by Duane King

Introduced in the SW Clone Wars animated series, this is the single seat fighter used by the Jedi, with a single AstroMech droid being positioned centrally in front of the pilot. The fighter is maneuverable, with four laser cannons for combat. Skywalker tends to crash these so he gets to borrow other ships from time to time.

Built straight out of the box, this snap tight pre-painted kit was glued together and hand painted using Gunship Gray and black acrylics. The cockpit was hand painted using acrylics, and the molded (sparse as they are) instruments were detailed using prismacolor coloring pencils. I added some color photo copy reproductions of 1/72 scale cockpit instruments to detail the cockpit a bit more. I carefully painted around the factory applied Jedi circle decals.

The R2D2 unit was touched up using acrylics also, after assembly. Given no other pilot figures, I put Anakin into the ship.

It is a simple kit to put together, but I think the R2 unit is out of scale for the model. I opened up the joining holes as I went so that I could test fit parts prior to gluing.

Image: Bottom

Image: Cockpit, left side

Image: With crew

Image: Dashboard

Image: R2

Image: Rear

Image: Pilot

Image: Left side