# Manta gunship



## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

Hello and welcome to my first project post.
Over the last year ive been working on a Gunship variant of the Manta. 
Ive been working in Epic scale to match my Aeronaughtica fleet.

My goal is to produce a fighting super heavy gunship based on many of the manta parts and systems. 
The use of battlefield proven systems will lower cost of research and development as well as ease mass production as many of the parts are currently in use for the manta transport fleets.

What would a super heavy gunship be used for?
In space it would be used as a heavy attack bomber.
In air ops, heavy support for anti air and ground attack.
Ground ops, heavy support, suppression fire, super heavy and Titan killer.
(note, I do not entend to use a super heavy to kill a titan, for the cost its cheaper to send a tigershark a1-0. )

why not send a manta to do all those jobs?
Space, the manta is a outstanding bomber, but its also the main transport for the fleet. Every manta shot down is one less for the army.
Air to air. The manta again is supperb in battling all air opponents, but if its shot down the transport pool suffers.
Ground opps. Once more the manta is able to lord it over the battle field like the god engines of the mechanicum. If shot down it means all the firewarriors it was supporting have to walk back to base.

In summery, I want the firepower and speed of a manta but not as a transport.
Ive looked over many posts over the last year on tau titans and super heavy tanks and ive concluded from the various arguments for and against that Tau mobile warfare is not served by a titan walker, and super heavy tanks also are not as fast or theatre mobile.
A super heavy airborn gunship is mobile for the cadras, the manta is the pinicle of their mobile firepower but its loss means too much for the army and navy as a whole.

I have the parts and concepts worked out to begin work on a pure gunship. It will retain much of the mantas weapon placments, offer a smaller overall foot print, this is to save deck space on ship hanger decks.

Pictures will follow but for now Im looking for some feed back. Ive got to go, i wrote this post at work and its time to go.


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## Disciple_of_Ezekiel (May 23, 2010)

So this will be an Epic manta project? None the less good luck and look forward to seeing how you progress!

Regards,
DoE


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

I'm still painting my the bulk of my air fleet and i wont begin in earnest a new project till thats done, how ever ive gotten some of the ground work done.











the above shot is some of the paper mock ups as well as my early attempt to start the gunship. 
The paper cut out is to be used as a size reverence. 











the above pictures are the mockup to show size im working towards. 
the lower picture is my first and not completely successful attempt to make a resign cast of the manta, it may be flawed but it will serve as parts for the gunship. I drew the lines where I will cut the wings off the central body.








the lower hull and where I want to cut it, I don't want to use the bulk of the lower hull, I will use a partial section of the Pirhana's front nose.
the lower pic is a full look at the underside. the tape over one of the railgun details is there to protect the detail when I use the dremmel to cut the wings off.









The above 2 pics are all the mantas Ive produced to date, included is the original that I made the mold of. I started my casting program to save some money and to field large force of standard and exotic war engines and gear.
second picture is one of my home made mantas in its base paint, all the burst, ion and rail cannons were also produced at home. the tiger shark a-01 is also a home made craft.

I will be working on the epic scale to see if the model will work, if it does I may make a 40k scale version. or just a shadow sized cut out on a stand to go with the epic version for 40k games, this way I can have the model and keep its foot print as well as my money and sanity.:headbutt:


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## Viscount Vash (Jan 3, 2007)

Nice bit of work.

Don't often get to see Epic Scale conversions or Scratch builds so it might be a bit sparse on replies until the epic players find it.

Don't let that put you off though.

Like I said nice work, I look forward to seeing more of your fleet.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

I was suppose to be selecting camo paint for my air wing to night but I really loath painting so I grabbed my dremmel and hacked off the wings of one of my mantas. I now have the wings for the new gunship in hand. 
Also started to night was the making of a mold of the Piranha prow. It will be the lower hull, slender, strong looking armour and with a huge hard point for a yet unknown system of weapon.
In the picture the mock up looks different than the paper concept so ill have to either accept that or keep working on wing shape. the picture suggests that only 1 set of under slung drones will be at the prow of the craft. I may extend the nose some to put back in the second set of drones. Time and work will tell.

Second picture is mix like the underside of a home made manta to show that that i made a 2 sided mold. The main feature is to show the scale of the gunship mock up with the concept paper cut out and with the manta transport. I also produced all 3 of the barracudas in photo.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

*Project update 7-19-11*








I recently decided not to use the sculpi upper nose section from the first mock build.
Sculpi crumbles too easly. Instead im going to use the nose from manta who reciently donated its wings. 
In the first photo is a a ruff early fitting of the parts, Much work in trimming cleaning and patching remains but for now it gives me a quick look at the direction the project is heading in. The shot is a top down, The wings are pulled in so youll notice the engines are partially under the main body, I may bring them out some later but thats the over all look im going for. I also pulled the wings up inline to where the back set of drones would sit If they had survived the casting. I like the look of the wings that far up the body. It reminds me of the Protector cruiser of the Tau navy. Also in the picture is featured a side view of the under side of the nose or chin i intend to use. The mold of the piranha worked out well. I added for the picture 3 of the turrets i will be using to augment the weaponry. The turret body is the one taked from the Orca belly turret. In this case they are armed with twin ion cannons. One turret has a rail gun.











