On the Sienar assembly line

Starting from the worst

As we're talking about a TIE series fighter, the build obviously begins with the command pod. This time I was prepared for the wing pylon attachment being a horrendous process to say the least. With this knowledge I left all the preparations (pre-bending the front and back lips of the lobes) and started swearing the pylons onto the pod's sides.

After over half an hour of sweaty fighting I had both of the bits properly and firmly attached. They really required pushing and pressing with astonishing force, just to get the lips and holes even remotely aligned. There were quite a few moments when I was absolutely certain that the tangerine lobe -like bits of the command pod would just snap any moment, thanks to the forceful pressing and bending. In the end the setup survived and the pieces got attached correctly.

On the downhill of th edifficult ramp

Sealing the pod's front and back parts with the canopy (and the rear thing) was the next and second most awful part of this build. Now these stages were a bit more difficult than with the TIE/ln, as the wing pylons held the pod tightly in shape. Still, as a work phase this was ridiculously much more enjoyablethan the first one.

After this I attached the hexagonal wing support bits into the ends of the wing pylons, fun and easy. Now I'd just need to get them nicely attached to the wings themselves...

Surprisingly the next step was to jump to the coffin-shaped base. On the base went the hamburger-like rear hull that then got a pair of low wing supporting boxes.Again, very quick and easy.

How in the Empire...?

Finally (surprisingly late) I was instructed to smash the command pod structure between the rear hull's pincers. I'd done it a bit differently: first attach one of the boxes, then install the pod and finally seal the setup with the second box. But no, now I had to twist and bend the wing attachment bits to get the pod installed with scary amount of force (again). Finally the hexagonal boxes had to be attached to the wing boxes. I have to admit that I was slightly surprised when none of the lips didn't break or get bent useless.

Finally I needed a couple of funnels in front of the hexboxes and then I got to attach the iconic wings themselves. At this point, for some totally mindbending reason, one of the twin Blaster Cannons fell off, even though I had been absolutely sure of them being tightly and surely attached. Grumble.

Done

The TIE/A x1 proto ended up looking pretty nice, even if I say so myself. I didn't even leave awful fingerprints on anything. The last photo of this set has a 50c coin to provide some scale to this silliness.