By Bill Human - images & text © 2007

Editor's Note: What could you build given 2 pounds of parts and a deadline? Back in 2004, a challenge was issued on the Starship Modeler Discussion Forums to answer just that question. Participants scoured their strategic styrene reserves for likely parts, then sent them in to SSM, where they were randomly boxed up and sent back out again. None of the participants knew what they would get. The results .... well, see for yourself. The full record of events is still online on the Discussion Forums (though some of the individual links have undoubtedly decayed since then).

The 'Century Kestrel', is a Corellian YA1701 Light Courier. Built a decade before the time of the Clone Wars, she was #420, in an order of one thousand, one hundred and thirty eight such vessels, bought by Universal Package Services. Such fleet vessels are not named by the companies that own them and thus UPS#1029384756 was known only, by the delivery pilots that flew her, as “The one with the slow acceleration compensator”.

Shortly before the loss of the Empire's Death Star at Yavin, UPS began to replace its older ships with Incom Y-4 Transports. It was during this time that the Kestrel was bought at auction, by an entrepreneurial Rodian named Plado Deecha.

Plado, a big fan of the Holovids and Newscoms featuring the exploits of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, named his ship the Century Kestrel, in keeping with the ancient tradition of Corellian ship captains. Plado, however, was to prove not as adept as his hero, at avoiding the pitfalls of independent operation.

After losing a shipment of Ithorian nose butter, to “customs agents” on Sriluur, Plado found himself in the unenviable position of having to pay for the lost shipment. Of course he did not have the money. He was given the choice of his ship or his life. He would never know that the Twilek gangsters that had hired him to make the delivery, had also arranged for the shipment to be stolen, or that they were agents of Black Sun, a criminal organization run by Prince Xizor.

After a background check of Plado and the Kestrel came back clean, with no warrants, it was decided that Plado would be pressed into service with XTS, Xizor Transportation Systems. His clean ID would be a useful tool for making deliveries on some of the stricter Imperial worlds. He was allowed to continue operating the Kestrel with a promise that, someday, his debt would be repaid. Of course, this will never happen.

Being a registered ship 'owned' by XTS, however, does have its benefits. Because of an 'agreement' between Xizor and the Empire, the Kestrel is almost never boarded by Imperial patrols and is rarely hassled by pirates or smugglers. Most pirates and underworld types know better than to risk incurring Xizor's ire.

Getting Started

Enough with the back-story! The Century Kestrel is my entry in the Box of Parts challenge. This challenge, conceived on the forums, asked modelers to make a model entirely from parts supplied by someone else.

My box seemed like it would never arrive; when it did, I sat in front of the TV for an hour just rummaging and fitting various parts together! Some parts like the toy boat trailer, the cover of a remote control transmitter, or the GI Joe backpacks, I knew wouldn't be used. But the, mostly complete, TOS Enterprise and various other Star Trek parts had me, at first, thinking about some Borged-up version of the Enterprise!

The more I played with the parts, however, several things occurred to me. The round sections of some model rocket kit, along with that conical section kinda look like the Millennium Falcon's cockpit. Also, that main deflector housing from the Enterprise, sorta looks like one of the Falcons docking rings. And the Enterprise's saucer section could be used as the hull of my ship. Hmmm.

Basic Construction

After making some drawings, and endless scouring 'the box', I felt I had enough main parts to get started. The rest, I would make up as I went! One of the first problems I faced was the distinctive 'turret-ring' on top of the ship. I didn't want to make a copy of the Falcon, but I felt that without this ring, it wouldn't be very recognizable as a Corellian transport ship.

After no suitable round piece was found in my box, I decided to mold my own. I chipped up one of the Galaxy class hull parts I had, into very small bits, and poured them into a metal air pellet tin. I the center, I had glued another small, round tin. After 15-20 minutes in the oven, the plastic had melted into a nice, round shape with a hole in the middle.

Next, I needed to cut a turret-sized hole in the lower saucer half that I could fit the turret into. After this was done, I used part of that cut out piece to serve as the inverted 'turret-window'. The laser cannon on top, I would leave to later.

Using the Falcon's cockpit tube as a reference, I cut the rocket-tube sections into a close approximation of the right shape, and then cut into the hull enough to fit the tube. Then, using sections of sprue as spacers, I joined the upper and lower halves of my hull. On the other side, I cut another notch, which would mount the ships docking ring. After a little trimming, and cutting out the ribbed center of the deflector, I glued the new 'docking-ring' into place.

Next, using the lower hull of some Tamiya tank kit, I started fashioning the forward, top hull piece. As this was mainly just a cutting and gluing exercise, I'll skip the details! Or the cursing!

Detailing

Looking at the Falcon's hull what I needed most, I didn't have much of: flat, sheet styrene. I found every flat bit in the box, whether wing sections, flat parts of a tank or ship hull or even bits of that RC transmitter! Coupled with the one piece of sheet styrene that did come in the box, I thought I just might have enough.

I laid a piece of construction paper over the hull, and then started tracing the shapes I would need. Using an exacto, I then cut the shapes in paper that would serve as my templates.

It took a while, but I was finally able to fit the paper templates on the plastic I had; and with the plastic I scrounged from the box, found I had enough to layer the top of the ship only! Oh, well. It was then I decided to concentrate wholly on detailing all but the bottom of the ship.

After gluing my panels in place, the rest kind of fell into place. The bits for the 'engine-deck' are from the lower chassis of a tank kit, slices of that rocket body, some landing gear tires, suspension parts from some purple model car, sections of cut-in-half sprue, 'number tabs' from sprue runners and plastic punched out of a hole punch!

Other areas of the hull were adorned with bits from an Abrams tank and a Bradley APC. The docking ring 'hatch' is from that Abrams kit as well. The blaster cannon was made from what I think was a starter from a Corvette model, the lower transmission pan of that purple car kit, and some of the AA gun bits and torpedo tube parts from the old PT 109 kit. The round window portion of the laser turret is from (I think) the idler wheel of that same Abrams tank.

The 'guts-on-the-outside' sidewalls include one half of an AMT/ERTL AT-AT head, one very small-scale tank top (sawed in-half), more bits from the Bradley, part of a transmission from a small-scale car kit, some stretched sprue rods, wire from the box and the rear end of some 'spring-loaded-launcher-toy-thing'.

One part that I kept putting off was building some sort of engine. I didn't have anything that I thought looked like the Falcon's engine area. I rationalized that if this were a smaller, possibly older ship than the Falcon; it may have more traditional, nozzle-type engine 'bells'. Using this rationale, I found six bogie wheels from the box belonging to, I think, the Bradley kit.

Here is another difference between this project and one I'd build for my self; If I had had more plastic, or access to my own stuff, I would have added some detail in the 'middle-area' of each bogie wheel, going around the circumference. As it was, I was so worried about having enough plastic that I sadly dropped this idea.

I wanted a paint job that was simple but distinctive, in this case, the 'fleet' paint job it had while in service. Paints were Wal-Mart flat white and green, and details in acrylic.

Conclusion

To sum up, I'm glad I participated in this challenge but I'm happy it's over! It was one of the most challenging (frustrating) modeling projects I've had. Frustrating, because instead of building to my own standards, I had to build only with what I was given. It was for this reason, that I really have a sense of accomplishment at having completed it. You can bet, this model will have a definite 'place of honor', on the old modeling shelf!