A question on Warseer about whether a Centaur would fit in the Sky Talon grapples (Modellng a drop centaur for elysians) got me digging my Talon and a couple of Centaurs out of the attic, and inspired me to work on something 40k model related for the first time in over 6 months. I've got 3 Centaurs and I'm not planning on getting a Tauros, so modifying the Talon to carry a Centaur to fit my DK seemed like a great idea.

The mod was pretty simple - separate the grapples out so that the lower arm could be adjusted to hang straight down rather than at an angle, and reposition the clamps that hold the vehicle. As the Centaur doesn't have wheels the clamps will be on the track sides, I'll be adding magnets to make them more secure.

In order to allow the Talon to carry a Grenadier Centaur in flight (the front dozer blade is much larger on the Grenadier version) the flying stand needed to be moved forward. As the Talon kit comes with a piece designed to fit on the underside of a Tauros to mount the stand centrally I decided to trim it to fit in the recess just in front of the existing stand mount, and by adjusting the angle of the top of the flying stand and adding a pin to stop the Talon pulling itself off due to the off centre weight it fits just right.

To finish the mod I still need to add GS to the grapples to neaten up where they have been cut, replace the hoses with some guitar string as adjusting the angle left the existing hoses about 1cm too short, and add magnets to the centres of the clamps and metal to the Centaur hull to match up with them.

Pics can be found here: gallery/v/Spack/Spack04/Spack8/skytalon/talon_centaur/

A few selected pics:



The latter ones were taken on my phone as the batteries in my camera had run out, I'll post better ones tomorrow.

Looking food mate. Good to see you had the urge to model again. You be careful though you might actually end up going to the club too soon.

Looks good enough to eat Dan

Yummy!

Like it

I would like to see these giant drop pods that are mentioned in the fluff for the Talon. Come on FW get on with it.

Looks sexy!

Just uploaded a few new pics.

Great - simple conversions are the best! Are you going to re-angle the loose pipes back in? (Will they reach where you want them?)

I'm going to replace them with guitar string as they're not long enough to connect back up.

Did some more work on this today.



I picked up a cheap guitar string from the local music shop and used 3 small lengths bent to replace the outer hose, and a single length to replace the inner hose (just visible at the upper right) which was much too thick to allow the Centaur to be carried.

I also filled in all the gaps with green stuff and tidied up the grapples as best I could. They were then glued onto the Talon (while the sliding rails do work ok they have a habit of falling off if knocked) and then drilled and pinned to make sure they won't come off. The entire Talon was then given a fresh undercoat of Halfords grey primer spray (the blue markings already on it were put on the bare plastic/resin so I could proxy it as a Vendetta at the last AoS meetup).

The grapples grip the Centaur very firmly - there is just enough give to slide the Centaur in, but I've managed to position them so that they grip the hull firmly. I did glue in small magnets with the intention of adding small pieces of metal to the Centaur hull to hold it in place but they're really not needed, and I may well remove them to use on another model.



All that remains is to put the cockpit interior together and start painting. I'll give it a coating of black and then add blue camo markings to match my other Navy aircraft, and then have a crack at painting the details in to match the one fully painted Valkyrie.

Looking great Spack. Odd question - but which size (note?) guitar string is that? I need some for a couple of projects but aren't sure what size to get.

It's a D string. It's actually thinner than I wanted, I didn't realise till I'd got home though. But I do like having 3 hoses rather than 1, so it does work. If you hoses closer to the thickness FW tend to use, go with the thickest bass string you can get.

Cheers - gonna shop around on ebay - see what I can find.

I use 'top' E strings for my cabling (there are two 'E' strings, top and bottom on the guitar. Ask for the top, thick one if you aren't musically cursed).
Bronze wound acoustic guitar strings.
They work well and are easier to bend than the steel wound ones.
About $3 a piece here from my local muso's corner.

Nice work.

... and all the time, my washburn sitteth idly by ...
Very nice Spack.