Second picture is a underside shot with the piranha nose and a really ruff fitting of the wings, I have much work to do to reconstruct the main body, atm i used clay to illustrate the shape im looking for. also featured are twin mounted ion cannons in the nose , and the location where I will be mounting the orca turrets on the wings, I would like to mount turrets paired over and under the wings balanced ontop of each other. also featured in the shot is the remains of the manta cargo bay, It was not easy to cut that free, but I managed to get it off with out damaging too much of the detail.

















Underside nose shot, Twin ion cannons




























the last photo failed for some reason, im on a dumb terminial so its not too fast or responsive so let me repost the pic


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## Legoss85 (May 7, 2011)

*Cool idea*

Dude, good idea, very nice execution, following this with interest.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

*small update*

Its been a busy week at work so I havent had alot of time to work on the gunship. 
I will be adding wing mounted twin ion cannon turrets. I believe I can make them swivel in their socket. I drilled a pin hole through the wing to mark where the center of the upper socket should go, that same hole will allow me to use a common office staple as axel to connect both upper and lower turret. If all goes well, both turrets will spin. They will not spin seperatly from one another. 
I may add that feature to the rest of my manta fleet. 

fitting of the wings to the body is ongoing, its a slow process of sanding, and filing to the point where I can blend the pieces together smoothly.

After reviewing the damaged upper side detail of the nose of the gunship I decided to make a new nose. To do this I started a making a mould casting of the nose of the parent manta. I could use the main mould i used to make all my production but that mould is not suited for making minor portions of the airframe, its a make the whole thing or not at all mould. so i settled for making the part I need. 
Once done ill cut off the old nose and install the new intact one.

Now on to show and tell.
The other day I was looking at the lower cargo bay that i cut off and though that if I installed that on the upper side of a manta I could field a super carrier.
For ground opps it would be mostly for use to drop up up to 8 tanks or apcs. 
If geared for air support, it could support up to 16 Remora stealth drones fighters.
The picture is a real ruff and crude mock up just to show the concept and a look to see how much work would be needed to make the conversion.

thats about it for now.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

a quick update. The rubber mould of the nose section is still curing and may be useable tonite, Work on central body is on hold till the nose section is replaced.
Work shifted to the wing mounted twin ion cannon turrets.
Socket holes were cut using a dremmel drum shaped grind stone. Both wings now have the socket cut in.
In todays picture I mocked up one of the turrets flush mounted in its socket and placed the ion cannons that will be used in the finished aircraft. The forward burst cannon will need to be moved so not to break line of sight for the ion cannons in the forward arc. Ive placed the burst cannon where I think it should go to avoid blocking the ion cannons and still offer the range of cover arc that it had in its previous location.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

*Progress is slow but still moving forward*

Its been a month since ive updated this log but i that time alot has changed on the airframe.
New nose section, wing sections are no longer partially under the main body, and the tail section is under way as well. 
Starting with the nose sections, the first 2 nose sections were going to have many issues that would make them unsuitable so I made a new rubber mold of just the manta nose and produced the replacment part, the photo does not show the drone burst cannons because all 4 broke when comming out of the mold, all 4 are in tact they just need to be glued back on and will be when Im about done, they are fragile and im sure ill keep breaking them or one will go missing.
Youll notice that the nose section is longer and offers something that may be usefull. the standard manta has 4 underslung drone mounts on the nose. the gunship could have 6 underslung or mount the extra 2 on the top side for additional coverage from attack. This plays into the 3d element of tau air and void war.

Let me post the first photo, its a top down taken just after the wings were pinned into place.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

.There was more for my last post but my pc had a stroke so I'm posting from my droid now.









I've started filling in the gaps with milliput. The drone is also made of milliput. If all goes to plan I should have the body filled in over the next few days. Ill also have more drones 









As you can see I still have more to fill in, the first part was to get the foundation started and build up from there.

I'm still on track to use this aircraft in the fall world wide campaign


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

Looking awesome!


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

*Project update*

work on the central body continues, Mold and casting of x-42 upper cannopy complete. First image is the mounting of the part.









Image 2, Over the labor day weekend I filled in the wing and central body. I didnt mix enough milliput to make the wings as thick as they needed to be. fortunatly milliput allows you to build layers on top of one another. 









Image 3 is a close up front profile. this pic shows that all my attempts to align all the components were not completely successful. 
some of the issues I can hide by blending curved shapes. others, not so much. As you can see the wings are not universally thick, Ive been looking at pictures of the F16, and SR-71 for angles to blend body and wing.









Immage 4 is a tailing shot. Ive been looking at possible tailgun position. mabey a aft firing railgun or a pair of ion cannons.


















