Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I found a company called ACME models that does the drop ship from Space Above and Beyond (1996 TV show about US Marines in space) in resin for $80. 1/60 scale which is more or less 28mm.



They also have the fighter, called the Hammerhead



The site looks a bit dusty so I can't say anything about the company or quality but it might be of interest to some here.

http://www.acme360models.com/default.htm

It has the advantage of looking a credible vehicle but not being so famous (like the Aliens ship) it looks out of place in 40k.

I think I would rather get a SR than spend 80 dollars on a website that might just be a remnant of a lost age.

I haven't seen those in ages

I have the series, and love it

Thanks for the links! I may have to get some now

Chowderhead wrote:I think I would rather get a SR than spend 80 dollars on a website that might just be a remnant of a lost age.

Well I'd make sure they're answering email before paying anything.

And frankly I'd rather have root canal than pay money for the Chibi Hawk

Ascalam wrote:I haven't seen those in ages

I have the series, and love it

Thanks for the links! I may have to get some now

Never could understand why pilots where always doing ground missions....but i loved the show as well!

@KK: great find as always!

I know the chibihawk has its fair share of critics, but does anyone really despise the Chibster enough to pay 20+ bucks more for something that doesn't fit the army aesthetic?

Plus the 2nd vehicle doesn't seem to have any type of VTOL capability, which is what the chib is used for.

Side note : I loved that show as a kid. I wonder if a re-release or remake would be more long lived with todays more sci-fi accepting general public. Show had alot of good themes, beyond a war with aggressive aliens, who may not have been all that alien from what I remember.

alarmingrick wrote:
Never could understand why pilots where always doing ground missions....

Same reason that the Captain was always leaving the ship on Star Trek: They focused on the wrong characters as the main.

Platuan4th wrote:

alarmingrick wrote:
Never could understand why pilots where always doing ground missions....

Same reason that the Captain was always leaving the ship on Star Trek: They focused on the wrong characters as the main.

Or more because they were pilots second, and Marines first

I think the canon answer was it was so expensive to get people that far out into space they did whatever had to be done. It was cheaper to risk pilots fighting on the ground than fly out dedicated infantry.

Not a bad answer really.

The Hammerhead looks great! The drop ship would have been cool about a year or so ago, before the Valkyrie became plastic. Seriously, a Valkyrie is the PERFECT vehicle, I would rather use that as is then a Storm Raven any day.

NELS1031 wrote:I know the chibihawk has its fair share of critics, but does anyone really despise the Chibster enough to pay 20+ bucks more for something that doesn't fit the army aesthetic?

I would argue the Chibi Hawk does not fit the army aesthetic. I mean really, a dread hanging off a UFO catcher on the tail? That's where they ride?

And a bank of bolters hanging off the side of a ship while it rides through re-entry?

And a cabin that's even smaller than a rhino but holds more troops?

And ARG!!!!!! I can't take it! The Chibi hawk SUCKS! Oh GW we know FW can make great boxy space ships, they do it all the time and hit it out of the park, why oh why couldn't you have made an Aquila Lander in plastic, why?

I was really disappointed when that series got cancelled. Things were just getting interested and revealing at the end of the season, and *poof*

Very cool model, though it looks more like a valk than a Storm Raven. I would like to see it compared to a 28mm figure though. 1/60 is nominally a small 28, but 1/60 military vehicles look quite small next to heroic 30mm 40k figures. As it's a sci-fi model, depending on the actual size, it could be quite small or more than adequate.

And ARG!!!!!! I can't take it! The Chibi hawk SUCKS! Oh GW we know FW can make great boxy space ships, they do it all the time and hit it out of the park, why oh why couldn't you have made an Aquila Lander in plastic, why?

Because that would have been incredible. And fitted with in the idea of the imperium sharing similar templates for construction (aka S.T.C). But no the Chibihawk was born instead. Mind for £15 more you could have an Arvus Lighter (much better than Chibi IMO) or for double the price of the Chibi there is the FW Aquila.
There was the chance to make an incredible mini but they failed.

The ones above aren't bad, with a bit of 40k bits added you could have something that looks a lot cooler than the chibi. But cost is what makes a great model. Me I would be comfortable paying for a better model if I knew I would use it a lot.

NELS1031 wrote:
Plus the 2nd vehicle doesn't seem to have any type of VTOL capability, which is what the chib is used for.

