MPC 1:43 X-Wing
First step was to clean up the glaring sea lines and rescribe
This kit was built with that nasty testors glue - so it broke apart very easily. This was a good thing as it allowed me to repaint the components.
I planned to repaint the kit - which meant the original decals would be lost. Since I had no decals to replace this with, I made a template guide for the markings with masking tape.
This kit had no details whatsoever, so I had to use styrene to recreate that using the Bandai 1/72 as a reference.
Primed and painted the panel lines
More of the masking
Lasers after sanding, priming and darkened panel lines
OK - finally starting to look like an X-Wing
I tried to jazz up the cockpit a bit by adding a styrene rod and wiring, but the cockpit was atrocious.. in the end, I scrapped the mods and tried to rebuild the cockpit from scratch.
Yeah - my skills really sucked back then
Using web references, I crafted a better X-Wing cockpit. This had to be redone a few times so the pilot could fit! Note that glass efffect handn’t cured yet.
Modded the pilot and repainted. Pilot got an upgrade from Sucks Rocks to just barely passable. Barely. I don’t blame the kit, this was my lack of skills at the time. The oversized hands however, that’s on ERTL…
Maybe I should have matted his suit down…. Note the not-so good panel lines. Should have also done a better job on the post-shade.
Finally assembled. And no, I was not planning on mounting Harpoon or AIM-7 Sparrow missiles to it - I was just working on the 1/72 ordinance for another kit at that time. ?
Pew! Pew!
Oh if I had only discovered AK Xtreme b[metals back then, I would have made those nozzles better…
…and lit it with LEDs!
…and lit it with LEDs!
I don’t know if there was some detail in the open areas in the wings, but I flourished it with wiring to add detail
I added a few laser scorch marks, but kept the X-wing clean. My weathering skills were non-existent, so I kept it fairly new.
Komentarzy
13 19 December 2023, 06:02
CaptGPFThanks James! This was torturing me for a long time when I got back into the hobby - screaming to be redone properly. What was supposed to be a "quick" touch up and repaint ended up taking a lot longer than I anticipated. I've since purchased a second kit and plan to tart the up a lot more with LEDs.
So many kits, so few weekends….
3 March, 21:11
Mr JamesHa, I know what you mean. The 'Kits to available days' ratio is heavily leaning towards the plastic stuff 🙂
3 March, 21:58
Album info
For its time,, the MPC X-Wing was the best kit you could get for that scale. It was reasonably accurate on the outside ('though some purists may disagree) - but the interior cockpit was…. Crap. I built this over 10 years back when I thought rattle can painting was adequate - and before I knew that X-wings were BOT Dark Gull gray! So it was time to deconstruct it, fix the obvious gaps and ugly seam lines, fix the toy cockpit and make it look like a real X-wing!
This was one of my earlier re-builds since I got back into the hobby - so the scribing wasn't all that good, but I learned a lot from fixing this kit that I was able to apply to the subsequent builds.