So, an update on the work on the Opus Magna. For many years now I have been thinking about the flight deck and what I should do with it. One thing that has been bouncing around the back of my head were what to do with the crenelated sides. These comes from the landing platform sides that are intended to be raised to form a barrier from where the soldiers defending the plattform can shoot. This looks good and ties the Opus into the ascetics of the 40K scenery.
However, once I started work on the flight wing I quickly realized that to fit everything onto the deck I needed to balance the aircraft with the tails sticking out as far as possible over the edge, which meant balancing on the crenelations with big holes in-between. The fact that that the aircraft does not have a modern landing gear set up does not help as there is no nose wheel but a tail wheel, preventing the tail to overhand the edge. So this meant that I would need to close up the gaps in the crenelations, adding some much needed extra space to the flight deck. I always imagined that this would be a quick thing. Just cut out the suitable shapes and glue them in. Well it did not turn out to be that easy. Not all pieces needed to fill the gaps were the same shape, and to give things some details I also needed to att some extra layers to each piece. All in all I ended up doing some 53 pieces, each consisting of four layers. So this to a lot more time than expected, but in the end I think it was worth it. Next thing will be to mount it to the hull and see what this did to the profile (there are still some things to do around the interference with the air defences).
Another thing that has been troubling me with this build is the fact that the original aircrafts are WTOL's, which in principle makes a carrier somewhat obsolete (as there is no need for a take off and landing strip). But on the other hand I think that WTOL operation, from what I have seen on live footage is not a rapid thing and probably not something you would like to do in a hot zone as you become an easier target as you slow down for the landing or is a sitting target as you take off.
Then there is also the issue of moving things around the deck as the original air frames do not have wheels. This probably means I have to remedy this on my builds. And that sort of lead me to the second addition to the flight deck, catapults. As I will have wheels on the aircraft I can also use the catapults to launch them of the deck, and actually use the angled deck for normal landings (when in a combat zone).
I added two catapults to the forward section of the deck where I had left some space open as decoration when I build this part. I also added a slightly longer catapult to the side of the angled deck to launch heavier crafts. Each catapult has a small runner that I can move along the track depending on what action I want to portray in the future. I also added two horns to the front. I am not sure they look good. They are a bit on the skinny side. The hone on the angled deck is lager, perhaps on the large side. I will have to think about what I do with these...
All this has taken a lot of time and it is not done yet. Now I need to go in with GS and seal any gaps, which I dread as I know it will take forever. But before doing that I will paint some normal models just to clear my head.
