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Back in July 2013, I acquired two things. The first is a bulldog named Lily.



The second, which you people actually care about, is a MDF model by a company called Angry Badger games. I'm not sure if they are still in business, but when I bought my Dropship, they sold terrain and models, and even had a thread on Dakkadakka for their stuff.

The MDF flyer, which was called a Hellbadger, had a 16" wingspan, was very heavy, and had some similarities to a Games Workshop Thunderhawk. It wasn't a knockoff - it was it's own beast - but had the same bones.

Here are some stock images of the Hellbadger:


It ran $140 including shipping, which I thought was a very good deal (it's a heavy kit obviously).

It was a very easy build - my wife and I built it together over about 3 days on the dining room table. We used elmer's glue for all of it - it was like assembling a puzzle. Unfortunately I didn't take a single picture of the build process - In my defense, I didn't know it would go OOP. In fact, I pre-ordered it and got a voucher for future terrain that I imagine is now worthless

Well, que sera, sera. I still feel pretty satisfied in the end.

I did make some modifications to the build: The stock Badger has twin angled tails: I tossed 3 of them, and used it to make a rudder instead.

I got an OK from the guy who made the kits to recast the winglets, so I cast 2 of the winglets to make the classic Thunderhawk T tail.

I reversed the front winglets.

I added some wings from a Stormraven to make the smaller secondary wings.

I made a raiser box for the turret, and removed the twin lasers to build a Turbolaser (which I built out of styrene tubing and such).

I took off the gatling guns and their mounts, and covered them with big airbrake looking things.

I added the Stormraven gun mounts to the mid-body (which Games Workshop now does with the new Thunderhawk - hah!)

I made some dual heavy bolters out of... I'm not sure, I found them on ebay and they originally had Ravenwing iconography.
I also found some lascannons, which weren't quite as long as I wanted, but they would do. I also got some missiles from the Valkyrie kit, which I already had.


So, after I built it, I did what I did with all of my models: I primed it, and then put it upstairs with my giant pile of unpainted 40k gak and abandoned it utterly for years.

Here you can see it on top of my Unraid server.


Man, that keyboard is disgusting.

So, flash forward to about 2 weeks ago.

In the ensuing 4 years, the only progress I made on it was moving it from the top of the server to my gaming table, not because I was going to paint it, obviously, but because I needed to take the server cover off to replace the CPU. Eventually I got tired of cropping it out of the background of random pictures I'd upload to Dakka.

I decided to at least prime it red. And with that, the hook was set. I was on a tear: I got almost all of the body painting done in a single night. I don't have any pictures of the painting process, because I was in the zone - I probably spent 6 or 8 hours straight painting. It was very straightforward, anyway: I preshaded everything with an airbrush, then did some masking, laid down a basecoat etc etc.

Here it is when it was very nearly finished:


And it wasn't bad, really but... it didn't quite pop.

First I added some decals. This could have gone better.

It turns out the waterslide decals I had made up were now so old, some of the paper came off with them. Oops.





They're still wet in the pictures, but you can see the little bits of paper under there. Well, no big deal, I can paint over the patchy parts.

I decided the problem was the engines. They weren't bad, but they weren't great, and this thing was very nearly great.

I couldn't mount them where they are normally on a Stormraven - the Hellbadger has removable wings, and they're so heavy it would be very difficult to re-engineer the kit. I could put them right on top of the wings, though, and it would look good.

I checked Valkyrie engines, but they were too small. I made some up and put them on Shapeways, but they came to $135 each. I couldn't find pod racer engines or anything similar. I finally gave up and made my own.

I went to Lowes, and got some plumbing supplies. I don't know what any of these things are, I don't know anything about plumbing. I know it cost 9 bucks for all this stuff though.



The original nozzles were now too small to fit on that compression... thing. I had to build my own nozzles, which I did with some help from Daedalus (thanks again!).



I had 2 fan inlets from Zinge Industries, which were just about perfect - but they weren't a matched pair. I spoke with Zinge and got an OK to do a one-off recast. Here is the moldbox with some more detail added:



And here is the original plus the recast with final detailing added:



Mostly I used styrene tubing. I also added some little gubbins from GWS kits, and made some hoses with a GSI tentacle maker..

Finally, I had the engines done. I eyeballed them into place, attached with some brass rod, then removed them and painted them. I really wish I had gotten more pictures of the rest of the build, but the only parts I really had the presence of mind to document was the engine build - mostly because it was midnumbingly boring and required frequent breaks.

At that point, we're more or less finished. Here are the finished images!

With the rest of my Blood Ravens:











All of the underwing weapons are magnetized, although I don't think the Thunderhawk can take different weapons (right?)








The heavy bolters in a Stormraven mount:



The Turbolaser turret is magnetized and so can swing left and right.







Finally, I put some lights in it, which totally did not need to happen.

In the cockpit:



Front ramp:



Rear ramp:





The top/tail assembly lifts off. In a normal Hellbadger build, this locks the engines in place, which locks the wings in place - you can assemble and disassemble the major parts for transportation without glue or anything. WELL NOT ANYMORE, so I might as well glue this back on before it falls off unexpectedly.



Here's the power switch under a magnetized hatch. You will note the switch is just a piece of paper stuck into the battery holder between the battery and the contact. Incredibly lazy.



Anyway, that's it. The stock build took about 3 days, the base paint was 2 days tops. Scratchbuilding and molding the engines and painting them took about a week on and off. Another few days to finish everything up, along with 4 years of procrastination made for a pretty fast build. Too bad you can't get these anymore, I don't think.

Beautiful! Bit sad that these aren't really something that you can come by anymore. Wonderful job! Makes for a good centerpiece.

Very awesome!

Very impressive work. And such a sweet puppy.