The VTOL capability of the Ward-hawk are modeled exactly where? I see some fixed engines. Nothing that implies VTOL. Unless you mean those exhaust vents on the front that block the bolters and would actually accomplish nothing because they would require so much internal eqiupment that passengers would not be able to use the front door of the vehicle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

alphaomega wrote:

There was the chance to make an incredible mini but they failed.

they got all of the bandwagoneers to jump on it with over-powered rules and still sold a bunch of bad models that were designed on the cheap.

So it's not an entire failure.

lol... the company is called ACME? do they also ship explosives and various road-runner-catching devices in resin as well?

it's been a long time since i thought about that show but i did watch the entire (albeit short) run way back when. the dropship and fighter were so-so but i do remember the capital ships looking quite spiffy.

I'm confused. Where has it ever been said that the Stormraven is a VTOL?

Everything I've seen implies it's more a STOL, ala the Harrier.

The Harrier is a VTOL.

It can take off and land vertically, hover, and even fly backwards.

My uncle is a Harrier pilot.

That bird can dance under the right hands :0)


Of course the twin Pegasus engines and their fuel tanks take up 99% of a pretty big plane

The Chibihawk doesn't really compare, but i don't much care. I don't run marines anyway. It looks a lot better than the leaked photo implied, but i doubt i'd buy one except to ork up as a Fighta-bomma

Space: Above and Beyond was the best nuts n'bolts sci-fi series. While other shows had a plethora of muppets and "aliens" that looked like they simply had their own genitalia growing from their foreheads and could solve any problem by retasking the photon dish array to produce tachyons instead of gamma rays, it was the first show to consider how space combat would look if fought by contemporary soldiers rather than computer programmers in space 'jammies.

sigh.

I always felt the Battlestar Galactica people must have been big fans of the show, because it really felt like its predessor. And, both series had crap endings.

/nostalgic b!tching.

I think the canon answer was it was so expensive to get people that far out into space they did whatever had to be done. It was cheaper to risk pilots fighting on the ground than fly out dedicated infantry.

Not a bad answer really.

That's a terrible answer! It's sooooooooooo much more expensive to train a pilot than a front line soldier. The only comparison off the top of my head would be USMC pilots that go through normal boot camp and infantry training, this is to familiarize them with what the troops do so that their missions are more effective.

If anything because the resource of a good pilot would be even harder to acquire they should have been protected more.

Drove me crazy, when I would watch that show, understand it was necessary for the plot, but still a terrible idea.......cool show though otherwise. Enjoyed the physics based space fighter movement.

alphaomega wrote:

And ARG!!!!!! I can't take it! The Chibi hawk SUCKS! Oh GW we know FW can make great boxy space ships, they do it all the time and hit it out of the park, why oh why couldn't you have made an Aquila Lander in plastic, why?

Because that would have been incredible. And fitted with in the idea of the imperium sharing similar templates for construction (aka S.T.C). But no the Chibihawk was born instead. Mind for £15 more you could have an Arvus Lighter (much better than Chibi IMO) or for double the price of the Chibi there is the FW Aquila.
There was the chance to make an incredible mini but they failed.

The ones above aren't bad, with a bit of 40k bits added you could have something that looks a lot cooler than the chibi. But cost is what makes a great model. Me I would be comfortable paying for a better model if I knew I would use it a lot.

Man, a plastic Arvus would get my wallet out in a hurry. Oh well, maybe GW will get around to it in 2050. The Chibi just looks terrible. (although I do have an interest in the hurricain bolter array for a rhino mod...)

Kanluwen wrote:I'm confused. Where has it ever been said that the Stormraven is a VTOL?

Everything I've seen implies it's more a STOL, ala the Harrier.

I mentioned it in my post, which incurred Worglocks critique of the chibis (many) imperfections. I personally always imagined the Stormraven to work like a harrier(without the moving engine that the harrier has obviously), so I brought up the vtol part. Maybe I got STOL and VTOL mixed up, not too familiar with aviation stuff. I just see the engines on the wings and the front and the landing gear that doesn't allow horizontal landing(unless it skids) and assume it can hover up and down using super duper sci fi stuff.

Worglock wrote:The VTOL capability of the Ward-hawk are modeled exactly where? I see some fixed engines. Nothing that implies VTOL. Unless you mean those exhaust vents on the front that block the bolters and would actually accomplish nothing because they would require so much internal eqiupment that passengers would not be able to use the front door of the vehicle.

The back cover of white dwarf 373 calls them "altitude jet pods", not exhaust vents. Again, I'm not privy to the intricacies of aviation terminology but isn't altitude a measurement of height? Doesn't that imply that these "jet pods" are used for climbing height? I'm not saying that the chibster is a practically designed vehicle, just that the 2nd vehicle that KK showed is more of a high speed fixed wing fighter. Anything goes in Sci-fi though, so it doesn't bother me at all if someone used that as a Chib. Or even a Valk for all I care.

