UCS Predator Class Starfighter

[Walter Kovacs]

This design is almost complete. I still have to add things like Technic pins and axles, and design the UCS Stand. But none of those things affect the overall look of the model, so I give you the Predator Class Starfighter:

A few notes about this model. According to Wookiepedia (sorry, no link), most of the fighters had the slatted windscreen, but the flight leaders had the traditional TIE Windscreen. I opted to design to the flight leader, because the slotted front would be a nightmare to try and emulate in LEGO. I suppose a plain tan windscreen covered in custom decals would be the best way to emulate it, but I don't have the skills to pull that off, especially in MLCad.

If you think that this model has come out a little quick compared to the Scimitar Bomber, you're right. I started this design last Thursday, completely re-designed the wing attachments over the weekend, and finished up Monday morning. That's pretty fast for me on a UCS scale model.

Enough prattle already. On to the details!

First and foremost, the attachment between the wings and the cockpit ball had to be robust enough to support wings that are 39 studs long. Thats a lot of weight to cantilever out away from the model. The source picture (the link is above) shows that the rear plate is very thin. Far too thin to do in LEGO. So I made it as thin as possible while still being sturdy enough to not fall apart during construction. The rest of the design was built around this fact. Here is a Close-Up of what the rear section looks like.

The next most important feature are the quad lasers. You can see them well in the Front view.

Another distinct feature of this fighter are the Four Engines. Ideally, I would have used a 10 x 10 Octagonal Cockpit for the rear of the Cockpit Ball, but the holes for the engines were off by 45 degrees. So instead I built my own out of plates. The slopes used for the engines really made sculpting the roundness of the Cockpit difficult, so there's probably some improvement that can be done.

Here's a Side and Top view to give an idea of the overall size of the ship.

And finally, the last important detail of this particular starfighter. The wings close foe docking, and my version HAD to have this feature. Here are some views from the Front, Top and Side with the wings closed. I realize that the wings should be parallel while closed, but I thought it looked better the way I show them. The rotation pieces certainly will allow the parrallel configuration.

The Full Gallery can be found here.

Overall, there aren't too many opportunities to greeble this ship. The rear section was already to thick, so I didn't want to make them any taller. Besides, greebling the rear might impinge on the Engines, which IMO are a much more important detail. The cockpit itself is fairly sparse (I realize I didn't give any pictures of the cockpit interior. You're not missing much, trust me.) I certainly could spruce that up quite a bit, but those are details that can be done anytime.

As mentioned above, the stand hasn't been full designed yet, though I have worked out the spacing and theory of it. In a nutshell, there's a hole in the bottom of the Cockpit Ball which will keep the model from moving side to side or backwards/forewards. The weight of the model will be supported by the rear of the model. Imagine the stand from the UCS Vader's TIE Advanced, only greatly elongated.

As always, Questions, Comments and Criticisms are greatly appreciated.

PS: At the current time, I have no idea which TIE variant I'd like to do next. If anyone has a request, I'd be glad to attempt it. The only ones I refuse to do are the TIE Mauler, TIE Crawler and the TIE Hunter. I want to avoid treads for as long as possible, and the Hunter has some very difficult angles to incorporate into a LEGO model. I need to sharpen up my technique before trying it.

[commandosevy]

when walter-kovacs do you sleep??? well anyway thats soo cool it has originality in it and a cool new design.

5/5!!!

[Lt. Col. Thok]

Very nicely done!

BTW, here is your link: Link

[Vaders_son]

I didn't know that Tie before, so thanks for the link LT. Col. Thok

I'm not so sure about this model, the shape is somehow strange I think, but this is common among the Ties

Your build is good, but having seen all the other models you posted one knows that you didn't invest a lot of time in it. It's not as detailed as the others, but still good

Benny

[Tarfful]

Great work (as usual) Walter!

Your model represents the Predator almost perfectly.

Are you going to ever build it in real bricks?

I always thought the Predator was one of the more abstract TIE's.

It always reminded me of nothing so much as a gnat with over-sized wings.

Tarfful

[Walter Kovacs]

  Tarfful said:

Great work (as usual) Walter!

Your model represents the Predator almost perfectly.

Are you going to ever build it in real bricks?

I always thought the Predator was one of the more abstract TIE's.

It always reminded me of nothing so much as a gnat with over-sized wings.

Tarfful

Actually, I only need about $9.00 worth of bricks from BL, plus S+H, to build this one. So I will be making it out of Bricks relatively soon. Not exactly sure when soon is, though. I'll add the pieces I'm missing for my TIE Drone to the same order, and maybe enough for a MINI as well. A nice round $30.00 order should fit into the budget somewhere, right?

One of the reasons I made the Predator, despite it's obscurity, is that there was actually a schematic I could scale off of. There are only a handful of schematics out on the web that I can find, and I've built most of them except the TIE Mauler, TIE Fighter and TIE GT. I sort of wanted to stay away from ground based TIEs for now. I'm not going to attempt a TIE Fighter of my own, at least not for a long while. And since the GT is really close to the Fighter, it should probably come after I get a good Fighter design.

The reason I don't want to try a Fighter yet is fairly simple. Reto Geiger has done a UCS scale TIE Fighter, and it is much, much, MUCH better than anything I can do with my current skillset. I'm going to hone my skills on all the other variants, then try my hand at what is probably THE most Iconic TIE of them all. In short, I can't do the model justice yet, so I'll wait till I can. I hope my intentions are clear.

  'Vaders_son said:

Your build is good, but having seen all the other models you posted one knows that you didn't invest a lot of time in it. It's not as detailed as the others, but still good

I think part of the detail problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of surface area to detail. The wings make up 75% of the ship, and they're about as detailed as they need to be. *shrugs* We'll see how it looks in real bricks.