I'm certainly not the first person to ever mod a VCX-100 to have a docking bay for its shuttle. Heck there are even 3D printed parts to slot in. However most people don't need to make room for a full sized Phantom as well.
The basic mod is very much similar to what most people do. Remove the shuttle part and make room for a docking bay. The only real difference was that I needed to cut away more stuff than what i usually needed. As you can see there is quite a lot of stuff that needs to be removed and it's not easy unless you have the right tools.
To remove the excess material I used a Dremel type rotary tool with a high speed cutter bit. This is always a tricky procedure as it is far to easy to remove more than intended. Just to be clear, the above picture doesn't show the full extent of the 'destruction', I needed to do more work after the picture was taken.
When I was happy with the newly created cavity I started measuring up some plasticard pieces in order to build the actual bay. First was the back plate, then the 'floor' of the docking bay. After that is was really just a matter of detailing the rest of the bay.
A small magnet was inserted in the middle of the docking bay in order to hold the shuttle in place and then it was off to the painting corner! The bay was painted to match the surrounding area, mainly the engines. A 1:2:4 mix of VGC Cold Grey, VMC German Grey and VGC Charred Brown proved to be an almost perfect match to the original paint job.
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