"Let's talk about Dropships" Topic

Lion in the Stars is right that the mass ratio I'm suggesting is wildly optimistic (though again not superscience). However, my main point is that the vast majority of even "hard" sci fi settings have dropships that can't possibly hold anywhere near a reasonable amount of propellant.

Something with a mass ratio of 2 (50% propellant) should have lots of tankage. So just as an APC holds more people than it looks like would fit (because they're packed in tight), a dropship carries far less men and equipment than you'd think.

A dropship will be far larger than a VTOL or transport aircraft that's intended to carry the same load.

Speaking of dropships, I just came across the latest post from ravenstar: ravenstarstudios.blogspot.co.uk

Is it just me, or is that new ship from Ravenstar almost… Friendly… Looking?

I not sure but I just saw the Ravenstar Horizon and I want one.

That Horizon is purdy nice. I'm not completely sold on the size of the podded engines--given solely that they almost bottom out on the ground when landed (and assuming that the skids are indeed the landing gear)--but I would still consider buying. Given the fact that it has multiple cross-scaling possibilities it looks like a keeper.

It looks as if it would fit in with the Old Crow military DropShip which can cover 6-15mm comfortably.

That Ravenstar Horizon looks lovely. Very tempting and I don't even collect 15mm sci-fi.

Whatever the tech arguments, in order to be a dropship in my mind it's got to be big enough to land at least light vehicles. Otherwise what you've got is a cutter/gig/hopper. Small interplanetary or interstellar spaceships are still going to be HUGE in 15mm, so if you want one of those it's almost got to be a scratchbuild IMO, and is probably best suited to being a terrain piece rather than a part of the game in general.

In fact, one of my more ambitious ideas is to build a section of the Engineers ship which will sit on the edge of the table, the implication being that the rest of it is parked off board. Even though I'm only going to depict part of one 'arm", I plan on it being something like 15 inches tall and two feet long.

Great looking work on the dropship Horizon Chris its quite generic and i can see it being used by both humans and aliens alike, i would personally go with the longer cockpit housing and add another small remote ball turret at the rear of the housing just to gun it up a bit more and i would loose the landing skids but all in all a top job…

wow how did i miss this , thanks for the kind words , it was a fun build. I wanted to do a transport that was roughly based on the 1958 Westland Wessex Helo. link below.
I also uploaded a pic of the transport with a 28mm figure to show scale.

link

ravenstarstudios.blogspot.com

Or possibly something like this?

link

Looks a little familiar… :) Mel Ebbles used to make the UD-41 Dropship that looked great too.

The UD-41 is still available, I found it the other day:

link

Picked up a model of this to convert, I think I'll replace rotor and props with with big wing mounted power units. Its 1/72nd so needs a bit of 15mm-isation too.

I wish someone would license the rights, and produce a resin UD-41 model.

ModelZone in the UK (well the Milton Keynes branch) is selling the "Academy" 1/72nd scale C-97A Stratofreighter for only £8.99 GBP (used to be £34.99 GBP). Height of fuselage 64mm Lenght of fuselage 462mm Width of fuselage lower part about 36mm upper about 46mm.

I'll be converting it with parts of a "Revell" Kazon fighter which I also got from ModelZone for £7.99 GBP (down from £17.99 GBP).