11.19.07» Source, Concepts & Initial Scratchbuilding

And I said to myself... well, how did I get here? I started this project out mentally as another Martian Hovertank like my prior one... gathered all the parts I've been stashing for it then somehow used none of those parts and decided to add wheels and a suspension and a lack of curves. Seriously... I am not sure how this came about. HAHAHA! But I'm all for going down the opposite path if the end result is something interesting.

The Armored Dune Hopper (ADH) is an armored recon vehicle for use in desert environments. I haven't decided yet whether this will be martian, lunar, or terrestrial. It started out martian with the large enclosed cabin and large wheels. The size of the cabin is so that the driver can get in and out easily and fit into it with a bulky space suit. I still plan on having a large, double hatch opening to allow for a bulky suited driver, be it armored bulk or space suit bulk. I'm also added a couple of large storage compartments on the sides. The insides of those have the diamond-plate texture since it's fun to weather and I saw it used in fire truck storage compartments.

First I constructed a frame using square tubing. On this frame will sit the cabin, engine, suspension, etc... Everything so far has been scratchbuilt from styrene sheet and styrene tubing. I have a lot to clean-up and do yet like figure out the front shape, do the rest of the suspension, make stabilizers for long booster-assisted hops, and make/add the engine. I'm waiting for an Anikins Podracer kit to use parts of for the two booters on the upper rear of the engine. The engine will sit behind the cabin and will be somewhat exposed. Impractical to be sure, but it'll look much more interesting that way. It'll have lots of greeblies tubes, wires, etc....

Here's some initial pics of it sitting up on a scrap of 2x4. That's actually the height it will sit off of the ground once the tires are attached. The hood and roof will be somewhat squat and won't add too much more height to the profile.

11.26.07 » More body-work

Still plugging along on the chassis and body of this beastie. I've been doing mostly clean-up on the body before adding any finer details. I did manage to make the "hood" of the vehicle as well as the hatches. I got the low cabin profile I wanted with plenty of room for the driver inside. The front of the "car" will have a small laser mounted inside the left "tube". The right 2 tubes will have optical equipment. A sheet of armor will hang below those like on my Martian Hovertank and in front of that will be a nice big roll-bar-looking bumper. Still waiting on the pod-racer kit so that I can begin work on the rear 1/3 of the vehicle. Looks like an odd Snowspeeder at the moment, but after I add the engine/wheels it'll change.

Below is a shot of the tires I took from an old RC car. Unfortunately 2 of the tires are in horrid shape so I'll have to make resin casts of these 2. They're 3" tall and shown next to a 1/20 scale figure.

11.29.07 » Start Your Engines

Got a little further on this, but there's still a very long way to go. The Pod-Racer kit came so I built-up and sliced off the parts of that engine that I wanted. The rest of the kit is great for little greeblie details. I made a radiator grille for the back of the engine and used parts of prior scratch-builds that I started, but never finished, to make the mount for the rockets and engines. I also made my "air break" flaps for the rear of the craft. These will help steady and level the vehicle when doing a booster-assisted jump.

Next I need to work on the suspension some more, interior, exterior details, and create a nifty overly detailed engine.

12.02.07 » More Engine

Here's a shot of some more work I did on the engine. Started making the engine block shape then added some misc detail parts to it. Later I'll add some more details, pipes, tubes, etc... The exhaust pipes were made by measuring the circumference of the tube (1.625") and laying out the dot pattern in illustrator to that size. Then I printed it out, taped it to the tube and used the printout as a template as to where to drill holes. Took me an hour to do the two large holed pipes. More details and pics in a few days.

12.05.07 » Guns A-blazin'!

Here's the gun that some of you have been asking about. It's a belt-fed mounted gatling made from misc bits and scratchbuilt parts. The ammo box was especially fun to do. I've also included a shot with a large Tamiya paint bottle to give a sense of size.

12.08.07 » Cabin Pressure

One of the good parts about a project such as this is that if you start to get burned out on one part, such as the suspension, you can work on another such as the interior which is what I've done since the last update.

I started out by making an interior roll-cage using styrene rod. For the bends I simply heated that part over a candle until slightly pliable, then I bent it into position and held a minute until cool. For the cross-bars, some Ambroid Pro-weld (styrene glue) did the trick. I just need to sand the glue-connections now to remove the melted out styrene.

Next-up was the seat which was made from scrap-styrene then covered in half-round. An indentation was made where the drivers back-pack containing life-support would fit. That way there's no need to remove it to sit in the car.

The gauges and main view-screen were made from leftover parts from the parts bin and option parts. The main steering and gun-aiming sticks were made from thick styrene strip which had the narrow part dremmeled in to create that shape.

Shifting knobs were made by placing the end of styrene rod close to the heat of a candle flame. This causes the end to expand and form the mushroom shape. They were then cut-off and had a hole drilled in for the wire/shaft.

Another piece of wire was bent to create some sort of emergency pull-handle. This won't be for an ejection seat, and quite frankly I'm not sure what it'd do... but it'll look cool with it's black/yellow striping and that's why I added it.

Overall I'm glad that I left as much space for the cabin as I did. Once everything was created and added in it's made for a cramped and busy-looking space and a great reason to leave the hatches open in the display case.

12.10.07 » Suspended

Lots more pics and info for todays update. First off you can see the smoke dischargers that I finished yesterday. They're made from aluminum and styrene tubing and steel bearings. Next for those I need to make caps/chains. I also made a jerry can weeks ago for this build. When I was making the mounts yesterday I thought... "wouldn't a jerry can full of water externally on Mars just freeze solid? So what's the point?" Well... it's now a Jerry can full of... ANTIFREEZE! Probably useful.

The front suspension I roughed out last week but forgot to take pics of. It still needs details added but the basics are there and it works!

Here's a small shot of my new wheels. Nice treads and about as big as the hard plastic ones I would have had to cast before. What I like about these are that they'll have a nice realistic sag from the weight of the Dune Hopper. The removable rims makes for nice painting and all 4 wheels with rims only cost $12.

Next is the main hatch. I made some working pistons, a padded foor-top (for rough landings) and a pull-bar for opening it or something.

12.11.07 » Roll Call

Here's a shot of almost everything I have done put together. I finished the front and rear bumper which are made from heat bent styrene rod. Grills were added on the armor to protect the headlights. The grills were "dented" using heat from a candle. Headlights will be made using T-Flat aluminum thrusters from Mechaskunk.com. They're the perfect shape for this... just need to make lenses and mounts. The penciled stripes are where I'll add non-slip texture.

The bottom grill on the front bumper is damaged so badly that a piece of diamond plate will be retrofitted there to keet rocks from hitting the steering box. This was a frequent modification to this type of vehicle. (in my alternate universe)

Like your car hood, a thin bar holds up the cargo hatches. I also added the fuel entry hatches seen in this pic.

Here you can see the rear bumper/grill and some more braided tubing mounts behind the cargo hatches.

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