Meng 1/300 Harkonen Ornithopter

Ornithopters, also commonly referred to as 'thopters, were the most common small transport vessels in the Imperium. These aircraft were capable of carrying 6 passengers, 9 if the back seats were removed.

'Thopters were also very versatile. While they were capable of space travel over short distances, these small vessels were mostly operated in planetary atmospheres. Their uses varied from human transport between cities and continents, to light cargo transport across long distances.

'Thopters were often used for military purposes and equipped with weaponry. Usually these weapons were lasguns, but they could also carry small missiles and repeating maula pistols. With the exception of the planet Arrakis, and for heavier cargo transportation, most ornithopters were equipped with shields.

Most 'thopters were winged vessels that were capable of flight through jet propulsion, as well as by mimicking the movements of birds. While the jets were the primary propulsion system, the wings assisted in maintaining altitude, as well as maneuvered the vessels.

/From Dune Wiki/

The latest version of these vehicles can be seen in Denis Villeneuve's visually stunning masterpiece film series of Dune. They look a lot like mechanical dragonflies and not the awkward vehicles from the previous versions of Dune.

As one might have noticed, I am a fan of the first few books of Dune by Frank Herbert where he crafted a SF universe built around nature more than machines (especially AI) where man spread across the universe because of Spice or Melange that can only be found on one planet, Arrakis aka Dune because of the massive sandworms found there. Spice, for those not familiar with Dune, is the most expensive and addictive substance known to man as it allows for people to extend life, intelligence and create wormholes in between stars for faster than light travel. It is said that if one controls the spice, they control the universe.

The Meng Ornithopter comes in two versions. One for House Atredies (the sort of good guys) and One for House Harkonen (the really unpleasant bad guys.) I ended up getting the one from House Harkonen because it was the only one available at the time.

The kit comes in a rather small box with six small sprues for the various sections of the model. Two sprues contain most of the fuselage, the common B sprue contains most of the external parts of the fuselage including the landing gear parts for flying and landing modes, the C and D sprues contain the dragonfly like wings and the Z sprue which has all the parts required for the stand. The parts are well done with fine crisp details and small sprue attachment points for easy clean up and removal.

It also comes with a tiny decal sheet for the cockpit windows and Harkonen ID markings.

The instructions are on the back of the box.

I followed the small instructions and added each part after some clean up to remove any excess plastic. I removed most of the fuselage seams because I glued the fuselage parts together with a small dab of CA glue on the various external seams and Tamiya extra thin cement for the internal attachments. Those visible seams were lightly sanded away using 600 and 1500 grit wet/dry sand paper. Those seams that went thru specific detail like grills I left alone.

The rest of the model quickly went together including the dragonfly like wings which only glued the mounts and left them to freely pivot into flight or landing mode.

I put the ornithopter on the assembled stand and it sat for almost five months before I painted it.

This was the most complex part of the entire model as I wanted it to look as dirty and worn in the movie so I used movie stills and images off the internet to figure out how I was going to paint this tiny model.

It turned out it wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be. First I painted it a base color of Tamiya Dark Khaki to give it the base brown color. Next I used a very diluted mix of (20% paint /80 thinner) of each Tamiya Khaki and Xtracrylix RLM02 to lighten it. I tried to make the paint look streaky and dirty and for the most part it worked. I used my finer Iwata Revolution airbrush for this task.

To highlight the dirt and sand, I dry brushed Tamiya Deck Tan using a fine point brush on various areas. I tried not to over do it and not make all the airbrush work disappear in a mish mash of Deck Tan. It was very tough to do for me as I have a habit of overdoing the dry brushing in the past which either ruined what I wanted or forced me to strip it down and paint it again. I'd say that the dry brushing took almost a couple of hours to do before I finally stopped.

Next I took some of the Tamiya Desert Weathering “makeup” set and brushed on fine dirt in both dark and lighter colors to expand on the splotchy nature of the weathering. I'll admit that I used it to cover up some of my mistakes with the airbrush.

Finally, I ran Tamiya's Brown Panel Line enamel wash all over the model to make the details pop out.

Once that was done, I sprayed on Vallejo acrylic gloss coat to prepare the surface for the decals.

I added the 13 or so small decals for the windows using MicroSol and MicroSet to get them to snuggle to the surface. When the decals were dry, I brush painted the cockpit windows with a coat of clear orange at the bottom and then added clear red as I got to the top of each window in an attempt to show off the clear material used for the cockpit. It didn't work very well as the cockpit window decals are black. Might have been better if they showed the interior or were a dark grey instead.

Next I used a fine paint brush to mark up the various landing/search lights and lasguns (Dune speak for energy weaponry). I painted them white or black depending on the purpose then painted the lights clear red or dark orange. Then I dry brushed the search lights and lasguns using Vallejo gold paint to highlight them.

After that I sprayed on Vallejo Flat coat except for the nose to seal everything in.

I had fun with trying to build a desert beaten/sand blasted Ornithopter from the House of Harkonen because I enjoy doing the weathering and painting steps of model making the most. I recommend these small kits for fans of Dune and they can be built without painting/weathering, but they look a lot better if one takes the time.

It's one of those kits where any amount of weathering is okay depending what you want to do.

Dan Lee

1 July 2025