The landing gear is now almost done. A couple of oldschool autocannons, a splash of plasticard, and tada. The feet are fastened in place on the legs, however the legs will rotate back together through 90degrees. This puts the landing gear out of the way for flight, and gives the kopta something of a frog-like silhouette. So I'm thinking that's where it's name will be taken from (grot hoppa perhaps?).

Search light is done, it's just a chopped up slugga and an old style IG search light. Think it works nicely.

IG flamer backpack attached under the engine, some sort of coolant or boost I would envisage. My grots are very smart meks but don't always tell me what the new bits are for. I try not to pry.

Rokkit on the other side is new too. Just a HK missile chopped down a bit. I'd like to have a go at painting a big grin on it when I get that far, but my free hand is appalling so we shall see.

The rotors have now been started properly. I dismantled the old version, chopped a gap out of the middle and assembled what you now see. It's a new SM searchlight back, filed down and attached to some tubing. Makes quite a nice housing. I want to add some small rod pieces to act as controls for the tilting of the blades (sure they have a hugely technical name I don't know). A few bits of tube on the upright have helped detail that too.

I've also started the pilot, but no pics yet. I'll try and get him greenstuffed this week, filling the gaps I had to hack in a pair of wolf-rider legs to make him fit, and adding the ubiquitous goggles.

After that's it just needs a roll cage bar thing and I think it might be done.

Really enjoying this, tis good fun working on finite projects rather than big beasts with no end in sight.

The post Landing Gear appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

Rather than trying to recreate the gyrocopters I just wanted to use them as an inspiration. So I didn't try to copy their design, merely used the idea of the sentinel hull as the cockpit. Rather than wasting the rest of the sentinel I set about trying to fit it all together in a decent pattern.

The engine rotated and fit nicely up against the back of the cockpit. Underthis I fastened the upper half of the pelvis joint. This left me with a gap, which I promptly filled with half a gun from Robogear!

For the trail I rummaged in my bits box and found the shoota support from a war buggy. Somehow it seemed to work perfectly.

The rest was just bits acquiring. The big shoota is an old warbike autocannon with a shoota barrel (like all the big shootas in my grot army), but then I used IG autocannon ammo to give it a smoother, rounded look. On the side I've fastened a support from an old HK missile, on here I'll mount my search light. On the other side I'm thinking of mounting two new HK missiles after orkifying them a bit.

The rotor assembly is just tubing and plasticard, but still needs lots of detailing.

The sentinel had been used as a catachan sentinel previously, meaning the frame at the top was removed. I think I'll replace this with another rollcage, rather than a solid roof. Hopefully then with a grot inside it'll look suitably ramshackle-cum-mek to fit with the stompa.

The post Sentinel Base appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

Then I remembered Peter Colon’s Squat Gyrocopters I’d seen a few years back. They used IG sentinel hulls as the cockpits. Then when I picked up a slightly mauled but unpainted sentinel off ebay for a couple of quid, everything fell in to place (cue manic laughter).

The post Project Overview appeared first on BlokeCrafted.