Imperial AT-TS

[Weaver]

Serious progress! Cockpit floor and pivot now all installed and working and turret swivel/tilt mechanism fully built and working a treat: it even has an eccentric feature to raise or lower the turret a bit!  More pipe blanks have been abused to do this: their rubbery plastic is ideal for this sort of thing (I just hope it'll take a coat of paint....)

[Weaver]

Some quick photies:

[nev]

This is gunna be cool.  In my minds eye I can picture it rumbling along, the head raising up and looking around

But 2am?  srsly?

[Weaver]

Yawn...yep -actually it was more like 3.00am plus for the pics...


The head won't actually be able to raise up on it's own: the turntable doesn't pivot to compensate. Although it doesn't look like it now, the cockpit and turret "arms" will be fixed relative to each other, in other words they're a thin, skeletal "hull" on which the other bits are mounted.

Weaver
Owner of a permanently screwed-up body clock

[Taiidantomcat]

Excellent! 

[Weaver]

Could've sworn I posted these last night.....

Started detailing the inner sides of the hulls:




This is the finished central beam:




The arms on the beam are just butt-jointed to the pivot tube, which struck me as a bit weak, so that central plastic tube conceals a longer alloy tube that's drilled and pinned to the arms at each end. The ends of the pins (brass wire) are secured by little plastic plates glued over their ends. This means that the weights of the cockpit and turret are now trying to stretch an alloy tube instead of trying to shear off a cemented plastic joint.

[Mossie]

This is special!

[NARSES2]

This is special!

Seconded! 

Thirded 

[Weaver]

Cheers folks!  

Some more pics. A GA first:




Here's the inside of one hull with it's detailing almost finished (few odds'n'sods to sort out). Note the umbilical at the back. I ended up making this out of 15-gauge fuse wire as 30 was too stiff and kept breaking the mounting tubes off the model when I moved it!




Inside of the turret. The black bulkhead is to stop light from gaps at the back being visible through the gunner's slit, which means I don't have to mask it: hopefull it's far enough back that spray won't get on it:




Here's the "radiator" at the front. I've left the element loose (it's a tight sliding fit) so that I can paint it separately. There are 40 pieces of Evergreen in the rad plus it's mountings!




And here it is in kit form:




There's actually a few more bits than in that picture, which will be sorted out in the morning. Then it's paint shop! I bought a tin of Modelmates soot black weathering spray a while back and had inteded to use it on this, but then I read on their website that you have to be careful with the black as it's the least removeable. Sure enough, a test on spare bit of painted plastic showed that it's much too dark, so tomorrow, I'll be seeking out the Slate Grey.

Today crop of classic cock-ups include:

There's a peculiar problem whereby the discs on the side of the head won't sit flush to the head when the guns are fitted. Hacking about at the mounting pins cured this, but meant that they now had to be very carefully aligned for glueing, and not using the guns, since I'd have to clamp them while they dried. No problem, fit too short stubs of Evergreen rod in the holes, cut flush, glue, clamp, then push the rodsout from the inside when it's dry. Great plan, upto the point where I came to push then out and remembered that I'd plated the bottom of the head in..... I eventually had to "screw extract" them by drilling them and screwing a self-tapped in to give me something to pull on. In the process, both discs came off again, due to the peculiar shiny plastic that the kit parts are made from. Did it again, with floods of glue, by eye.....

Made a little radar unit for the top of the turret (can't see it in the pics) by glueing a short length of tube to a Panther idler (great cassegrain aerial shape!) and a disc to the back of it. Came to drill it out for some wires hours later, and the whole thing squashed in my hand! I'd created a sealed compartment full of liquid poly with no way for air to get in, so it had just eaten and eaten at the tubing without drying. I've drilled a tiny air hole in it now, but it still hasn't stiffened up....

[nev]

[Weaver]

Base made (pics when finished ).

Coat of Humbrol primer and.... it reacted: loads of wierd paint effects... Some of it could be down to the plastic that the base kit and some of the scavanged bits are made of, but it can't be all that because it's happened on regular styrene too. Might have been that the base coat was too heavy, trying to get into all the detail. Live and learn...

I used the primer grey because Hobbycraft were sold out of Hu64 light grey, but I had half a can of it, so I gave the main parts a light top-coat of it. Being lighter it gave some nice contrast and got nearer to "Star Wars Grey". Didn't mask the reacted bits, but since this is a rough-finish land vehicle I decided to live with them. If it was a plane I'd be crying now though...

Now to paint some detail and stuff and put it to bed with a coat of matt varnish. No pictures now until it's finished.

[sotoolslinger]

Seriously frikken awesome

[Weaver]

I am so stupid - the primer, that I picked up out of a rack of ENAMEL spray paints, was acrylic...

Cheers Hobbycraft, but then I suppose I could have read the tin too.....

It's now got a thorough mix of acrylic and enamel paint on it, so I've given it a top coat of acrylic matt varnish. See what it's like in the morning.....

[Weaver]

'Tis done - pics uploading now.

I didn't use the modelmates spray in the end because it was just too dark, so I weathered it with good old Windsor and Newton black ink, heavily diluted. True to form, that went a bit wierd too, but the end result's acceptable.

I made the windowsby cutting sections of cleat packaging plastic, painting it on the inside, and then sticking it on the surface with superglue. This gives you the sense of depth, i.e. that the darkness is behind the window, not on the surface of it.


