There is not much to say about the Star Wars X-Wing Fighter that many if not all of you know about it at this point. This is the same Snap Tite™ X-Wing we did an in-box review little over a year ago. Even though they don’t share the same scale, I thought many times to give it to my youngest son (19) to build it for display under a skylight in our office hallway. But at the same time, I knew that the model had more potential so I held back from the idea.
As my many personal projects that happen between builds in the studio, I decided to finally tackle this one little over a month ago. After reviewing the 3D printed hangar for the Revell/Zvezda Star Destroyer, the folks over at Falcon 3D Parts were kind to join this venture and sent us their 3D printed cockpit. This cockpit is a far cry from the original stock one and brings the model to a whole new level. They also provided us with their 3D printed cannons and emitters. From there I took over with Evergreen Models tubing. Last but not least, Falcon 3D Parts sent in a recently added to their catalog canopy frame which is glaze-less.
Since I like to photograph my models, I thought of adding to mounting points on the front and back. That was achieved using some ingenuity and 7/16 Evergreen styrene tube (#234). 3/8” brass tubing from K&S Metals slides into the 7/16”. Every end has a miniature connector to power the 8 LEDs. 4 for the engines and 4 in different colors including RGB for the cockpit. Speaking again of the cockpit, the pilot is provided and the printing detail (at 50 microns) is outstanding. I lost the provided clear 3D printed visor to the carpet monster and I had to improvise with acetate.
With room available -but not visible on the final photos-, I decided to add a 3rd mount right under R2-D2 for top camera flybys.
WHAT COLOR IS THE X-WING?
That’s the 64k dollars question. I used a base color of Tamiya TS-20 Insignia White but after a few days of my eyes acclimatizing to it, I wasn’t entirely convinced. The final base color was a 50/50 mix of Tamiya XF-19 Grey and XF-2 Flat White. That looked closer to what I remember from the movies. The weathering took care of toning down the cleanliness of new paint. I wanted to depict Red 3 for a change because our hero Red 5 I find personally overly built. I did not follow a weathering pattern based on the studio filming model but rather my personal interpretation of Red 3 ”at any certain point”. All the weathering was done using Ammo Mig Products.
My sincere thanks to Revell USA for the model sample. Falcon 3D Parts for their excellent upgrades and Ammo Mig for their loyal support with their weathering products.
PS,
As with any build of this kind, I highly recommend joining a group of the same interest. I did it for the Eagle Transporter from 1999, the Revell/Zvezda Star Destroyer and now with this build, I joined X-Wing Builders Anonymous group on Facebook. There you will find help, answers to your questions and find yourself giving help to some other folks building X-Wings of all types and media.
