A followup since showing this at MosquitoCon yesterday:  I'm going to re-base this, and replace the foam base with one made from epoxy putty.  I can make the base thinner, and I will drill down into the pedestal.  That way, I can support the figure more properly in the running pose, with the left foot in the air, not touching the ground.  My goal is to finish re-basing it by our Lehigh Valley Scale Modelers Club meeting Wednesday evening, and then on to MFCA next weekend.

Wow, that SDR dude is really booking!

Someone did a video short showing an SAFS running through open ground, and I immediately thought of Youtube click bait proclaiming “Guy in an armored suit runs and trips on a tree stump - see what happens next!”  These things weigh around half a ton, so I can’t help but wonder how agile they’d be.

The Gustav is probably the best looking of the Strahl PKAs, IMHO.  Good to see a MaK model on the forum!

Yeah, very cool! Love the in-action look!!! 

Thanks, Real G and Gamera!  I'm glad you like this.

When I first got interested in Maschinen Krieger, and saw the suits, my thoughts went to the powered suits in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers".  I remembered, too, a show that was on The History Channel, that looked at arms and armor through the ages.  One episode dealt with the late medieval man-at-arms and his armor.  While the armor was heavy in itself, when distributed over his whole body, it didn't inhibit his agility or motion in combat.

I think the suits amplify and enhance the pilot's movements, as well as provide protection in combat.  Good weapons should increase, not decrease, the odds of a soldier's survival.

Don't discount machine agility just due to mass.

Boston Dynamics regularly is building autonomous machines in the quarter ton range that are as agile as an equivalently sized quadraped.

If we ever cut the Gordian Knot of a power supply for mecha, they will only be slow on purpose, not for lack of agility.

CapnMac82

Don't discount machine agility just due to mass.

Boston Dynamics regularly is building autonomous machines in the quarter ton range that are as agile as an equivalently sized quadraped.

If we ever cut the Gordian Knot of a power supply for mecha, they will only be slow on purpose, not for lack of agility.

Thanks, Cap'n, but my point is really more about the common interpretation of the MaK artistic design, than about true mechanics.  That is, most modelers finish their suits in static poses, or if they're depicted in motion, it's plodding.  And the series creator, Japanese graphic artist Kow Yokoyama, has produced illustrations of suits that are truly bulky and look like they'd plod along.

When I was introduced to the series, my thoughts went to Heinlein, and to David Drake's "Hammer's Slammers", and the notion of powered armor suits that enhance the soldier's own body, amplify his motions, and make him more effective.

So I don't like to pose my suits just standing around with both feet planted, looking off somewhere.  I like them to be more agile.  Here's an earlier figure I built and mounted on a base, an Armored Fighting Suit AFS Mk I, to illustrate what I mean:

I borrowed a little from Drake with the AFS, too.  In the MaK canon, there is the SDR, which is the totalitarian power trying to defeat the colonists on Earth and their mercenaries.  The AFS was developed by the mercs.  I've made him a member of a Sikh Battalion.  Kow didn't write anything like that in his stories, but Drake did.  In the Hammerverse, different planets were colonized by national organizations-the Dutch settled Hammer's home planet, for example-and some military units are made up from smaller national or ethnic groups.  The Sikhs are renowned for their warrior prowess, so I thought, why not a Sikh Battalion serving with the mercs.  I need to get decals made up for the unit signs, though.

I took this to MosquitoCon, and then to the MFCA show the following week.  In between, I replaced the foam groundwork:

with a thinner base made of Aves Apoxie Sculpt:



I also anchored the figure more securely into the pedestal.  With the terrain fitted more closely to the right foot and the suit anchored better, I got the pose I wanted, with the left foot in the air, in mid-stride.  For this kind of application, I think putty will be my first choice for the groundwork material.