Custom UCS Y-Wing (Simplified)

[CommanderGrimm]

Recently I've picked up an interest in the Y-Wing from the Star Wars original trilogy. This interest inspired me to try creating y-wings of my own, inspired by Lego's sets of the past and my own design choices. However, there was one thing that began to haunt me: the UCS Y-Wing. It seemed so distant, so impossible, so... intriguing. Just last night I handed myself the challenge of creating my own on LDD. However, I decided to stray from the instructions and allow my imagination to flow. Using pictures of the original set and some diagrams of the ship I built a (very) inaccurate depiction of the Y-Wing to the best of my ability.

It was designed to be cost-effective, to be simple, to be everything the smaller versions stood for. It was my way of moving on from my childhood and onto bigger things, but still holding onto the past ever so slightly. It wasn't designed to be accurate; rather, at the time I designed it for fun, and thus it isn't very well thought out. Everything is pieced together so that it can be easily disassembled for travel or storage and quickly put back together. Each section is held together with 4-5 pins, hopefully making the connections strong enough for display. 

Due to my inexperience with UCS, or building anything good in general, it is a bit simplistic in design, and has several design errors, such as the body being too short and so on. The likelihood of me changing the design is small, as I have become rather fond of its flawed nature.

Though the body is inaccurate, I am very happy with how it turned out. While still holding some properties of the original, it has a certain Kenner-toyishness to it that makes me smile. Perhaps labeling it a UCS is erroneous; rather, it is just a large version of your standard Y-Wing set, but without any special building styles. Unless I get the uncontrollable urge to change something, this is how it will look. 

I hope you enjoyed this build and, if you want the LDD file, I will be happy to provide it. Thank you for reading!

 

And if you want to build it yourself or change it up to your liking here's the LDD file!

Download

Edited December 2, 2017 by CommanderGrimm
Adding LDD download.

[CommanderGrimm]

Decided to add some landing gear to hold it up when on a shelf; also just looks more accurate.

[brobert]

Oh come on, don't undersell it, it looks brilliant! It's an effective and sympathetically simplistic rendition of the craft, and while I admire the more intricate and complex builds that some are kind enough to share, this truly looks like that can be designed by someone who doesn't spend most of his free waking ours in rooms full of LEGO.

(BTW, if you were more like some SW fans, you could justify the inaccuracies by concocting a 1000+ character backstory to the ship )

[CommanderGrimm]

Just now, brobert said:

Oh come on, don't undersell it, it looks brilliant! It's an effective and sympathetically simplistic rendition of the craft, and while I admire the more intricate and complex builds that some are kind enough to share, this truly looks like that can be designed by someone who doesn't spend most of his free waking ours in rooms full of LEGO.

(BTW, if you were more like some SW fans, you could justify the inaccuracies by concocting a 1000+ character backstory to the ship )

Wow, thanks! I'm currently ordering pieces from Bricklink in the mail, so hopefully on Christmas I have something amazing to build! 

Perhaps this is, uh, Gold... 4.

Valiant, fearless pilot, but crashed into a turret at the first Death Star because he got a text message.

Don't text and fly, kids.

[EnderWiggen]

LoL, suprising enough I know that is something Pilots do, at least thay wont crash into any turrets lol. I like that you made it in sections, you hace a really good build prosses and your design shows it. Have fun building it for Christmas.

[CommanderGrimm]

Just now, EnderWiggen said:

LoL, suprising enough I know that is something Pilots do, at least thay wont crash into any turrets lol. I like that you made it in sections, you hace a really good build prosses and your design shows it. Have fun building it for Christmas.

Thanks! Also, I decided to see what other Y-Wings would look like with my style:

[EnderWiggen]

Nice, Red Jammer is probly my favorite. Definitely post the finished build.