Storm Raven Part 1

Well kids by popular demand from facebook folk I will post my ongoing progress on my Storm Raven Transport.

For those who don't know the Storm Raven is the little cousin of the Thunderhawk gunship. Rules and text for the S.R. can be found in the newly released Blood Angel book. It has been loosely described as a flying land raider and interestingly there are no existing pictures of it anywhere. Soooooo... Those of us that want to play with one to improvise. Sooooo as it is described as being a flying land raider. I liked the idea so much that that is how I made it.

I have loosely based my design on a half built Storm Raven built by my mates Vince and Glen. Cheers boys.

I will start with a few general photos of the hull prior to wings, engines, weapons... OK pre-lots of stuff!



As you can see from the above picture I have taken the front and bottom of a land raider and merged it with the cargo bay and tail assembly of a Valkyrie. While it hurt me to butcher two such beautiful kits, it didn't cause me too much stress and in no time I was sitting in a snow drift of plastic shavings.

This is what the S.R. looks like from the front.



As you can see here it is much thinner than a land raider. I completely ignored the middle and inner parts of the land raider kit. What you can't see is that the underside is the land raider floor inversed (so the texted inside is the outside of the bottom. More on this later). By doing this the front doors don't actually fit any more. I had to cut two plates of thick plasticard for the top and bottom of the "jaws" of the front hatch.

I also cut a smaller piece to mask the gap between my doors and the inversed floor.

Here is a picture of the plates I cut before they were installed on the Raven.

The big ones are 5 cm wide and 3.15 cm long.
The thin one is 5 cm wide and 1 cm long.



You can see below how I cut the side panels of the land raider. (note I over cut mine a little and lazily did not use a ruler so one side does not fit perfectly leading to a slight bow in my kit if you look at it from the bottom. I will fix this BUT you should avoid such silliness. I will also take this opportunity to say BY CAREFUL! Using saws and blades can be dangerous if not done properly. I am wearing a band aid as a testament to this. Be smart... Shop S Mart...



and how I cut the side panels of the Valkyrie...



Now the roof. I cut the rounded tip of the Valk room flat. So it would fit. I also shaved the roof flat.



One last bit of housework before getting your glue out.

The front plate of the Land Raider. You have to very minutely trim the front plate where it meets the sides towards the front. I hope this picture helps...



Please contact me if you have any questions..