Project III/23

Running in the Death Star trench

The Autumn side Father's Day brought, in addition to the mumblings-unrelated things, some Lego! This has been a good theme for years and I was more than happy to build things.

It was an action diorama. I remembered seeing someone building (or upgrading) this one as an automata, but it could also have been a yet another fake memory of mine.

The trench

Building this set was quick and hassle-free, just perfect for a quick afternoon build. It only had almost 666 pieces so the expectation was "almost done".

With the first bag's baseplate done, the next couple were full of greebling at random places. My set was missing one light grey ingot (99563) from the center-middle, that I could complain about to the Danes and get a replacement. I just wasn't familiar with the process and wasn't sure if I wanted to bother.

With the floor of the trench done I moved on to the sidewall, that received a good amount of greeblies. In the middle you could see a couple of the claws that I had set 90° wrong, but I fixed that as soon as I noticed.

The completed sidewall sat sturdily on the baseplate and it got then impaled into it with two (for some reason of different length) studs. Undoing this might be interesting, but I didn't see that appearing into my calendar anytime soon.

Black squadron

In this scene Darth Vader was escorted by two wingpeople, both in TIE/ln starfighters. Unlike what the instructions said, I set the green laser blasts a bit offset for both of the firing units, because I just found it more visually appealing than the dual-firing ones.

To get the best-looking and most active scene I might have to fine-tune the angles of these a bit still.

Red 5

Then the baddie of the scene, flown by the Red five from the Red Squadron of the space terrorists, his Incom T-65C was a pretty decent representation in this scale. While building it I was wondering a bit why the spaceframe's front and back halves were only connected with two studs instead of all the four available, but maybe it looked better this way, greeblie-wise. The S-Foils were not adjustable: the split-wings were going to stay open so you couldn't use the fighter on a more calm scene just as it was.

Diorama

With the fighters built and installed only the Taim & Bak XX-9 heavy turbolaser turret was missing. It was a pleasantly poseable piece, even though it didn't have any green turbolaser blasts for the barrels. As befit the scene.

We were running seriously low on space on the shelves with these various Lego sets we had accumulated over the years :D

Father's day 2020 (Project V/2020)

A TIE Pilot's helmet

The father's day took place again and brought some Lego with it. I had seen a couple of photos of these helmet or bust sets before, but I wasn't sure if I had witnessed one with my own eyes. Not that it told much during this corona season, as I spent even less time in toy shops than before. The helmet was going to be stylish and at this point it was spread out into six bags of pieces.

Constrconstrconstrconstr

Of course I started building the same evening, and in my delusions of grandeur I thought I'd be done in one sitting. The first bagful of pieces resulted in a colourful core of the helmet.

The second bagful gave us the stand and the neck curve for the helmet. Some dedicated builders have been doing these round shapes just for fun, I found it pretty complex work.

While building the subassemblies I didn't guess that these were going to end up as the forehead and the lenses of the mask.

Interestingly the grimacing Stormtrooper-mouth was a bit difficult to keep in check, thanks to the angles and many hinged connections. It behaved decently in the end, even though I managed to drop those off a couple of times later on.

When I was wrapping up the first evening I had reached the end of the left ear/cheek/chin section. This was pretty slow work, but I wasn't rushing, because I wanted to enjoy building in peace. The pilot was missing her chin, while there were a couple of part bags left still.

Evening 2

On Monday evening I sat again to build. Taught by the left side, the right side went much quicker and easier, as these symmetrical builds tend to go. Again the biggest problem was the jaw-complex's final part that had to be installed much deeper (closer to the mouth) than what I imagined from the picture in the instructions. That's why I had gotten the mouthpiece fall off a few times while working on the left jaw.

The most beautiful printed radar dishes ever were to decorate the forehead of the pilot. I could want a few spares of these pieces, just to own a few.

Everybody here knew that the Imperial Navy's gorgeous TIE series ships did not, according to the old canon, contain life support so the pilots had pressure suits. At this point the jaw's air pipes looked a bit more like the insulators one can usually see next to high-voltage power lines.

Finished

After a bit more than two hours of tinkering the bust was finished. These shiny black pieces were impressive-looking, they just left me wondering if I had left too many fingerprints. Just like with the Metal Earth Models, an extra source of concern.

By the Emperor, it was magnificent!

Finished: Project VIII/17

Sienar Fleet Systems

TIE/sa Bomber

To be honest, I cannot recall ever seeing this TIE/sa marking anywhere else but the wpedia, everyone else has always talked about the TIE/B or TIE Bomber. All the same to me, now I've used this marking as well.

I took a bunch of photos from different angles and as usual, applied them below. The next day I brought the model back to the office and proudly presented it around. Confusingly few people recognized it, but as the hit percentage wasn't a flat zero, I couldn't complain much.

With a very little coercing I ended up promising to show the Bomber and a couple of "real" models one Friday afternoon at the Tinkering Club. Their response was somehow staggering in its positivity.