First Six Combat Armour Suits Completed

 

All the combat armor suits that have or will appear in my Gate Walker novels.

I started this project back at the end of January, five months ago, now we're at the end of June. How time flies by? As I've recorded here, there has been a lot of fiddling and modifying to get these looking the way I want.

But now they're done. As always, click to embiggen the pictures.

This started out as Espera's suit from my novel Strike Dog, but will now represent a variant of the CAS-1-Mod 3.

I now have another eight RAFM Gears to convert, and fortunately enough spare parts to be able to do variant weapon loadouts with magnetized arm joints.

A CASE-2X suit variant based on the support platoons in my novel Bad Dog.

And below there's a triptych of Tachikoma's new boss suit that will appear in future novels.

CASE-2XC-Mod 2E variant.

And finally some close ups of Ferretti's Buster suit. The right arm isn't magnetized because the ammo feed restricts the arm movement, but the right arm is, but that's purely for the ability to be able to pose the model when taking reference shots for cover art.

CAS-4CP variant.

So, the next stage will be to wash these in preparation for painting.

  

More RAFM Gears Acquired

Two Azure Devils Jagers, A Grizzly, and Support Cobra.

Thanks to the kindness of Jeff Racel I received a some more DP9 RAFM Gears. These additions will plug a couple of holes in my collection.

Also, expanded my weapon selection and accessories, which was a total bonus win when it comes to my conversions, because you can never have too many choices to choose from.

A bunch more weapons and spares for stowage.

And there's more... Moooaar I tell you!

Jeff very kindly sent me two Jaguars that I will strip and rebuild, which was a totally unexpected bonus.

 

The green Gear with an axe might be the Predator Jaguar variant.

Finally, a Matchbox HEMMT PLS, which was super kind of him to part with. Now I have plans. Cunning plans to turn this into a representation of the trucks that appear in both my Strike Dog and Ghost Dog novels.

M1120A4 HEMTT LHS precursor to 10 wheel PLS version.

Muwuhahahaha! Catch you all on the bounce.

Mech Suit Progess: More Fettling

I added a roll bar to protect the head from the crane arm, and changed the weapon because I could.

Just when I thought I was getting nearer to slapping some paint on these, I had an idea. It's all Wouter's fault too! Only kidding, Wouter, you got me thinking.

 

You can see the magnets nestled inside the torso, and the extra stowage I added to the back of the mech.

I have a bunch of old RAFM Gears, but a lot of them are missing parts, like heads or backpacks. However, this means I have a bunch of spare arms to play with.

I had to rework the arm, as my first attempt to sculpting didn't work out.

So the thought occurred to me that if I magnetized the shoulder joints I could swap arms on the models, and change out the weapon loadouts to suit my fancy. How hard could it be?

Jolly hockey sticks, not so much hard, just more time consuming than I imagined.

You can see clear through the torso that I've drilled to mount the magnets, and close-ups of the sculpting on the knee joints.

So that's what I've been doing, and it's taking a bit longer than I anticipated to convert all the models, so yet another work in progress report. But soon I shall start painting them.

Soon I say, my voice lost in time and space.

Guest on SciFi Shenanigans

  

This is late news because I became distracted by world events. I remembered to put it up on Facebook, but forgot to do so here. I can only blame myself for not posting this news here sooner. Doh!

I was recently invited to be a guest on the SciFi Shenanigans podcast.

So now you can hear me speak in Episode 155 – MilSciFi Panel 3 – British Edition, hosted by JR Handley with my fellow Mil-SF authors Tim C Taylor, and Ralph Kern.

In other news, after a long hiatus I've started writing, refreshed after a long, much needed break to sort out my shit.
  

Takara 1/48th Burglary Dog

I scooped this Takara 1/48th Scale Burglary Dog ATM-09-DD off eBay this week. I've wanted one of these toys for a long while, but all the ones I'd seen for sale have been offered at a breath taking price.

So this particular version often goes for staggering sums of money, but I was very lucky, and acquired this one at a bargain price. Colour me very pleased.

As you can see, some assembly required, but this is simple enough: on par with IKEA furniture. Still it came as a bit of a shock, as I was expecting an assembled toy to play with.

Dream Pod 9 drew inspiration from the anime Armored Trooper VOTOMS show. A rough comparison reveals this model is about twice the height of the RAFM Heavy Gear models I've been converting.

When I've assembled this model, I'll take a picture with my RAFM conversions, so everyone can a better idea of how big these are. If they weren't so damn expensive they would make good mecha for 28mm wargames.

Hope to catch you all on the bounce.

  

WIP: Carrying On Conversions

It has taken me a lot longer to complete the conversions than I would've imagined. I spent all of Saturday working on adding stowage to just three mech suit miniatures.

Sunday I had two writing assignments to finish, so today I spent some time fiddling with getting the next two miniatures further forward to being complete.

This time I knew it was going to take a bit of time to fabricate the parts I wanted to revise my command combat armor suit.

After gluing two pieces of brass together I stated filing them to shape, as can be seen in the picture at the top of the post.

Then I split then apart (easily done with superglued joints. As you can also see I've changed the hand on the arm so it's now pointing a finger.

Finally, I mounted the antennae on the shoulder, replicating the look of the VOTOMS Bloodsucker Dog here.

No wonder people like ready assembled miniatures.

In other modeling news, I got an order from GZG for more stowage (jerry cans, boxes etc.) and a bunch of Jon's robot figures.

In other secret news, now not so much of a secret, I have four more RAFM Heavy Gears in transit for the States with a big bag of parts, and a Matchbox HEMMT. Thanks to Jeff Racel for enabling this acquisition.

As always, stay safe, stay well, and catch you all on the bounce.