Image 5 is just for fun, Im still working on other projects for the void wing. so far ive made a handful of drones and a tigershark drone carrier. all made from milliput and the molds made from instant mold. the drones have some issues of top and bottom alignment, Still they will be suitiable for the table top. 
The ion cannon on the tray is to show the size comparison and that the looks about the right size to mount on a drone. As for AI rules, Ill use the barracudas profile for its nose mounted Ion cannon. I may drop the ammo from 4 to 3 to reflect that the drone cant generate as much power as the larger barracuda. Still, it will have greater chance to wound over the burst cannon equipped drones. The lose of seeker missles hurts some but then I will be fielding mixed packs of drones..










Ill finish this update with a few thoughts on whats to come for the gunship.
One is its name, Ive been looking for aggressive, deady or killer fish names from google. not many sound good to me, so far Devil Ray sounds the best. I like Koi and Lionfish but im no pleased with any name that ends in fish. 

Ive also been messing with adding a 3rd set of nose mounted drone burst cannons. my nose is longer so there is the room and it would also make the gunship stand out on the table top. I dont have a mock up picture of it at the monment but I will make one before I mix up more milliput to thicken up the wings.
Once the wings are the correct thickness ill be adding cut plastic card on both sides of the central body to show where the anti gravity plates are on the craft. the shape is taken from the underside of the manta and thinned to fit the new spaces.

Thats about it for now, Please give me some feedback about the gunships class name.


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

Looking good so far, I am about to take a road trip so I will brainstorm and see if there is any names I can think of to help you out. Keep it up!


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

Its been a while since my last update. Ive been to 3 family funerals, a wedding welcoming my new daughteri-in-law, and almost lost my dog to infection. Its been very eventful.

In all that time I have managed to get in a little work on my projects. First up ill post the most current shot of the gunship. I am going with a 3rd set of drone turrets on the prow.


















I finnaly did make a Ion cannon geared remora drone.


















Last is a orca sized assault shuttle, It started as a joke of what do you get when you mix a Tau with a Klingon and one thing lead to another and I got a new airframe to mess around with. Im still working out how to build it and what I want it to do..

















Thats about it for now. Im short on time tonite but I wanted to break my silence and share what ive been up to. Enjoy.


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## troybuckle (Nov 24, 2010)

Nice modeling man! I dont play epic, but good job!


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

Sorry to hear about the events that held you back but the model is coming along really nicely.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

I don't play epic either, this project is for Aeronaughtica. That game of air combat in the 40k. I plan on using my epic scale manta in apoclips level games, to simulate the full size I will outline a manta on plywood and cut out the shape. And then mount my small manta on a flying stand on top of the cut out template, after all the manta is high up in the air so it should be seen. As smaller. Ultimatly ill field 4 standard mantas and the gunship in a apocolips match. Flights of the titans.


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## jamesknouse (Oct 28, 2009)

very very nice


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## Thomas Mondrup (Nov 25, 2008)

Here are some names I use for my FW BFG Tau fleet 
Skychaser, Mistrunner, Skyseer, Stormsinger, Bright Star, Solarstorm, Soulstorm, Herald of unity, Flow of Time, Communion. 
The name of the ships that is, not their classes ofc. ^^


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

*Update,*

Its been a long time since ive updated this site on the progress that ive made. Its been a difficult year at home and work. One thing I still take pleasure from is model work.

Ive finished the shapeing of the underside wing and central body. Detail lines have been cut. All burst cannons, rail guns and ion cannons have been produced and are cleaned up and ready to mount. engine vents still need to be cleaned and fitted. 

On to the pictures. first is a pre detail shot of the central underside. and then a few of it post detailing.


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

I wanted to add another shot but I couldnt get teh cursor to move down, so im on to another post update. Ok, as for the shots above, I used a red sharpe marker to highlight areas for me to work on since shading brings out shallow valleys and other surface imperfections that needed to be sanded down. 

Ive only got time for one last shot of the top side detail. 
More pics to come as this project nears its end.


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## Shas (May 6, 2012)

The fact you can even make something like this is another level of awesome for a log. Brilliant, and good luck with it.


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## Chaosftw (Oct 20, 2008)

Shas said:


> The fact you can even make something like this is another level of awesome for a log. Brilliant, and good luck with it.


could not have said it better myself. This is all kinds of awesome! Keep it up! if you ever feel like making a CSM ship of some sort hit me up!


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## Kelsik (Jun 30, 2011)

Over a year ago I started the gunship project and its been a challenge for me to work with new materials, tools and lots of second opinions. 
The day has arrived at last, the last burst cannon mounted, the last ion cannons installed, each cup holder filled just in time for the 3rd annual Aeronautica Imperialis Hosted at the following link.
http://z8.invisionfree.com/Airspace/index.php?showtopic=873

The campaign started on September 1st.

Its getting late here so ill just post the pictures and head off to bed.
























































Just a few quick notes, The ion turrets still swivel in the sockets and as of now im doing my best to paint it neatly. I'm no painter and so far each manta takes me about 12 hours to paint and im still not done with any of them. Any ways, I had alot of fun and lost alot of sleep on this project but now its done and ready to deploy. 
I still dont have a class name but ill give this gunship the name Mont'ka. In the Tau language that translates to "the killing blow"


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## Zodd (Jul 27, 2009)

Grats with the completion of this giant project of yours. Please have some rep


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