Worglock wrote:they got all of the bandwagoneers to jump on it with over-powered rules and still sold a bunch of bad models that were designed on the cheap.
So it's not an entire failure.

Yes, but they pay for those "over-powered" rules points wise, which is why you don't see too many. You can get better things at its points level that play more to the strengths of the BA. If they had made it a bargain points wise, it would've have been a bigger success.

I keep my sanity but imagining that all Imperial fliers use anti grav and the engines are just for forward propulsion.

I also imagine a tear-shaped power field around them keeping them aerodynamic.

But I draw the line at the Chibi Hawk.

Kilkrazy wrote:The Harrier is a VTOL.

It can take off and land vertically, hover, and even fly backwards.

The "take off vertically" part isn't true.

A rolling takeoff, sometimes with a ramp (ski-jump), reduces the amount of thrust required to lift an aircraft from the ground (compared with vertical takeoff), and hence increases the payload and range that can be achieved for a given thrust. To put it bluntly...the Harrier is pretty much incapable of taking off vertically with a full weapons and fuel load.

NELS1031 wrote:
I mentioned it in my post, which incurred Worglocks critique of the chibis (many) imperfections. I personally always imagined the Stormraven to work like a harrier(without the moving engine that the harrier has obviously), so I brought up the vtol part. Maybe I got STOL and VTOL mixed up, not too familiar with aviation stuff. I just see the engines on the wings and the front and the landing gear that doesn't allow horizontal landing(unless it skids) and assume it can hover up and down using super duper sci fi stuff.

Basically:
STOL="Short Take Off Or Landing". They use really small runways or can operate from assault carriers that normally could only operate helicopters.
VTOL="Vertical Take Off Or Landing". Right now, some fixed wing aircraft(the Harrier, the F-35, and the V-22 Osprey[technically, tilt-rotor, but the wings are fixed]) are capable of this. Of them, only the V-22 and F-35 can perform a VTOL when fully loaded. The Harrier needs to get a rolling start.

Andrew1975 wrote:
That's a terrible answer! It's sooooooooooo much more expensive to train a pilot than a front line soldier. The only comparison off the top of my head would be USMC pilots that go through normal boot camp and infantry training, this is to familiarize them with what the troops do so that their missions are more effective.

Honestly, I think people forget that they actually did address that. In the pilot episode and a later one(second? I think episode dealing with the replicant insurgency) they mention that they "trained soldiers to be pilots, so that they can bring themselves into the warzone and fly themselves right back out if necessary".

It's kind of the "Rogue Squadron" mentality we had in the Star Wars EU.
What's more dangerous than commandos?
Commandos who know how to operate basically any kind of craft they get access to.

Kanluwen wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The Harrier is a VTOL.

It can take off and land vertically, hover, and even fly backwards.

The "take off vertically" part isn't true.

A rolling takeoff, sometimes with a ramp (ski-jump), reduces the amount of thrust required to lift an aircraft from the ground (compared with vertical takeoff), and hence increases the payload and range that can be achieved for a given thrust. To put it bluntly...the Harrier is pretty much incapable of taking off vertically with a full weapons and fuel load.

i think he's responding to your post below which makes the blanket statement that the harrier isn't VTOL without adding any qualifiers. The harrier in all its versions was/is a VTOL aircraft within certain limitations (which you've clarified above).

Kanluwen wrote:Everything I've seen implies it's more a STOL, ala the Harrier.

Not entirely true.

I've been up in a harrier with full payload and fuel, taken off a helipad (no stol equipment and no assisted launch 'pult.

It's not graceful, but it can take off loaded. It doesn't soar into the air like a videogame ship, but it will rise under it's own power.

Having a pult or a runway helps a lot and is fuel efficient, but when necessary a Harrier can do it. They also qualify for VTOL under the 'or landing' section, as Harriers are routinely hovered into landing in tight landing zones if they have the spare on-board fuel.

Man, I loved Space: Above & Beyond. That said these are a little too spendy for me.

You guys see this sweet helmet they also sell?

Ouze wrote:Man, I loved Space: Above & Beyond. That said these are a little too spendy for me.

You guys see this sweet helmet they also sell?

To spendy, and I think the Storm Raven is cooler. Nothing about these looks like they belong in a SM army.

Ask any Marine who has ever flown from a Corsair a F-35 if they are a pilot or a Marine and there will be your answer.