Hero X-Wing

[MonsieurTox]

I'm starting on my hero X-Wing, using the excellent Frank's pyro kit !

Putty...sanding...putty...sanding... to remove all the flaws (scratches, repairs etc) :

I filled the R2 unit slot then I cut the wing blocks with my hobby knife, following the seam lines. I filled the holes with styrene. I also cut the nose, now I have to extend it. My fuselage lacks some material at the very back, I'll had styrene and putty later.

That was the easy job... Now the canopy... What to say about it ? It's a pyro canopy, I mean the canopy has pyro windows cutouts. The frame is thicker on hero's, the forward side windows are longer and the backward windows dont have the same angle.
Then the fitting... Was a real *****, the biggest gap was about 2 mm wide !!

I then sprayed a coat of primer to see all the flaws (heavy coat to act as a filler), Ive started to rescribe some panels, but I still have the whole thing to do. Next step will be to clean the canopy fitting with more putting and sanding then remove the mounting cover plates.
Hope you like guys !

 

[ralphee]

Superb work Julien, i LOVE that canopy fit!

lee

 

[-... . .- --..]

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Julien, I know exactly what a pain in the a$$ it was to get it to that point, and you've only had yours for one day. You're some kind of modeling machine...

 

[Scott Graham]

Nice! Thanks for sharing. This is also how I want to go about doing mine.

 

[PHArchivist]

You're a mad man! This will be fun to watch!

 

[TheRealMcFly]

Wow you guys are ON these things. Just finished repairs on my second engine. lol. These fuselages really shine with the canopy in place. Good stuff.

So Julien, since you've already got a motorized X will this be the second? Any particular ship, or a custom paint job?

 

[Clerval]

Julien, the text in that post is awesome!

In my mind I can hear some stubborn old curmudgeon of an engineer or mechanic or such, rambling on about this and that and the other and then there's this and I'll have to that... and in the end he looks up and says, 'Yeah, I'll have it for you in about an hour' and goes off happy as can be.


Ever on, Julien. Rock another build.

 

[jedimaster]

Looking good man. Am I the only person with one of these pyro's who is going to build it as a pyro? This will be another excellent build.... Looking forward to following this.

 

[Scott Graham]

I've got one pyro kit I want to build as a pyro and got another basic fuselage+canopy+nose that is hollow that I want to make into this type of hero. Seeing how I haven't completed a model in 1 1/2 years and Julien does this much in a day, I think I might have to give up!

It's great to see how Julien and Guy just jump in totally confident and bang out builds...what's the secret?

 

[jedimaster]

No kids? They are model machines.

 

[MonsieurTox]

Thanks guys, glad you like !

So Julien, since you've already got a motorized X will this be the second? Any particular ship, or a custom paint job?

I'm planning to build all the hero birds (and a pyro, don't know which one yet), but the first one will be Blue Leader (or Red 2, I'll do both but I don't know which one will be the first). None of them will be motorized, it was fun to design the mechanism and build one, but it's pretty useless, to be honest since it's finished, I've never plugged the motor, I just open or close the wings by hands ! :lol

Julien, the text in that post is awesome!

In my mind I can hear some stubborn old curmudgeon of an engineer or mechanic or such, rambling on about this and that and the other and then there's this and I'll have to that... and in the end he looks up and says, 'Yeah, I'll have it for you in about an hour' and goes off happy as can be.


Ever on, Julien. Rock another build.

Now that's funny ! :lol Well to be honest I was not very confident about how the canopy would turn up, but finally the result is not that bad... I was very scared by the huge gaps I have to fill and reconstruct the shape ! After staring at those gaps for some minutes, I tried to understand how John Eaves cut the broken canopy and how he cut the new one and I found out the back of the canopy shouldn't be flush with the fuselage but with a gap of 1mm, this way the canopy is moved forward (if not the canopy is not large enough to fit the fuselage, the hollowed castings are bigger than the solid fuselage has there's almost no shrinkage). The canopy finally lined up with the fuselage side walls... After that, that was just filling and reshaping what was missing !



Well I have not worked on the X today, but I took those pics yesterday :

I have reconstruct the tip of the fuselage to match the original hero master, removed the mounting cover plates, filled the gap with styrene, rescribed most of the lines and repaired the rear of the fuselage.

I still have to fill all of the pinholes (the pinholes are mainly were I sanded the square chps and were I removed the cover plates), and I still to have scribe some more lines (top of the canopy etc).

The top halves is more or less finished, very cool, gonna start working on the bottom very soon !

Thanks for looking guys

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

Nice job of work. What did you do to the fuselage tip?

 

[SurfingDoc]

What are you doing working on this x-wing?! Get back to that Star Destroyer build!!!

Kidding... looking forward to this.

 

[Moska]

Hi Julien. I'm happy to see how a great modeler as you are starts a new Hero. This thread will be very useful for me as a good guide for my own project.

Rafa

 

[Robiwon]

Julien, you said you may be doing Blue Leader. I know when I built mine there was not a whole of reference for when Blue Leader was Blue Leader. Of course then it became Red 2. Do you have any new reference?

 

[MonsieurTox]

Nice job of work. What did you do to the fuselage tip?

S, I used bondo sanded to shape !

I made it just long enough to be able to build any of the hero (the shorter being Blue Leader/Red 2)

What are you doing working on this x-wing?! Get back to that Star Destroyer build!!!

Kidding... looking forward to this.

Hehe I'm not sure I'll work again on the ISD until I move, most of my kits are packed up right now !

Hi Julien. I'm happy to see how a great modeler as you are starts a new Hero. This thread will be very useful for me as a good guide for my own project.

Rafa

Thank you for your kind words Rafa, I hope this thread will be as helpful as Kevin's Hero thread ! Good luck on your project !

Julien, you said you may be doing Blue Leader. I know when I built mine there was not a whole of reference for when Blue Leader was Blue Leader. Of course then it became Red 2. Do you have any new reference?

Unfortunatly, no. I'll follow pictures of Red 2, and the few pics of Blue Leader we all know. It looks like Blue Leader was just a bit less weathered than before being Red 2... I will use awesome Jason's decals for this project, they will be very handy !

 

[MonsieurTox]

I thought the lower fuselage would be easy... I was wrong

Still a lot of work to do !

I've started the engine pattern for Red 2 / Blue Leader (on the right) :

 

[Mauiman]

That is coming along very nicely but yarr better be getting to yer Star Destroyer ya slug! Arrr! *Listening to some Motley Crew while posting this. I guess it makes me talk like a pirate in forums

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

Julien, you mean you extended the fuselage? By how much?

 

[TheRealMcFly]

Hey Julien I really like what you're doing with this fuselage. It does have that sleeker look to it that Colin and I are always going on about.

FYI and you may know this already but the Blue Leader engine pattern is made from two of the same half of the Phantom engine. If it's any consolation I did the same thing and boy was I not thrilled about having to source another F4 to get it just right. You want that double conduit line on the one side and this will result in a little extra length needed so you don't have to trim the raised bits of the jagdpanter part at the bottom. Here's my interpretation and I think it more closely matches what moffeaton shared with us earlier.