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A kit that is seldom seen, been on the stash shelf for a number of years. Thought I'd do something other than rigging biplanes for awhile. I'm well into assembly but an early choice must be made.....build it as is or try to improve the fit of various sub-assemblies such as the four engine nacelles and the nose sub-assembly. And let's not talk about the cockpit, does not live up to the detail molded on the vehicle body. Anyway, moving along now that the seams have been filled.....

Finished this one up today for our club build. This is the Revell snap-tite 1/48-ish kit, which I was overall impressed with. The kit fits VERY well, with no slop in the parts once they're in place. The cockpit is nicely detailed and the canopy crystal clear. The parts break down on lines that match paint lines, so not much in the way of seams is visible when completed. The X-wing can be open or closed. The only oddity is that the nose gear can be retracted, but there's no option but on or off the model for the main gear, which means I left them off for the "in flight" attitude on the stand. The stand is from the spares box, and NOT in the kit. The only major thing I did was rebuild the wing cannons with plastic, aluminum, and steel tubing. Even though the kit ones came cradled in a clear support box, they were still rather bent. Other than that, I painted and washed various details and put some belts on the kit seat. The only complaint I can make on the kit is the type of plastic used to mold it. It's somewhere between rubber and styrene....the mold lines are tough to scrape off (much like a car kit tire) and tubular parts cannot be simply bent back straight. They're also harder to drill through, the plastic being more "gummy" during drilling. That said, it IS workable, but doesn't react like your typical injected styrene does. The kit doesn't come with a pilot, and is meant to display on its gear. However, that makes opening the wings up problematic, as the main gear is then canted awkwardly. The kit has some nicely molded details between the wings I wanted to show, so I grabbed a stand from the spares box and put it in flight attitude. By the way...the kit has a gimmick, in that the cockpit is molded as part of a sound box/device. If you push down on the R2 it'll play cannon fire! Anyway, this was a quick build, yielding a cool looking model that allows me to have one to put in our club display at the local library next January, coinciding with the release of the new Star Wars movie around Dec/Christmas. Comments/questions/critiques welcome! GIL