MOC: Tahtorak

No, not the green beast than won the Rahi compedition back in 2004 or 2003 and was pretty good MOC for its age despite some flaws, no. This is an airship, as you can notice, named after the species. So yes, a Bionicle MOC. Pretty thick, right? At least a Klaanon MOC. In Klaanon story, the protagonist organization Bio-Klaani has some steampunk airships and vessels used formerly for cargo business and currently for defence against The Alliance's Nazorak Empire. The Fleet is (surprisingly) led by my self-character, Tongu.

Tahtorak is the mothership of the fleet, being aroud 450 meter long from tail to nose. The cargo area is located on the wooden fuselage on frontal area of the ship. The bridge and the crew's facilities are located on the top of it. The engines are located on the middle part of the ship, the large steel pot with huge furnaces, boilers and pistons. There are two main lift rotors create the upwards momentum while three strong back rotors make it move forwards. There are also two steering propellors on the side.

This model is motorized. I was beginning to build it, and had my old 9V motor with the huge 4x14x4 battery box around so I thought, why not? The battery box is located on the front, which was voluminous enough to hold it. The motor is at the back of the engine cylinder and the motion is instantly directed to the main vertical axle that turns the lift rotors. Above it a gearbox makes the motion horizontal again and leads it to the back of the ship using chain drive. A few gears and 43121 Engine, Larges used as gearboxes make the side rotors turn. I don't know if they are used as gearboxes before. It's a nifty little technique, though I think it might have too much friction if the speed is too high. Works pretty well here. Five turning rotors with one motor!

The design is based on a drawing and a watercolor I made. I also had another, four or five years old drawing on it, but it was too dull and needed a redesign. These concept art pieces can be seen at the end of this post, along with some Klaanon post pictures done using beautiful backdrop photos from Flickr's Creative Commons group and freeware Photoshop CS2 downloaded from Adobe's homepage. So a bit extra stuff here, too.

-Eero