Aeroeza

Cheers Sucram! It felt really a eureka moment when the penny dropped whipping up that solution for the nose! I'll be spilling a yarn & waxing lyrical about it to the grandkids one day, with my dentures flying loose and hearing aid turned off so as all protest can easily be ignored. Hope you enjoyed reading the 'update blurb' this time around too! I genuinely appreciate your comment icm. We didn't want to leave any stone unturned, and really hope AFOLs who decide to invest their time in our MOD enjoy it all the more as a consequence...

UPDATE!! Allow me to present to you our NEW Directors Cut of GotB’s 75355 UCS X-wing Starfighter... Although these ‘add-ons’ are not critical to the completion of the model found in our main instructions, what we have endeavoured to create with this additional free release is basically a smorgasbord of display choices and optional little ‘extras’ for you to enjoy should you be wanting to push the potential of your X-wing to its absolute limits! Hopefully you’ll find something in our Directors Cut that floats your boat, elevates your heart rate or simply pushes all the right buttons in all the right places because it sure did for us! To begin with we’ve added a couple of additional ‘greebles’ we just had to throw in at the last moment. Our initial build succeeded in keeping much of Henrik Andersen’s DNA intact but there was the odd personal preference we had left out in deference to his build which we’ve now decided to present here for your consideration. Next you will find a modification for properly incorporating Luke into his cockpit. Although not to mini-fig scale we’ve come to appreciate that many AFOL’s would enjoy this UCS with our erstwhile hero at its helm. This MOD wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds but we are ecstatic with the result. Again, not a necessary change but a welcome one for many. But the biggest challenge we set ourselves for you to explore is a display variant of our model with ‘accurate’ and stable landing gear. It seemed only natural for a UCS X-wing to have this capability, especially as we had already hidden a little ‘Easter Egg’ into our build’s cockpit to augment this very display potential. You see, there are already 3L bars in place which can be extended to ‘hold-up’ the canopy much like the pneumatic pistons present in the film’s full-sized cockpit mock-up. What a feature to waste! So how did we go about making our landing gear? Well, let’s make a short story long in the expectation that you’ll enjoy the ride…. There’s a plethora of differences between the original four ILM X-wing models, their pyrotechnic copies, the life-sized soundstage props built, and the off-the-shelf commercial modelling kits used for filming in the ‘Original Trilogy’. That’s not to mention a simplified 3D version found in Star Wars: A New Hope’s ‘Special Edition’ and a whole new era of practical, digital and full-sized assets and props created for the Disney era. Luckily, we had been spoiled for choice when it came to available primary source material with our initial X-wing project regarding the very era of Star Wars that mattered to us the most. First, there were fantastic orthographic blueprints reproduced for the Rebel Starfighters Owners’ Workshop Manual which, as we had come to understand it, are at least in part based on 3D scans of the ‘Red Three’ hero model. Second, but by no means least, were high-resolution images of the hero ‘Red One’ which had only recently become available due to its auctioning in the United States. These all proved an invaluable prize for detailing our X-wing and in understanding the more esoteric oddities of ILM’s masterpiece just when we needed clarity the most. However, there is no equivalent primary source material available for an X-wing’s landing gear. Of course, there are images and scenes from several of the films you can gaze at as well as toys and model kits, BUT no Lucasfilm blueprints existed publicly providing their dimensions or angles for what would truly satisfy our thirst for accuracy beyond Steve Gawley’s initial X-wing blueprints from 1975. And these had long been superseded by what eventually appeared on the silver screen. Furthermore, not only did the original and ‘Sequel Trilogies’ differ in their depiction of both gear and corresponding undercarriage details but even the computer game Star Wars: Squadrons has its own ‘take’ on the look of it all! To be fair, when conceivably supporting the weight of a Lego model that tips the scales at just over two kilograms, some of these takes are more forgiving than others! For instance, the gear found on the full-sized studio prop of the X-wing in Rogue One has less ground clearance to that found on the prop in A New Hope. Also, its front gear’s main strut is strikingly beefy, angled more directly to the ground with a skid constructed to hide a wheel underneath so as the prop could easily be towed around a sound stage. In contrast, the full-sized prop used in ANH sat higher above the ground and being built from less robust light-weight materials, was designed instead to be re-built in situ and then lifted about by crane for a ‘Repulsor’ lift-like effect in the movie. It seemed to us the wisest candidate to base our landing gear on would be that found in the Disney era of Star Wars however the purists in us were compelled to attempt the dimensions found in the original films. After all, it was Luke’s Red Five we were recreating here, and our own ‘love note’ on the subject matter demanded its full pint of blood, sweat and tears! Having made this decision our second problem to solve was to work out the length of the primary, secondary and even tertiary landing gear struts with their respective skids and undercarriage doors from ANH’s full-sized prop. It’s a given that at this scale Lego can only really approximate these, but we still wanted to get as close as feasible and in so doing understand our own margin of error. But how could we maintain our own high standards of reference material for this phase of the project? Well, given none existed, the simple fact of the matter was we just had to make our own…. Time for a little context! Stage H, Shepperton Studios, Surrey England, June 1976. A solitary full-sized X-wing prop has been transported in various parts from Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire where it is then rebuilt beside a full-sized Y-wing. The Y-wing’s starboard engine nacelle is altogether missing but, never-the-less, both constructs prove a convincing facsimile of the draughtsmen’s plans especially after receiving their final dressing from the prop-department. Stage H is the only soundstage both available at that moment in Great Britain and large enough to accommodate Lucas’ vision. The hanger set’s temple columns stand over ten meters tall but still, despite the size of the space, only via the art of filmmaking can a vast fantastical Rebel hanger-bay, and the squadrons of snub fighters it is meant to house, be fashioned convincingly enough for the overwrought, budget conscious production to pull off. Forced perspective, the use of a matte painting and five wooden cutout fighters carted about on shopping trolley wheels complete the illusion. It stands to reason no one on set that day could predict just how iconic a design these two fantasy starfighters would soon become or how much the zeitgeist generated from this film would capture the