The second test build the other day went a lot better. I had modified the wheel wells and the light bar a bit in response to issues that I ran into on my first test build, and they did the trick. The car is cute, especially next to the tug.
My building skills are still a bit rusty, I still don’t have a dedicated photography area, and I hadn’t used my camera in so long that I’d forgotten how to set it up correctly. 
For those of you who use Tombow markers for edging like I do, here are the edging colors I used.
- Tug blue and security car lightbar: Tombow 515
- Tires and other black bits: Tombow N25
- Dark gray areas (tug underside, etc): Tombow N55
- Towbar yellow: Tombow 055
- White and chrome bits on the security car: Tombow N95
- Medium gray areas (towbar hitch, for example): Tombow N75
- Lightbar red (follow-me car): Tombow 772
Your mileage might vary a bit depending on whatever combination of paper and printer you’re using.
I also made a couple more tweaks to the follow-me car:
The lightbar has been relocated to the back, and the static Follow Me placard on the back has been replaced with a digital display that can show other useful messages like “Stop” and so forth. It’s actually much closer technologically to self-illuminating e-paper than an old fashioned dot display or LCD system, but I chose to make it physically resemble a LCD in order to comply with the Coffeepot Rule.
(For the new folks: I came up with that rule back in 2007 on the old Ebbles forum. It states that if you want an audience to immediately recognize something spacey as a coffeepot without having to explain it to them, then it needs to look just enough like a coffeepot for the audience to immediately recognize it for what it is. It reduces technobabble and keeps exposition down to a minimum, saving it for elements that are more important to the plot.)
The display is textured in the nighttime mode (where it looks more obviously like a digital display) rather than the daytime mode, which is not illuminated and looks a lot more like the old bright red text over fluorescent yellow placard.
Okay, I’m done messing with the cars, and I’m currently spooling out the PDFs for the Zoom. There are currently 36 cars in total. 28 are unique, the remaining 8 are alternates. Here’s how it breaks down:
- 8 security cars with unique roof numbers and license plates, in both white/blue and yellow/blue variations
- 8 customs cars with unique roof numbers and license plates
- 8 admin cars with unique roof numbers and license plates
- 4 follow-me cars with unique roof numbers and license plates
As a bit of fun trivia, I actually went and generated several thousand new and unique license plates for various localities on Eyesore. I used a variation of the same license plate scripts I used to generate the plates for the Noir 2520 aircars I did over at WWG, then pulled out just the plates for Downport. I have a folder full of Downport-registered plates, and I’ve been issuing them to each car one at a time.
Second bit of fun trivia: many of the other localities are named after project supporters. Those plates will be issued to civilian and non-spaceport vehicles.
I also found a minor goof on the cutfiles for the ground handling unit while building one of my own–a couple of the wheel unit pivots on Frame 02 had cut lines where there should have been perforated lines. I’ve fixed that, and will upload the new ground handling unit cutfiles at the same time that I upload the Zoom files.
After I’m done doing all of the unique Zooms, I’m revisiting the tug and adding more unique numbered variants. There will be 4 tugs in total. As with the ground handling unit’s cutfiles, the new tug variants will be uploaded at the same time as the Zoom files.
Okay, back to the grindstone for me. 
Want to support this project?
Visit the project page for more details: Spaceport Set I
Finally finished my GHU tonight! (I’d been avoiding doing the wheels some; that’s why it took so long.) It looks pretty good; I’ll try and post a photo tomorrow. One minor note; the hook ended up being noticeably higher off the ground than the hook on the tug. So I have to hook the tow bar with the short segment in front, or otherwise those evil little wheels are off the ground!
I’ve been busy for a few days, and I came back to find out you’ve been busy too! It’s all looking great.
Carl: Yes, that’s by design. Wheels off the ground when hitched up is correct (you can see this in the promotional images for the GHU on the project page). The dolly wheels on the towbar are only there to keep the other end from dragging on the ground in a rooster trail of sparks when not hitched up to an aircraft nosewheel or a ground handler, and to make it easier for people to manhandle the things around.
I’m halfway through my GHU build. I’m hoping to finish it today. Looking forward to seeing your photos!
Becky:
I got my SD just in time. I haven’t picked up the Pingauzer yet. Does the UD-41 seem like it would be something the tug might ferry around as well?
i like the look of the folow me car, this set is really coming along.
AoM your gonna haver to stick some wheels on that baby.
I meant if it would look somewhat reasonable on top of the GHU.
@AoM; The GHU will carry the UD-41. However, you’d need a crane to get it aboard! (The UD-41 is so low-slung that the GHU couldn’t be rolled under it, even with the jacks down.) Whether or not this bothers you is up to you.
Your Evil Minion await the Beta……
…so now we need a rolling crane to lift the Dropship… ‘course if we had that we might not need the platform and Tug – but that’s only for that ship in particular or anything else that low (or big?)… Just thinking out loud… hmmmmm
Tommygun: Almost there. Still have to do instructions.
Just a note to everybody: the UD-41 isn’t part of the same setting as the Pinzgauer. It’s part of the not-Aliens line, not the Uppity Robots line, so it doesn’t really factor into my thinking when I’m developing stuff for the Uppity Robots line. This is probably not an important point to a lot of folks, but the reason I don’t like to mix universes is because it’s too easy to run into gaming problems or continuity/physics conflicts, and there’s a mile long list of those between the not-Aliens and not-Galactica settings.
For example, there’s no FTL in Aliens and that one thing all by itself gives Aliens much of its unique character. Likewise, the Galactica landscape is very heavily defined by a lot of parameters that just don’t exist in the Aliens universe, and mixing them up dilutes or eliminates many of the story elements that make each setting so individually cool, and it annoys me when I’m statting things out for Guncrawl or Flying Lead. So, I just don’t go there. This doesn’t stop you from mixing models from different universes, don’t get me wrong–I’m just explaining the rationale for my design choices, not laying down the law.
The Pinzgauer has pads/feet instead of wheels because, like the Crotale and Percheron, it’s primarily a carrierborne spacecraft and it needs maglock pads to interface with the landing decks, and it’s one of the few shuttle models that don’t have an aftermarket conversion kit that swaps out the maglock pads for wheels. (The way it’s designed doesn’t allow that.)
The majority of civilian and non-carrierborne craft have wheeled undercarriage and often need to interface with terminal boarding tubes, so a simple towbar/pushback tractor arrangement suffices for those.
The Pinzgauer doesn’t normally interface with terminal boarding tubes and usually just makes a VTOL descent directly onto a landing pad, but there are times when it needs to be relocated or brought into a maintenance dock by other means, and the GHU exists for that relatively uncommon need. This particular model of GHU is a heavy-duty one for large and heavy spacecraft like the Pinzgauer, and there are other, smaller ground handlers out there for smaller craft. For instance, the Percheron’s ground handling equipment is basically just a set of 3 yellow dolly skates and a little Tugger-style tractor.
Anyway, to bring this novel to a close, the real reason I did a GHU model is because the Pinzgauer is the only big spacecraft model for SOTUR right now, and in order for the maintenance dock props to make sense, it helps if there’s a way for the Pinzgauer to actually make it into a maintenance dock. For any spacecraft that doesn’t fit on the existing GHU, just assume that a compatible ground handler exists and it’s just “out of the frame” at the moment.