[MOC] T-65B X-wing Starfighter

[BrickRally217]

Greetings Eurobricks,

I have for you today a MOC of the T65-B X-Wing Starfighter seen in the OT. Specifically, this is Luke's Red 5. This is the second of 3 Star Wars ship MOCs I will be posting to the forum today.

Apologies for the photography and cluttered background. I tried my best but I don't have a great set-up at the location I am now.

So, I have taken a stab at creating this iconic model in LEGO, and I have come out a changed man. This took about two months of consistent work to get it how I wanted it, and I'm pretty happy with the result. But, gosh, was the process grueling at times. There are so many images, movie-stills, and diagrams of this thing, and they all have varying degrees of difference between them. The result of my MOC basically encompasses all the things that they have in common, with a few liberties of my own. 

My biggest point of pride with this creation is probably the nose section. I think I got the shaping just right, and I like how the angling of the side panels came out. I haven't seen anyone else try to replicate the leveling-off/slit portion of the silver head, so I took that challenge head-on, and I think it came out looking pretty spectacular (though I'm sure it could be improved!).

A couple of images of the back and back fuselage:

I'll say the only thing I'm not happy with here is how I've attached the wings. This was one of the biggest challenges I faced, since the stiffer ratcheting hinges bring too harsh of an angle but the more adjustable clip method does not support the weight. Since I definitely did not want to use ugly rubber-bands, I ended up doubling up on 2x1 ball joints for each wing, which works but still doesn't hold super well. But, since functionality is second to appearance for this model, I probably will not fix it. 

An aerial view. Like my Naboo Starfighter, this model is scaled almost perfectly to the astromech droid head on top, which is just slightly bigger than minifigure scale.

Cockpit view

I think that about covers it. Thanks for viewing and I hope you enjoyed my rendition of this ever-popular MOC. Any thoughts you have are welcomed in the comments!

[JintaiZ]

Great build!

[TeddytheSpoon]

Lovely stuff, of the three you've posted this is definitely my favourite!

[BrickRally217]

44 minutes ago, TeddytheSpoon said:

Lovely stuff, of the three you've posted this is definitely my favourite!

Thanks, probably is mine too tbh

[Curbthetide]

Great build, I especially like the side of the forward fuselage.  Well done!

[BrickRally217]

On 9/10/2020 at 9:23 AM, Curbthetide said:

Great build, I especially like the side of the forward fuselage.  Well done!

Thanks! I was worried the studs might look ugly but I think it came out looking just fine

[BrickRally217]

On 9/6/2020 at 4:23 PM, BrickRally217 said:

I'll say the only thing I'm not happy with here is how I've attached the wings. But, since functionality is second to appearance for this model, I probably will not fix it.

On 9/6/2020, it would seem that BrickRally217 did not have a grasp on the concept of Lego elements loosening over time, nor on his innate perfectionism. A year later, he would, in fact, fix it. 

Indeed, after a little while having this thing on display, the ball joints gave and the wings started to sag. So, this summer I returned to the task of solving a problem I had only previously scratched the surface of. As a builder whose strength has always lied in capturing artistic detail over things like functionality or physics, it was quite a nightmare indeed.

If you'll have me, I'm going to go through my process (if nothing else to get it off my chest, lol).

My first thought was "how do I improve the friction on technic pins?" My solution was absurdly simple; just put bars through them and bend the bars slightly, somehow. After a some fiddling around, I was able to accomplish this illegally; as seen below, the technic pins do not fit into the red liftarms without being slightly stressed. 

Still, I was okay with it, since this solution actually worked for a while, and it didn't use rubber bands, which I was vehemently against. It wasn't ideal, but it worked and it was creative. That was, until it didn't, and the parts started to loosen in much the same way the ball joints did previously.

Great, I thought, I'll have to rack my brain about the functionality of gears now, since I can't rely on precarious solutions anymore. My only experience with using gears in my MOC making was when I made my Starkiller Base Forest a while back, where I had a feature where the ground split open. Still, that was a larger MOC which gave me lots of space to work with, and even so, it still only worked about half the time. Still intent on using the 3x3 cylinders for the engines and not revert to anything 4x4, this is what I came up for my next attempt. 

(re blue plate: Gotta love repurposing your broken Lego in places where it doesn't matter, huh? )

It's really quite similar to what I had done previously, only this time with gears running along the liftarms such that the wings will balance each other out, and the use of t-shaped liftarms to provide extra support toward the bottom. That wasn't so hard, was it? After redesigning the wings to accommodate a single-stud connection (the white bits), I attached them and... well, they were just too heavy for the mechanism I designed and the small gears. That was one sad-looking, droopy X-wing I had on my hands.

After this, I took some time off from this project and made a Y-wing MOC and an A-wing MOC, both of which I'm very proud of and I'd love it if you checked them out. Coming back to this, though, I decided I'd get out of my own way and see how other X-wing MOCers did theirs. I came upon this thread from cehnot, and I saw how they used a simple gearbox, with the gears on the sides being attached to the extensions which attach the wings. I couldn't tell based on the picture how their mechanism worked beyond that, but that fundamental idea was all I needed. 

I came up with this as my final solution, using technic double-pins attached to the side gear, and the weight of each wing balancing out. I simply attached plates onto the technic beams and started building a new wing design! (and I gave up on the 3x3 cylinders as you can see, lol)

To avoid the alternating-technic-beam problem, I simply included a mock-up 1x3 beam on the opposite side to match; easy enough.

So, how did the final model turn out?

In my opinion, pretty spectacular. I'm not sure if it's the best minifigure-scale X-wing MOC out there, but I would venture to say it's definitely one of the better ones. Some other changes I made were 1. a color change from my original dark red to regular red, I think it looks a lot sharper, 2. painted a stipe across a tile next to the 1x4 "red five" tile to make it the "red six".

Thanks for looking! I hope you enjoyed seeing the completed model and/or got something out of my ramblings, lol.