Kyu-Woong Lee’s Dropship

The Dropship was by far the coolest design in “Aliens”. It went through several iterations before James Cameron himself fabricated the basis for the design, which was refined by Ron Cobb. After a few viewings, of course, I had some second thoughts about the practicality of the design, such as the unfolding of the two very large, aerodynamic bricks during high speed flight, or the exposed missile tips of the forward weapons pods during atmospheric re-entry. But if it were designed more practically, it probably wouldn’t be as popular a modeling subject as it is today.

After looking at various still photos on the deluxe laser disc version, I was very impressed at the level of accuracy achieved by Halcyon, particularly the decals. They really went the extra mile to make the model true to the studio miniatures, which didn’t always agree among themselves, anyway.

The biggest question when building this kit was which configuration to choose, as the kit was not meant to have landing gears retractable, or weapons pods fold. Some builders have found clever ways to accomplish these, but usually, the hinges are visible, etc.

I got the first kit at a time when you could walk into a store and buy it for $45. After pondering the issue for a short time (eight years), I decided to build two different dropships, one for each weapons pod configuration. By now, the kits were scarce, and I managed to find the one made by Tsukuda, which acquired the molds from Halcyon.

For the landing gear configurations, I made one set of deployed skids, and one set of retracted ones. These could then be interchanged between the two by mounting styrene tubes in each dropship landing gear bay. Thus, all four configurations were possible between the two dropships.

I also liked the two dropship solution, because then I could use both sets of highly detailed decals, “01” and “02”. The weapons pods were open on “01”, since this is the one seen with the pods deployed in the movie. I also got a mini-APC for each dropship.

There were a few accurizing details, which I decided to add to the already highly accurate kits. These were accurized landing skids, weapons pods, and opening APC bay.

The landing skids required some minor modifications. The front skids required just an additional bar detail at the front of the skids, taken from one of the unused deployed gear sets. For the deployed forward skids, I also hinged the skid on the strut by using a fine drill bit mounted on an X-acto knife blade holder, drilling holes in the strut and the gear, then used thin styrene rod as the hinge pin. Then, I used some fine, bent, strip styrene to provide the spring action. The strip styrene made the skid form a 90 degree angle with the strut when in the air, and then it flexed to let the skids land flat when the ship was sitting on a surface.

The rear skid required more modification. The part provided for the skid was a “tub”, with a rear flat piece and some detail pieces. I removed the sides of the “tub”, glued the detail pieces directly on the edges of the skids, then added bent styrene rod to form details to match the laser disc still photos. The best kind of rod to use was the one with a metal core, which is easy to bend into various shapes. I also hinged the deployed gear the same way as the forward ones, and added strip styrene to provide spring action.

For the rear weapons pods, I accurized the deployed pods on “01” only. I cut out the missile racks, which were pre-molded, and replaced them with a missile rack made from styrene strip and rod. I also cut open the smaller, triangular missile bays at both ends of each pod, and installed missiles from styrene rod. I didn’t bother to replace the missile rack for “02”, but I did accurize the rear triangular bays.

The folding wings for the rear pods were also cut down so that the inside surface was flat on both wings. Sheet styrene was used to cover them over. Also, I thought the angle the pods made with the wings was too severe, so I added a little strip styrene to make the pods more vertical. In retrospect, I probably should have accomplished this by reducing the angle the wings made with the main body.

For the front missile pods, I thickened the wings a bit by adding sheet styrene to the inside surfaces. It’s interesting to note that the pieces looked like they were molded as if Halcyon originally intended to mold an inside surface, possibly with a hinge assembly. The middle shelf of the missile pod was replaced with another one made of sheet styrene, because the studio version looked like it had an angle to it.

For the opening APC bay, I first glued the bay door bars to the bay door. Then, I glued styrene rod to the top of the bars on each side. After cutting the bay door open on the main body, and adding little rectangular openings at the corners of the opening large enough to let the vertical bars through, I flexed the assembly a little to put the bay door in place. I wanted to add an interior, but I ran out of time (= patience).

I also lighted both the models. I added the two sets of forward flood lights, as well as tiny little lights on the front landing skid doors. The wires themselves formed the hinges for opening and closing the forward skid doors. The rear skid door was glued to the rear skid itself. A single “AA” battery is placed inside the body, and the light switch was mounted inside the rear skid bay.

Kyu-Woong Lee