imagination of so many throughout the decades that followed. And it’s within that blissfully unaware moment that a quick anonymous snapshot was taken of the X-wing prop, levitating gracefully above Stage H’s floor, with a 35-mm camera lens. It turned out that a poor low-resolution digital copy of this snapshot was the best reference for us to use in our particularly geeky mission. Screen grabs of the Rebel hanger scene from our Star Wars Blu-Ray disc collections either did not show the fighter from the best angle or the focal-length of the camera distorted its fuselage too much for our use. Basically, the solution posited by us was to build our own 3D model of an X-wing using the Rebel Starfighters Owners’ Workshop Manuel orthographic plans and then match that as best we could to the photograph. Once done we could generate 3D topology of the gear itself from the overlaid ‘match’ and finally render out new orthographic portraits of an X-wing with its undercarriage doors and landing gear deployed. There could never quite be a perfect overlap between our model and the shot used though as not only did ILM back in the day have rather poor trans-Atlantic communication with the carpenters at Elstree but each had their own take on Steve Gawley’s production blueprints. Throw in some lens distortion and an unknown zoom setting and you end up with quite the challenge! However, those inaccuracies aside, our photogrammetry proved useful enough for the task at hand and we now had our own schematics based directly on primary source material. Judging by the latest measurements cited for the length of an X-wing fighter we could now confidently state just how high the gear held the X-wing above the ground, the dimensions of each skid, the length of each strut and what angle they should ideally be positioned in. Having just solved our second problem it only remained for us to build the damned things in Lego! Did we happen to mention already that the model weighed two kilograms? Okay, well we knew we wanted our landing gear to be modular so as it would be simple enough to swap out and return the model to its flight stand. This sounded like a plan! We did however ponder for a long time on whether to use a base plate or small stand as the primary source of stability for the undercarriage or rely instead solely on a trio of robust gears to support the whole model. Gears alone would be ideal, but we had learned through several iterations of our undercarriage MOCs that the whole thing tended to sag sadly over an hour or two of pained observation. Even the subtle draft of a passing cat added cause for anxiety, promising imminent catastrophic collapse of struts or skids with sudden force and equally bruised aspiration! Weight wasn’t the only obstacle. When it came to pins and bars and such Lego’s building software, Studio 2, wasn’t always as helpful as you might think with its confusing array of connective possibilities and impossibilities. The preponderance of old variant friction pins in our Lego collections was also an early unexpected obstacle when problem solving the build. We quickly learned that only through prototyping with the newest available pieces could we bring reality to a promising Studio 2 hypothesis and then again of course only when the cat wasn’t in the room or had instead found a possum to chase away during the witching hour of a frenzied Lego building night! Only in our wildest dreams did we think we could engineer a solution strong enough to support this UCS without the constant use of a baseplate or stand for stability. But we like to think we got there! We certainly knew we had hit a home run when a solitary rear gear MOC held aloft a 2-kilogram laptop! With the benefit of hindsight, our solution now seems all so obvious. Make each primary and secondary strut reinforce one another, fully weight bearing and firmly connected to the fuselage. Lock the rear primary struts into their skids as though hammering in the foundations of a pier. Remove any sideways give and use friction pins where possible to prevent forward lean. Finally, take no prisoners regarding the strength of the lower forward gear as it will need all the help it can get! All this had to be combined with an eye to accuracy and scale, not to mention our hope to execute it with a degree of pleasing aesthetics which could be in keeping with the colour of the source material and overall style of our X-wing MOD. In the end, regardless of strength, we decided to include an elegant stand to use with the three gear modules. Its purpose though is primarily for long term display and storage. We know the rear gears are as tough as a proverbial tough thing armed with a list of proverbs long enough to startle a hibernating sloth from a cryogenic deep freeze sleep! However, the front gear just might not enjoy the cruel test of time as much as the rear ones will. Don’t get me wrong, it is very strong, especially when combined with its two laptop bearing cousins, but it would be remiss of us to assume it could win every bar brawl that came its way over the length of time it might take for Lego to release another UCS X-wing. Even Rocky Balboa had to call it a day eventually! To make the Landing Gear Stand a bit more useful we threw in a modification for it so that when it wasn’t acting as a walking cane for an aging geriatric MOC it could moonlight as a flight stand that angled the model parallel to its display surface. The centre of gravity of our X-wing MOD is pitch perfect for just such a pose and positions it purposefully for a Death Star trench run. For those of you who dig our landing gear solution but prefer to keep your 75355 UCS X-wing in all its fragile, un-swoosh-able original glory, we’ve designed a conversion kit! So, for a few dollars more and a fist full of extra bricks any 75355 can perch atop our MOC and rest those weary S-foils from their droopy tendencies. But why end there? We thought it prudent to also update our initial instructions based on fabulous feedback and support we’d received from the community over the last two months. This has further strengthened and simplified our build, making it fair to say that this final incarnation of our X-Wing MOD is not only even more solid but also gets a fair number of bonus kudos points for extra swoosh-ability when compared to its namesake! There are also new custom printed stickers, including an updated placard design, offered by our friend Stefan over at CustomStickersGermany. Bonus Tip!! We cunningly used a 1 x 8 rail plate for our greebling on the wing tips so as the wings can be closed flush with the help of a rubber band or a slightly modified paper clip! And that’s it!! This is not only the end of my diatribe but also our first, hopefully not last, project. We would therefore like to shout out a big thanks to folks like hypodorius and ron_mcphatty who have generously shared their ideas with the MOC community. We are also very grateful to mountainridernzl and jmkiska who have contributed directly to the success of this project and really helped us fine tune our processes. It’s done now and with it too an era within our lives that allowed the three of us to pool our talents, hone our art and make new friends…. Gotta love The Brick! Download GotB's 75355 X-wing Starfighter UCS - MOD on Rebrickable. Also, checkout our free Landing Gear MOC and 75355 Upgrade Kit here. Cheers all, Aeroeza, rde and Rilted – GotB September 20th 2024

