up the hole that needs cutting.

"How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?"

 

[treyzx10r]

Very cool Andrew,that is a beefy looking unit!

 

[CDW]

You secure that s**t Hudson .... errr Andrew

Coming together nicely, always good to do a few scratch bits on a model .... if you think about it ....it's strange how some obvious bits on sci-fi vehicles and figures are missed off or dimensionaly wrong on the models.

 

[Boldman]

After a couple of days away from the modelling table as a break, I'm back with the dropship. Just as an experiment, I tried a bit of a dry fitting to see how things went together. Its an odd shape and I didn't fully understand where the main component went until I did this:

and here is the missile pylon

and the inserts that are supposed to represent the tip and tail of the missiles

In comparison this is what its supposed to look like:

One of the first things that is immediately obvious is the number of missiles is wrong. In the movie, it 4x4 but the inserts have 5x4!

So lets move on to look at the three main areas of interest (aka scratch building) in this model:

1) APC Bay

2) Cockpit

3) Missile pylons

For the APC bay, as you've already seen in previous photos, the base of the dropship is solid, even though there is a ramp, there is no opening to the bay. So we are going to have to cut a hole and build a bay! Here we see the ramp placed against the base of the dropship where it would have folded up.

As you can see its too long and will overlap the front part, so we move it backwards a bit and it will fit:

I'll have to scratch build and interior of the bay but fortunately, there are a couple of shots in the movie that give you an idea of whats inside:

So its going to be out with the plasticard and some scratch building!.

For the cockpit, I have some US chopper pilots from CMK I can use and to detail the cockpit (which OOB is empty apart from a couple of bucket seats, I've got an order in for some cheap resin ejector seats and some PE consoles. I basically chose the cheapest sets I could find from Hannants! I think the resin seats are Aries seats for a Tomcat and the PE is for a Phantom. Here are the pilots:

Sadly one is not female so Cpl. Ferro may need some surgery! Pvt. Spunkmeyer will be okay as is I think!

Thats all for now... Remember: short, controlled bursts.

 

[noble]

Nice work so far andy, so your building the drop ship bay....... very niccceee. What about ripley and newt?

scott