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X-Wing Red 5

By Evan Jones






This is my version of the Fine Molds X-Wing, completed in October 2004.

Using photos of a similar X-Wing in the reference section of Starship Modeler and the new DVD version of the movie, I built the X-Wing as close as I could to what appeared in the movie. However, there are inconsistencies in the movie that I noted. In particular, when Luke climbs into his X-Wing in preparation for the attack, his ship has a solid red stripe down the left hand side. When he begins to do battle against the Empire, the stripe had mysteriously split into three pieces! The right side of the ship is not seen in the battle sequences.

Luke’s robot droid, R2-D2, was called upon in the battle sequences to fix a stabilizer on the ship. A piece of small diameter wire was added to show R2 fixing a portion of the X-Wing engine. The only other deviation was to build the targeting viewer behind Luke as he deactivated the computer while he relied on the Force. The X-Wing was painted with Polly Scale flat water based Lettering White paint using my airbrush. Detailed brush painting of specific panels was done using similar water based paints and masking the areas.

Before the decals were applied, I dabbed on some Future Floor polish where the decals were to go and let it dry. This is a trick used by military modelers to eliminate ‘silvering’ of decals when applied to a flat finish surface. I used the decals supplied in the Fine Molds kit, with some minor variations, to decorate the ship using Micro Sol, followed by a coat of Testors Model Master Acryl 4636 flat clear to get the dull finish I wanted. The weathering was done with a combination of an enamel wash and various pastels. The vinyl masking kit, available through Starship Modeler, was used to paint the canopy.

The Fine Molds kit is probably the easiest model I have ever built. The detail is fantastic, the fit is excellent and except for the usual seams (especially on the leading edge of the wings), the kit went together with no problems.

It placed 2nd in the space vehicle category at an IPMS model contest, October 2004, in Ajax (outside of Toronto, Canada) and won a special theme award for Best TV or Movie-based Space Vehicle.

Image: Cockpit area

Image: Front view

Image: Detail, with R2

Image: Left/rear view

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