Here is my Sky Crane finally. The rotor spins, the motor covers still come off, the cargo box is removable with removable benches and troop rack. It can haul 40+ troops. It has 8 cargo hooks in the top with 8 cargo cables for hauling stuff that does not fit in the cargo box along with a central crane. It has a one man cockpit and a cargo management deck.



































































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Wow. That thing has a catwalk inside of it.

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yeah with such a small cockpit I felt that it need extra room of some kind to control the cargo area since it was not really feasible from such a small cockpit. Seemed like someone standing facing the payload could do it better anyway.

i thought the first pic was 1/1 scale!

very cool concept and execution!

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Exactly what I was going to post.

It's a little spare in some areas, but it's an epic project.

- R

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Define spare, not sure what you are trying to say.

This is really cool!
Only crit: It deserves a better cockpit.

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I think the word here is *sparse*.

Sparse: present only in small amounts : less than necessary or normal; especially : thinly covering an area : not thick or full

I take it that it is thick in places and thin in others.

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I thought about possibility that he meant sparse but still wanted clarification on what exactly he was critiquing. Dont mind the critique but would like to know what exactly he was trying to say.

Yeah there are the fair share that do not like the trouble bubble cockpit but the thing is the trouble bubble is where this whole thing started. At first I was going to make a bubble helicopter out of a trouble bubble I had, then after more thought I decided that I really wanted to build a sky crane behind it. I think the Trouble bubble fits pretty well for the Cobra feel, I am sure the heli-viper driving it would love to have a copilot but I figure he can tough it out and figure the Trouble bubble should have enough room for all the controls to fly it. I built a platform for payload control specifically to keep from overloading the trouble bubble. That way the controls for the payload are separate and with them actually in the payload bay managing the payload should be easier then trying to control it from a cockpit facing the opposite direction. If I was to do one thing differently, I would have built it with 2 trouble bubbles side by side so it could have 2 pilots.

The big idea of using the trouble bubble was I wanted it to be very minimalist, utilitarian, just very bare bones, wanted to have Destro slapping these together just as absolutely as cheap as possible because they are vulnerable and are likely to have a short life.

I get what you were going for with the spare bones thing, but this just looks like a scaffold/something very fragile. I love your idea, but it just looks like something that could not be a heavy lifter like it is supposed to. If it was a crash/wreck/rise of the Phoenix thing, I think it would be kickass.

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I actually did a lot of studying on Sky Cranes before I started. I realize that most of the new ones look like this.


But I had two problems with that one. Main problem is that there is already one of these made in mas production and the second is it does not scream Cobra to me.

So I went back to the early years. What you call scaffolding is actually landing gear and is actually is very heavy duty landing gear. The scaffolding is there simply to support the helicopter while it is on the ground. The lift is all done by the fuselage on top of the helicopter which is constructed very heavy duty. The landing gear is not the part that does the heavy lifting.

The early ones looked very much like this the only difference is they actually had the cockpit on the top. I opted to put the cockpit down in front like the newer models.

This early Hughes prototype is the one that I loosely modeled it after and mixed in some other aspects from other design pictures that never made it to production in the 50s like the walls on the side of the cargo area.



Here is a another early Sky Crane



I love this one. It is very early.

another reason for the sparse comment may be your camo job, it's too good! your camo actually works to break up the vehicle and cause confusion to the eyes, unlike most camo patterns that are applied for looks.

i find myself really having to concentrate to "see" your details

i like it and i like your source pics too.

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Thanks man.

D, everything about this is epic! Nice job man