[MOC] Imperial LAAT Gunship from 2 x 75338

[Wurger49]

Started on this last weekend, I think I am nearly there, any suggestions please?

Imperial LAAT Gunship, 2 x 75338 by Richard Yao, on Flickr

Imperial LAAT Gunship, 2 x 75338 by Richard Yao, on Flickr

Edited May 7, 2023 by Wurger49

[Guyinaplaguemask]

The turret should be more intimidating. The single small gun just doesn't look good, so if you can combine them somehow that would be cool. If you can make the engines longer at all, that would help as well as making the wings larger in any way you can. Would probably be hard with the prices available, but I thinks it's doable.

[Wurger49]

3 hours ago, Guyinaplaguemask said:

The turret should be more intimidating. The single small gun just doesn't look good, so if you can combine them somehow that would be cool. If you can make the engines longer at all, that would help as well as making the wings larger in any way you can. Would probably be hard with the prices available, but I thinks it's doable.

thank you, will play around with different turrent designs to see how it fits with over hull. Definitely need larger and longer wings, as the ship is taller and longer; wings have been designed, at the bottom of the pics.

[Wurger49]

I was quite buoyed by the reception on my Tie Advanced MOC, gave me the energy to put in the time to design and build this Imperial LAAT Gunship from two 75338 Mobile Tac-Pods.
The Imperial Gunship is very industrial looking with sharp edges and pointy corners, a bulky angular armored ship devoid of the organic curved looks of the Republic Gunship with bubble canopies and round fuselage.
LAAT_2 by Richard Yao, on Flickr
Like the Republic Gunship, the crew sits in tandem, with the co-pilot/ sitting behind and above the pilot. The stepped design replaced the double bubble canopy design of the Republic era.
It has three chin-mounted laser cannons at the nose of the ship, one dorsal-mounted twin-barreled laser cannon turret between the two engines. Two missile launchers are mounted in front of the engine pods, they could fire a variety of missiles.
When in landing configuration, its wings would fold up like Lambda class shuttles to save space, and it has four side ramps and one back ramp for disembark access. The ship can fit a speeder bike and six minifigures inside.

IMG_3790 by Richard Yao, on Flickr
LAAT_4 by Richard Yao, on Flickr
The design of the Tac-Pod’s angular ship is marvelous from LEGO, so I was standing on the shoulder of giants when I was doing this alternate build. The spacing on technic arms and space needed to put in pins created a bit of problems for me initially, had to pull apart and rebuild a few times.
The length of the ship is decided by combining a pair of 1x14 technic bricks and a pair 1x10 technic bricks as the spine of the ship, this allows for another pair of those two bricks to form the dorsal of the ship. I moved the technic columns as forward as possible to have space to fit a speeder bike inside. The outrigger of the speeder is wider than normal as they need to fit around the two technic columns.

IMG_3791 by Richard Yao, on Flickr

Wedge plates are used to has as little gaps between the canopy and fuselage, the wings enlarged to 8-studs wide at the roots to 5-studs wide at the tip, when the wings folded up, I reminds me of the Phantom II used by the Ghost crew in Rebels animated series.
The single long barreled laser cannon was replaced by my twin-barreled version, I used a shorter barrel to balance out the design. I had to use claws and bars to create the chin-mounted laser cannon look, they do have good field of movement but the connections aren’t not the strongest.
After finishing building the model, I had to swap out a few light bluish grey plates for bright light orange ones to break up the bulky monotonous grey sidewalls.

IMG_3794 by Richard Yao, on Flickr

IMG_3785 by Richard Yao, on Flickr

Edited May 7, 2023 by Wurger49

[Wurger49]

Instructions are available on rebrickable.

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-147877/wurger49/imperial-laat-gunship-alternate-build-of-2-x-75338/#details

[Wurger49]