Thanks for sharing YavinBase. I’m loving your last image in particular as that’s one hell of a collection you’ve got there! And it’s good to see that X-Wing in such auspicious company! I noticed also you’ve raised the canopy piece by a plate which got me thinking that you may want to check out KK3D’s modification of this area in the UCS X-Wing 2023 – Mods thread as it absolutely has its merits! However, in case you're interested, this wasn’t a direction we wanted to go. The main issue (mostly) is the height of 75355’s rear fuselage rather than that of its canopy. Lowering the top of the rear fuselage by the width of a 1x1 brick & the base of it by two (even three given its angular front/rear profile here) would be ideal. My image attempts to communicate these observations. The red lines are those of the studio model (as depicted in the Rebel Starfighters Owner's Manual), the blue is 75355. I’ve scaled the UCS’ fuselage to that of the orthographic image while matching their centerlines. Notably, the canopy’s position on the UCS is actually quite well placed, lining up almost perfectly with the height of the studio model’s rear fuselage. Unfortunately adjusting the fuselage here to match in Lego would necessitate the lowering of the S-Foil in our MOC (not possible given how it is mounted). The angles of the front & rear profile would also significantly suffer if not simply no longer line up. The point at which the fuselage begins to taper toward the front might also need to move back 4 or 5 studs if you wanted the underside to be more accurate, which really could put the cat out amongst the pigeons as I'm not even beginning to consider how the internal structure here would then need a powerhouse of an overhaul! Alternatively, raising the canopy, likewise, introduces proportional challenges to the sleekness & broad accuracy of the forward fuselage.... So, you really have to choose between your 'evils' here! Henrik’s solution is understandable given the balance of issues at hand. We certainly didn’t think we could resolve these problems to our satisfaction without introducing an even greater degree of 'proportional dysmorphia' throughout the model! We ultimately found we could do more justice to the build by better matching its orthographic view from above while focusing only on the side profile of the forward fuselage rather than its rear. I’m not saying it isn’t impossible to solve…. But we’d have probably had to throw the baby out with the bathwater with this UCS as well as our S-Foil which wasn’t really in our design brief. Henrik’s DNA needed to stay & so did our lift arms! But what really matters to us here is that you enjoyed our MOD/MOC! Go MOD it some more!!! I'm now leaning toward the happy thought that there's got to be some rather careful swooshing going on in that Lego room of yours!!!

