[MOC] Stinger Mantis Midi-Scale - Alternate Build Of 75399 Rebel U-Wing Starfighter

[Wurger49]

After around 50 Star Wars MOCs, I finally did my first Stinger Mantis, another alternate build from the 75399 Rebel U-Wing. To be honest, I am not really a gamer thus didn't play the Fallen Order or Survivor, but looking at models from fellow designers like Codyander and Zsoltom made me study and design this ship.

The Stinger Mantis is an luxury yacht which acted as the transport and home for its crew, one notable member being Jedi Cal Kestis.

The Stinger class used a asymmetric rotating wing design, with a large fin counterbalancing an outrigger engine pod. The entire front of the cockpit was a framed glass canopy, created by a trans-clear panel on hinge plates. Dual laser cannons were located in the bow, above the cockpit. The grey centreline section has the greebling with a trans-clear tile acting as a top-view window.

Behind the cockpit there are folding doors on ball joints where you can open up to put a minfigure inside, it's a tight fit where the minifigure will need to lay back really low. Ideally, each folding door should be connected on two joints, but I needed two for the outrigger engine connection, so I used additional horizontal opening ball plates to support the doors while they are closed.

The curved and cutout slopes formed the edges of the top panel, leading to the bulky white paneled section, I also used various slopes to build up this section. The outrigger engine pod's wing frame was made using technic beams and bricks, connected by ball joints and can rotate to both landing and flight positions. Overlapping plates are used to prevent this wing from disconnection due to play. With the piece limitations, the large fin was built independently, on its own hinge plate connection, I tried to recreate the yellow, blue and grey patterns on both sides. It can fold down to horizontal position, but not rotate on the same plane of the outrigger engine.

Finally the back section with two thrusters are connected to the front section via overlapping plates and long technic axles, simple but solid. You can pick up the model from the centre white panels and the back thrusters and swoosh it around with no problems. The edge curved slopes can be knocked off easily, and the single connection side doors tend to be pushed into wrong positions if you don't pick it up from the centre white panels.

A tall stand was built from round bricks to display the model in flight mode, this model will display nicely alongside other mid-scale Star War ship.

 

Instructions are on Rebrickable: https://reb.li/m/221373