A small, wedge-shaped vehicle, the Alliance snowspeeder was a two-person craft, with a pilot and a rear-facing tailgunner with a speed of 1,100 kph. It had two heavy, forward-facing laser cannons and a harpoon cannon placed ahead of the tailgunner. During the Battle of Hoth, these snowspeeders used tow cables to easily disable All Terrain Armored Transport walkers by firing the tow cable and chasing it out around the walker’s legs, stopping its locomotion and immobilizing the walker.
Shortly after the commencement of the Galactic Civil War, the Partisans had access to T-47s during their insurgency on Jedha.
When stationed on Hoth, the Rebel Alliance modified T-47 airspeeders to become snowspeeders, fast flying conveyances for patrol and defense of their hidden base. It took some doing to keep the crippling cold from permanently grounding their airforce, but Rebel ingenuity overcame the relentless Hoth elements.
Bandai (GUNDAM) 1/48 Star Wars Snowspeeder.
- Highly detailed plastic pieces molded in different colors
- Snap together
- Frame and clear canopies
- Laser effect
- Tow cable
- Interior details
- Air brakes
- Seated pilots
- Angle adjustable stand
- Sticker and Waterslide decals
- Illustrated Instuctions
With some artistic licencing and some imagination, I’m sharing this Bandai 1/48 Snowspeeder with some maintenance panels removed. This is my version of Zev Senesca’s Rogue Two played by the late Obit Christopher Malcolm. This is a small humble tribute to Zev’s T-47. He was the guy who flew over Hoth’s tundra to find a disappeared and wounded Luke Skywalker.
To cut over the plastic, I find no better way to do it than using my scribbing tool from Flex-I-File.
To make sure where I was going to place the cut without ruining the lower edges, I placed the upper half of the hull against a strong light source in our studio. I then traced with a pencil where I was going to make the cut. With the scribbing tool and a metal ruler I the proceeded to scratch the surface of the model. The first pass is very important. It will pretty much guide the subsequent passes. I passed the tool with a gentle pressure until the tip started to show up on the other side. I then finished the little that was left over with a fresh #11 exacto blade.
The Snowspeeder was painted with a base color of Light Ghost Gray MMP-073 from Mission Models US. Not used on our first model kit, I found thru trial and error that for the red markings on this version of the Snowspeeder, Vallejo Scarlet 70.817 (FS-31400 /  RLM-23) is the best match for the red seen on the actual filming miniatures. As briefly shown on our Facebook page (Like and Follow), the scratches and paint chips were created using toothpaste. Blast marks are combination of Rubber Grey (any dark grey would do it) thru my Aztek A-470 airbrush with the Tan nozzle and dark grey/black pastels. I did a pinwash with Vallejo washes and the streaking effects were made with Ammo by Mig Rust & Starship Streaking A.MIG-1209. The use of this products was kept to a minimum to avoid having the issues we all know with the plastic from Bandai models. Subsequently, everything was sealed under a modest coat of Mission Models US MMA-004 Flat Clear.
