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Something of a toughie for all you dakkaites out there: I have an army of swamp-fighter themed vetrans that are as of yet footslogging it around the battlefield and getting blown to pieces into the bargain, so I want to model a whole bunch of hovercrafts to transport them in, to count-as valyries/vendettas (fast skimmer transports being about perfect rules-wise).

Whilst I realise that there are a few companies that make some very fine hovercraft (ie voids viridians etc.), I would also like to use them in my local Games Workshop, so they need to be at least 50% games workshop parts. My thoughts were to mount some form of plasticard cockpit on a flatbed of movement tray cut to size, but I need ideas for both how to do the air cushion and the giant propeller at the back.

All comments and suggestions would be much appreciated, please help

The easiest way, would be to get some greenstuff, and a length of flexible tubing of a relevant size ( your local hardware / plastics / plumbing store will have it and will sell by the meter ).

You'll want to get tubing slightly thinner than the skirt width you want.

Then make a 'tape' of greemstuff and layer strips of it along the tubing.

You now have the traditional curvy billowy hovercraft skirt, cheaply, with a minimum of space and material used - and It'll be lota greenstuff, and how are they to know it isnt solid

I mean - to make something like this:

Would be easy enough.

Do the above, make a frame of plasticard (and/or sprue), use a bit of cardboard coated in GS to make the fan casing, paperclips to make the guard and you're away.

On a personal note - I'd make the deck out of trimmed sprue then drill a hole in that for a flying base.

Landspeeders are probably the place to start. You could easily use the cockpit as a driving position and potentially use the engines either as they are or just use them as the basis for plasticarding some big fans on. Landspeeders also have the benefit of regularly turning up cheap on e-bay.

If you want a sleeker look then perhaps use the Sentinel armoured cockpit as a driving position to narrow down the front of the thing?

For the air cushion perhaps shape polystyene? You will have to seal it before painting, but it would be brand free. Otherwise Old Crow do some fantastic 40k scale ground effect vehicles that you could plunder.

That is actually a brilliant idea, thankyou very much

How did you come up with that?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
To ovion, didn't realise there was another post underneath

I scratchbuild stuff a lot.

I made my own talos and cronos, and I'm in the process of making custom Venom(s) and Raider(s).

Sprue, GS, wire mesh and cardboard are my friend.

I'll do up a sketch of how to make sprue decking for you too if you want

That would be marvelously helpful of you

For the skirt why not use actual strips of rubber over an accordingly shaped foam/polystyrene base. Easy to attach and should look pretty authentic.

If I were making it, this is how I'd do it.
So first this:


Then this:


Get a hand fan.. like this:

2-4 fixed blade hand fan, then cut it down till it fits (make a hole at the bottom of the fan casing). This is me being lazy. You could make a stand out of sprue and GS the blades out of plasticard.

To fashion the steering assembly / cowling thing, I'd layer sprue and file it to shape as a frame, then make the curves out of greenstuff and / or cardboard.
Could possibly use chunks of the hand fan too.

I second Bullfrog's use of actual rubber. A blown bicycle tire tube would work beautifully to be cut down into strips. And glued over the skirt form.

Thankyou all for your help, it has been most instrumental (particularly for the handy guide Ovion). Work begins shortly, pics shall follow

Old crow has several hover craft... maybe look there for ideas
http://www.oldcrowmodels.co.uk/25hamm.htm