Republic Gunship 15mm

Its time to bite the bullet and tackle this metal toy. At first I was a little disappointed that they don't produce a printed gunship to accompany the figures. Then I realised that if they did, the cockpit would be resin, so you wouldn't be able to see inside. So the toy makes for a much more satisfying model with it's clear view port.

I decided to paint the yellow wings an off white colour to make the craft a lot more screen accurate.This was a bit of a faff as I had to paint three layers of the white before it became opaque.

The model is looking so much better now with the correct colours.

A shot of a gunship looking pretty grimmy with lots of carbon scoring and battle damage.

These illustrations were really useful getting the colour scheme right. 

I had to hunt around for details of these ball turrets.

 

Now comes the bit that gave me a bit of school boy joy, I managed to cut down some troopers and get them in the cockpit. 

I wasn't sure I needed to and the thought of wasting figures almost stopped me. However, now they're in, they look great. They also help to bring the gunship into 15mm scale that will match the infantry being dropped off. I think it was worth the gamble.

The LAAT pilots sit quite high up so you can definitely see them in the craft, luckily these figures match that looks exactly.

Painting the model completely did give me the opportunity to add some more details that had been left off the toy. These included little yellow warning signs dotted about the vehicle.

I like the fact that the pilots are looking in different directions out of the cockpit. Keep your head on a swivel!

"Matchstick requesting clearance to lift off"

Two cut down troopers are promoted to pilots. These were originally falling casualty figures. I filed off their helmet fins and gave them the yellow pilot markings.

All pilots to their ships...all pilots to their ships.

I used a fine red pen to draw on their helmet markings. Being so small I doubt anyone will see them but I thought it was worth doing.

Next came the scary bit of putting an oil wash over the model. I went with oil for the fact it can be removed with paint thinner in places giving you more control.

Heavy flak damage.

I dug out some black oil paint and thinned it right down with some paint thinner. I used the odourless one to please my wife.

I managed to match all the toy colours close enough. I also added quite a few different shades of  the colours to help with the panel work look. The gunships are very large and the panel work would be easy to see. I need to remember how long to leave it to dry...I think it's about three days for oil.

Here is the original toy a couple of weeks ago showing the yellow wings. I could have lived with this but when you're spending so long painting up models to be accurate, there's no point making so with something you're not happy with. Now the pilots are in, the whole scale thing is no longer an issue. Ironically, if the gunship was a bite smaller, I wouldn't have been able to put the figures in.

So, a morning well spent with a lovely surprise of getting those pilots in the cockpit. Now the infantry can be dropped off in style!