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Corellian YT-1300 Transport


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Hello all,

I guess I am staying with Star Wars a little longer.  This is the old Revell snap tite Millenium Falcon kit.  It is not very accurate (side walls are huge) and would be great for a kid to build and play with.  This kit has some of the hardest plastic I have ever encountered, very durable.  I am going to convert it to a transport version of the YT-1300.  There are several web sites that show different versions of the YT-1300 and I am going to go with the one with exposed engines.

Here is the kit.

33838996518_447ffb9ce7_o.pngYT01 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

There are not a lot of parts and if you were going to build it from the box you could probably be done with it in less than an hour.

Here is the top to show the size and quality of the prepainted plastic.

33838996388_cfab4a1719_o.pngYT02 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

I have made my cuts for the modifications, there is no going back now.

33838996198_d47a30baa3_o.pngYT03 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

Here is the factory painted cockpit that I will leave as is and a couple of 1:72 figures that I converted to sit in the seats.

33838995928_1d185f40a3_o.pngYT04 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

The pilots painted up and installed.  This is the Han and Chewie that were included with the kit.

46799934605_53665e7554_o.pngYT05 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

The cockpit was moved to the center and a bunch of Bondo has been smeared around.

33838995618_c9f7dba1d8_o.pngYT06 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

This is a great kit to make these modifications to.  The parts are thick and clunky and take a lot of abuse.  I was having so much fun I did not want to stop.

Els

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36 minutes ago, Els said:

 

33838995618_c9f7dba1d8_o.pngYT06 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

This is a great kit to make these modifications to.  The parts are thick and clunky and take a lot of abuse.  I was having so much fun I did not want to stop.

Els

Something in that image has me suddenly hungry for pizza but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

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Capt Obvious, quitting your job is excellent for additional modelling time, not so great for paying bills though.  I worked on it some today, filled in the area where the old cockpit tunnel was.  I thought that I had sealed off the cockpit but of course sanding dust got in there and stuck to the windows.  I am not sure how I am going to get that out.  Tomorrow I will head over to Home Depot and look for some items to make the engines and fill in some of the back end.  Plumbing section is usually pretty good for those types of things.

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My daughter went with me to Home Depot to buy these parts, I had to listen to 20 "This store is so boring's", 50 "What are you looking for's", and I lost count of how many "Are you done yet's".  A new rule for me is No kids on found object hunts!  This is what I ended up with to start the engine.

46986221324_575918f5ea_o.pngYT07 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

Here are the parts all glued together and primed.  I also added some styrene to the end of the nozzles to dress them up a bit.  You can also see where I filled in the open spot from where the tunnel to the cockpit used to be.

47723145122_e1f885fc13_o.pngYT08 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

I used the landing gear parts from the kit to start filling in the open void.

46858954685_2f7dc791a6_o.pngYT09 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

Now it is time to raid my spare parts tub to fill up the engine area some more.  Hopefully after I put in 50 or 100 more little bits it will look the part.

Els

Edited by Els
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I added as many parts to make it look like an engine as I am going to.

40848484713_6dfa87390b_o.pngYT10 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

I also made the mistake of painting it with a rattle can of Krylon.  It has been 4 days and it is still sticky.  I thought it was lacquer but I guess it was enamel.

 

On a side note, I was sad to see that Peter Mayhew passed away.  It was always amazing to me how much acting/emotion he could accomplish being fully enclosed in that suit.  I was stationed at RAF Mildenhall in the UK during the late 90's/early 2000's.  They used to have a 4th of July fireworks show/carnival at RAF Molesworth.  One year my family and several others went out there to watch the show.  We brought a lot of food and beverages and had set up all our stuff by the cars.  There was a big white tent next to our cars with tables and chairs but it was mostly empty so we decided to go inside and take over one corner of it.  Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission sometimes.  There was an individual at one table to the side that was some muckity muck in WWII that was signing books that he had wrote.  At the other table in the far corner was an old man and someone he knew.  Once in a while someone would walk by and talk to him for a minute and then leave.  We sat in there and ate and drank for a couple of hours then we packed everything up and went to watch the fireworks.  Later on my wife came up to me and told me that she had seen the old guy walking around looking and he was a giant.  I laughed and went on with the night.  The next week when I went to check my mail at the post office and picked up a copy of the base paper.  While eating lunch I read through it and on the last page it said that "Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca was going to be at Molesworth to sign autographs during the fourth of July celebrations".  I was a day late and a dollar short.  What a missed opportunity, I literally sat about 20 feet away from him for hours and did not know it was him.  I bet that if we had offered he would have sat with us and we could have heard some amazing stories.  There were a couple of thousand people at that event and I bet only about 30 people came over to talk to him.  That is one of those moments in time for me that I wish I could go back to.

I have only heard good things about him and I am sorry to see that he passed.  My condolences to his family and friends.

Els

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  • 3 weeks later...

Another one that I am going to consider finished.  

47974119112_064127d36d_o.pngYT13 by Hal Elsberry, on Flickr

The yellow/blue that I put on the engines is a lot brighter in the pictures than if viewed with the the Mk1 eyeballs, I guess it is because of the lights.  I glued an eye hook into the bottom of the finished kit after I took the pictures so that I can hang it on the wall as if it was in a vertical climb (I have no more shelf space).  Since I did not use any Aurebesh on the recruiting shuttle I thought I should throw some on here.  The nose art on a WWII C-47 gave me the inspiration,  so this is what I put on there; "Any thing, Any time, Any place" .  Probably a universal motto of transporters, especially the shady ones.

Again, this is another kit that I have had for a seriously long time and because of its inaccuracies and simplified details I would have never built it.  This is one of the reasons that I really like Group builds, it forces me to dig down to the bottom of the stash to find something to build that matches the criteria.  

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