Rain rain!

Its been raining for a couple of days which is great!  ...except that...  I need to primer the exterior of the Thunderhawk.  I'm at a point where I need to assemble the bits containing the wiring harness so that I can insert the cockpit.  After pinning shut the front assault door (FAIL!) I will have to insert the cockpit from the top and guide it into position through the forward landing gear well.  This is way more complicated than it had to be but...there ya are!  Its still doable It will just take longer and it means I can't adjust the cockpit lighting much after the its installed.  The lighting for the cockpit at this point is an indicator light on a console between the crew members and some under dash and side lights.  Using the light to actually provide illumination turned out to be overpowering so it will be accent only... although I do hope there will be a faint glow through the canopy when its lowered... the canopy will normally be viewed in the open position and the lights will work well there.

I'll need to paint the hull enough to add the landing gear and the center line engine next.  The spotlights are going to be added to the back of the main hull and will really need the gear deployed to safely sit.  Once that is done the wiring can be finished and the installed harness retested.  I'll paint the top of the hull and all of the upper superstructure and wing flaps separately from the main hull just to reduce handling of the hull and to minimize handling the full weight of the hull at one time. I'll have to see if I can avoid installing the outboard engines when I attach the lower wing assemblies.  I'd like to hold off adding the weight of the outboard engines until I can add the upper wing support.  It won't be fatal if the engines have to be installed it just makes the whole business a bit harder to maneuver.

I'm still not certain what the whole mess will weigh at the end.

Project Thunderhawk P.2 Light Harness

The light harness is complete and undergoing stress testing to verify battery life expectancy. With this 9v. configuration I'm expecting a bit less than 3 hours so am planning to move to an AA configuration with a target of 10 hours of operation.  This harness is for all the onboard systems while a separate circuit and power supply will address the offboard lighting.

Here are the dry fits off the spot light housings.  I think that they'll look fine when painted and should not require a diffusing lens cover to achieve the spot effect.

I've started the filling and sculpting to finish all of the roughed in areas now that I know how the harness will fit into the model.  The next block of work will be on finishing the greenstuff and primer/base coating the subassemblies.

Project Thunderhawk Phase 2

I acquired an old Workshop Metal Thunderhawk in 40k scale a few years ago and decided to actually build the thing.  The progress got interrupted for a bit as I moved and was unable to locate one of the two boxes it had been packed in.  A second move resulted in the rediscovery of both boxes so work can finally resume.

Phase 1 of Project Thunderhawk was construction, bracing, pinning, general engineering, and dry fitting of the major sub-assemblies.  This has been completed.

Phase 2 is designing, testing and installing the lighting solution.  This is where I am at the moment.

Phase 3 is designing, cutting, constructing, and lighting the display base.

Phase 4 is painting and final assembly. Some sub-assemblies are painted in earlier phases but will get final finishing in this phase.

Here are some shots of the end of phase 1: