by John Fleming

The Mestengo is a front line space-fighter. While it is capable of atmospheric flight, it does so like a brick. Luckily it has power to spare through it's 6 Neutron Fusion engines, housed in two three-packs. It also has 2 smaller high-yield Ion drives for non-combat thrust. The vents on the back are for cooling the fusion engines when in atmospheric flight. It get's a little hot working so hard to make this brick fly.

It has a single forward facing plasma gun (fed from the fusion engines), and 5 internal bays in the belly. These bays are infinitely re configurable to accommodate a verity of weapons as the mission may dictate. And depending on weapons load and mission, it will carry a crew of one or two. This is a Mk 11R, a single seat version, with the bays hard-configured to carry 12 C2C (craft to craft) missiles, and three location/surveillance buoys.

It is one of the most successful space fighter designs. It is still in production, incorporating the latest, and sometimes not-so-greatest, technologies. The basic space-frame remains almost unchanged over it's production run.

It measures 13.32 meters long (43'8.5"), 5.27 meters wide (17'3.5"), and 4.88 meters tall (16'). This model is 1/72 scale, and is 185mm long, 73.25mm wide, and 67.8mm tall. The model is mostly resin, with styrene, some PE and LOTS of CA to hold it all together. Do not stare at it too long, it may explode.

Image: Right side view

Image: Front and low

Image: Another view

Image: Bottom

Image: Grilles

Image: Top/right

Image: Again