Kitbash Part 5

Long time without a post, so you get a great big one now. The lightbox is also still kaput, so apologies for the murky photos.

First of all, a couple of kit bashes for my 15mm Scifi. I was recently inspired by the Khurasan Miniatures soon to be released Doe Gunship to try and build a squad lifter for my NKDF forces. A number of threads on TMP suggested various donor vehicles, but I eventually settled on a Revell 1/72 model of a Revell Kamov Ka-29 "Helix" helicopter:

The model itself is quite nice, with good detail on the various kit parts. It fits together well, even the spindly support struts for the rocket pods and under carriage.

To convert this from a helicopter to a VTOL shuttle I used several additional parts, engines from an Revell Easykit A-10, a LONGBOW radome from a Revell Easykit Apache, a Twin Gun turret from Old Crow and two side mounted thruster pods from Combat Wombat/Micropanzer (although I can't seem to find the thruster pods on either Combat Wombat or Micropanzer's sites now).

The conversion was fairly straightforward. I built up the model to the point where the hull was sealed but no external fixtures added. I then cut down the A-10 engine pods and attached them upside down on either side of the top rear fuselage. There was a handy rail on one side above the large crew door that acted as a brace, but nothing on the other side. In Hindsight, I could have added a piece of scrap styrene here to make my life easier, but ho hum. I then  glued the Micropanzer thrusters to either side between the locating lugs for the weapon wings. I then cut the middle braces out of the weapon wings and glued them over the top of the thruster pods. The wheels and undercarriage was then added, as were the various nose sensor devices. Remembering that this is going to be a gaming model and not a display piece, I left of the various fiddly and delicate aerials and grab handles (bitz box fodder). The final addition was the large Old Crow turret added to the bottom as a kind of remote bombardment turret for fire support, a bit like the AC130 gunship.

Once complete it was given an all-over undercoat of Army Painter Army Green - a very versatile green base coat that covers well - that tied all the parts together nicely. Next step is to paint it up to match the rest of my NKDF vehicles, so darker green stripes with grey and black offset "chocolate chip" patterns.

The next kitbash is of the old Matchbox Personnel Carrier inspired by the updates done over on Mini Metal Mayhem of the old Matchbox Stoat armoured car 

I had one of these from my childhood, and managed to pick up three more, all in pretty bad states of repair. I disassembled them, binned the two rows of seated passengers and the bendy plastic guns and dunked them in a pot of nail varnish remover for a week to try and get rid of the worst of the grime and old, flaky paint. It didn't totally work - when they painted something in the 1970's it was designed to stay painted, dammit! A lot of the paint did come off, but some of it is so welded on, I'm just going to paint over it.

Originally I was going to keep them wheeled, but swap out the big slicks for something a bit more rugged. However, when I saw the grav engines from Micropanzer, I decided to give them a go. You can see the engines on this thread at TMP (you can also see the thruster pods that I used on the Helix conversion on the shuttle in that same thread).

The wheel wells were filled in with some strip styrene and the grav engines glued in place. More strip styrene adds a few gubbins details besides the engines and the top deck was selaed over with sheet styrene. Details were added with half-round and tread plate styrene and a top hatch was also added. The bendy plastic gun was replaced by a spare from a GZG 6mm hovertank (The Rommel)

I've only completed one so far, and it's yet to be painted, but I'm really pleased with the progress.

Finally we have another 15mm Scifi piece, not a kit bash this time. This is a Khurasan Miniatures PA-3 Python Powered Armour Suit. This is again for my NKDF forces, to give them some light mecha support to compliment their big stompy robot.

Simple green/tan camo this time, as the green/dark green didn't totally work on the last NKDF Mecha. These are very nice little robots with a selection of arm poses. I have 3 more to finish off which will make a nice little strike team, or allow them to split up to add a bit of punch to individual platoons.