Components:

AMT Snap-tite clockwork AT-ST walker (scale uncertain)
C.C.Lee 1/72nd Leopard 1A5
Airfix HO-OO modern flat and shop (various grill and panels)
Two Airfix 1/76th Bloodhound SAM launchers (turntables, satcom body,various details)
Airfix 1/72nd Bristol Blenheim engine fronts (turret elevation pivots)
Matchbox 1/76th Panther tank wheel (targeting radar and hull hatch detail)
Airfix 1/600th HMS Daring (various bits of detail)
Airfix Fiat G.91 landing gear leg (satcom strut)
Wills HO-OO chequer plate decking and rivet strips (display base and bits of detail)
Spencer's 6mm injection moulded white lettering (Lettering on base)
Roco 1/87th Minitanks accessory sprues (various details)
Frosted pearl cabouchons (domes on hulls)
DIY screw head covers (satcom dish and turret front plate)
Pop bottle (brand unknown) top (turret base)
Plastic vac-form packaging (windows)
Hydraulic pipe blanks (various spacers and collars)
Evergreen plastic sections ( hull inner sides, cockpit bottom central arm, pivot tubes, various axles, chin radiator, surface detail)
Brass and alloy tube and rod (various axles, pivots and braces)
15 and 5 gauge fuse wire (cables and umbilicals)

[Weaver]

Captain Harl of the Rebel 91st Battalion's anti-walker platoon was quietly confident, despite the panicky comms traffic they'd picked up earlier. With mountains to their left and soft ground to their right, the Imperial walkers would have to come through the trees dead ahead, and by the time they cleared them, they'd be well within range. He looked around his position, checking the tangler teams again. Each team had two remote-control missiles on tripod launch rails, connected to each end of 100 metre spool of mono-filament cable. In front of him, the command-mine control box was all wired up and armed, and the kill teams with their mag-bombs were ready to go. They'd learnt a lot since Hoth.



Suddenly,  a heavy explosion to his right showered him with earth. More plasma bolts were screeching overhead, and he sought desperately for the source of the fire. It took him a moment to re-calibrate his brain, because the fire was coming from across the soft ground, and from a very long range.

"What the Hell...."



Harl scrabbled about for his macro-binoculars. Unbelievably, grey Imperial vehicles were advancing across the marshland, showers of spray and mud obscuring his view of how they were doing it. He was completely wrong-footed: all the mines were between his position and the woods and the tangler teams arcs wern't good.

"Target right flank! Re-deploy! Re-deploy!"



His men scrambled to point their equipment at the new threat. A corporal shouted something he didn't catch, pulled some plugs out of the command-mine box and ran off towards the trees before he could question it. The fire was coming in thick and fast now and they were taking serious casualties. Eventually, tanglers lept from their rails and sped off towards the mystery vehicles. Rudders hard over once past them, they spun round and round the target until it's legs would be wrapped in cable and unable to move. it was foolproof and tested in battle many times, but today, it made no difference. He watched in horror as the vehicles simply ploughed on, dragging the spent tangler rockets behind them like discarded toys.



He was still frozen, watching the advancing vehicles, when a blurred sillouette appeared in his view finder. He put the focus cues on it, and it resolved into the shape of the corporal. He was running towards the Imperial attack, from cover to cover, and he was carrying something: one of the command mines. Eventually, he got himself in front of the lead vehicle, stood up, and threw the mine like a discus. It cost him his life as a shower of blaster bolts blew him to pieces a second later, but his aim had been true and the mine had gone under the vehicle. As it advanced, it suddenly vanished in a heavy explosion of mud and earth, and then shuddered to a halt.



Harl's men began to cheer at the sight of this, but their cheers were cut short as, to their amazement, the Imperial vehicle didn't fall over: it just sat there, pouring fire at them. Harl couldn't understand it: how the hell were they doing this? Watching though his binoculars again, he got his answer. Another vehicle turned sharply sideways to go around the disabled one, and he could see that it was rolling on multiple wheels, with a mechanism that laid a kind of articulated "carpet" under them and then picked it up once they'd rolled over it. In the back of his mind, he knew he'd seen something like this in a history book, but it wouldn't come, and this was no time for reverie.



Harl looked around at their piles of kit. It was all useless: these things rolled over the tangler cable, they were too fast for the kill teams to approach with mag-bombs, the grav-field disrupters were irrelevant, there was nothing they could do. He made a decision.

"Retreat! Fall back! Every man for himself!"

They didn't need telling twice. The Imperials gave no quarter, blizzards of blaster bolts cutting through the men as they ran, felling many. In his fear and frustration, Harl wanted desperately to turn and shake his fist a them, make some sort of defiant gesture, but he didn't. He just ran, like the rest.



At the command post, General Timpu was seething with frustration and his staff were taking the brunt of it.

"How in the gods' names can they be there man? They'd have to be walking at 40kmh to do that and no walker's that fast, not even an AT-ST! Are all our scouts drunk?  These reports don't make any sense at all!"

"It's all true Sir."

The General spun around to see Captain Harl in the doorway. He was panting and dishevelled, and nursing an ugly blaster burn on his arm. Despite this, he'd had time to dredge his memory.

"They're not walking General, they're using tracks...."

"Tracks!" Timpu was thunderstruck.

"Well the devious Imperial bastards....."





(Note that the AT-TS obeys Imperial design rule 1a: "All vehicles shall be painted grey irrespective of operational enviroment" and rule 2b "All vehicles, no matter how formidable, shall incorporate a critical weakness that can be exploited by some reckless hero with more bollocks than brain cells". In this case, one of the vulnerable umbilicals at the back has saved him the trouble by disconnecting itself.... )