More progress, thoughts in future builds

Made a fair bit of progress since last post, nearly finished the fuselage now.

Detailed the interior to an extent i'm happy with, attempted to add folding seats to the side walls but these didn't turn out too well


Have added a sheet of textured deckplating to the floor since these photos were taken too.

managed to construct the nose shape and figured out how best to make the sloping wingtips. Also sorted out some crewmen in the cockpit. Wasn't really planning this originaly but there was some clear plasticard included in a mixed pack i ordered so i thought it'd be a good excuse to experiment in making proper windows



I was hoping to leave the floor removeable until i'd painted the interior but while making the nose it became clear it'd be too unstable to properly make the side panels (the ones still missing) unless the floor and the underbelly plates attatched to them were in place and providing support.

I've learned a lot making this first Valkyrie, and i've figured out a few more alterations i'm going to have to implement in future:

- I need to make shaper plates for the nose. Didn't really think about this in too much detail before, and i think that was a side-product of designing in 3D - plates just butted together and everything went without internal support, and this doesn't happen in the real world. I made one plate for the front of the nose on the fly, but it could really use 2 to give more stability, and i'll need to sort some out for the sides too
- No open cockpit! definitely going to seal this up and paint windows on next time, its just not worth the hassle. It was an afterthought this time and it really shows, and the fact i didn't know how best to go about it didn't help
- The fuselage to wing join needs 2 sets of magnets, one set just isn't going to cut it. I was worried to start with, and now the fuselage is almost complete i think i was right to be. It holds, but shake it a bit and it falls off. I've stil got filler and more plasticard to add yet, so this will only get worse.
I'm thinking if it does then it'd be best to use this wing set for the Vulture, as that fuselage won't be nearly as complex or heavy
- Seal the passenger bay up. This was a very sensible suggestion offered over on the Work In Progress forums that i hadn't actually thought of before. I may try again with an open one in future and limit the details, but sealing it will make construction much simpler, the model much lighter and it would still look fine. Other than visually removing the heavy bolters, i can't see that it would impact gameplay either.

Structurally, i'm nearly done with this one. Since i'm going to need to order more plasticard sections before i can properly start detailing im thinking about starting on building the next one already. I might fill the gaps first as i'm eager to properly try out the filler that i bought, but for now i've got an entry to do for my clubs painting competition to get out of the way.

More stuff soon.