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Hi all,

I've never chronicled one of my conversion projects before. I've decided to finally build the Storm Raven that's been sitting in a box on my shelf for 9 months. I've never build a raven, or any similar kits, but I'd like to do a few fairly ambitious things with it to make it something of an army centrepiece, and I thought some WIP might be interesting.

The Plan:

1. I want all the doors to work, and all the existing moving parts in the kit to be functional

2. I don't love the nose mounted weapons, so I'd like to move some things around.
- Nose mounted weapon changed to some sort of sensor array
- Add under slung mount to replace nose mount
- Weapon options magnetized, with the spare weapons on magnetized racks inside the raven for easy transport, storage, and swapping

3. I also don't love the hurricane bolter sponsons. I'd like to convert the side doors to open to reveal a hurricane bolter counts-as conversion. Right now I'm thinking a psilencer on each side mounted similar to manned machine guns on modern helicopters.

4. Dreadnought magnetized to rear in some way

5. LEDs

6. General appearance: GK relic-style, similar to a previous landraider I did; will have to pay attention to making everything look aerodynamic/still give the impression of forward motion vs the relatively stationary appearing landraider.

Progress
Update 1: Rear Hatch
Update 2: Underslung Weapon Mount
Update 3: Conversion, Lights, Basecoat

Update 1: Rear Hatch

I thought the rear hatch is a bit boring for the style I want, so I trimmed down a pair of FW land raider doors to fit, and magnetized them so that they are functional, but also removable. I'd like to get the LED battery and all the spare weapon options inside, so removable hatches seemed like a way to make those easier to access. I also added an extra magnet so that the door could be held open.

Update 2: Underslung Weapon Mount

Multi-melta/Typhoon Launcher mount that attaches under the nose of the raven. Turret is magnetized so it can swivel and be removed for transport. Weapon options are magnetized as well.

LED is a PoweredBases kit that I Kickstarted a while back. First time I've used them - it's surprisingly bright. Shows right through the plastic. I filled as many gaps as I could with putty, and hopefully a black basecoat will hide the remainder.

This is coming along nicely. Really love the rear door, I wish I'd seen this before I built my SR, as I had real problems with the rear hatch and had to glue it closed, which bothered me because I had spent a lot of time painting the interior.

Keep it up.

D

Been a while since I made progress on this project, but I had some time to finish the conversion and wiring, and get the model primed up.

Had some trouble deciding what to add on for the "relic" style I was looking for, without making the model look less aerodynamic (less than the flying brick it already is!). In the end I opted with some small armour plates from the venerable dreadnought kit, and some green-stuff script work in a few areas.

The interior of the model is a lot smaller than I expected, and once I wired it all up there was very little room for storing the spare weapon options and converting the hurricane bolter-counts as onto the side doors. After some playing around, I ended up deciding on a single internal manned gun on a swivel which is revealed by opening the side doors. There's a bit of suspension of disbelief involved (where are the lower half of his legs?), but considering it's also supposed to carry a half-dozen terminators inside, there must be some sort of extra-dimensional engineering involved!

Lighting is two of the PoweredBases kits with both cockpits lit, as well as the interior, and the underslung gun mount.

Base coated and attempted shading with an airbrush for the first time. The smoothness is great for vehicles, but I under-estimated how different the shades needed to be to show up, so I'll have to do some shading with brushwork.

I like the idea of the swivel gunner for the hurricane bolters.

All the extra details looks great, especially the doors. I think you've hit the mark in terms of portraying a 'relic' storm raven.

EDC

Looking good. I have always like LEDs in models lol