Thanks again! I agree. For me the cost of including exclusive minifigures was a backward step which can only compromise the proposed budget of a UCS. I'm wanting clever builds that approach a high degree of accuracy with full printed parts & exclusive pieces (such as that elusive X-Wing canopy) if required. That's it. Minifigures are a distraction unless the build, by happenstance or design is tantamount to minifig scale (which, let's face it, has a wide degree of interpretation). I understand people love their minifigures though, & clearly including them in UCS sets has proven a commercial success for Lego over the last decade. Cost is certainly a constraint but the S-Foil in 75355 was likely a design choice committed to early on for the set. It might therefore be that deadlines were a consideration in this case too. Had the S-Foil been more robust I doubt we'd have felt compelled to attempt this MOD. By & large recent UCS sets have been excellent, but outliers clearly happen. I guess that's all part of the drama of being an AFOL! I'm happy to hear you've taken the plunge & heartened to hear thus far it's proving a fun build for you! Let us know how it turns out!

We’re absolutely delighted to know you enjoyed our build so much & your comparison photos are just awesome! You’ve reminded us of why we deep dived into this MOD/MOC in the first place & have really made us feel like the hard work has paid off. Your review is genuinely humbling… Thank you. I’ll be sleeping easy tonight!!

Molto apprezzato RedWolfwere!

I’d just like to add to Rilted's last post that early on with our dabbling’s adjusting the angle of the canopy was considered. Jerac had executed just such a trick to great effect with his minifig scaled X-Wing. Unfortunately, the system scale X-Wing canopy verses the UCS’ have very different proportions. Angling the UCS canopy to capture this slope can disrupt the silhouette of the model rather than improve upon it. Not only do you run the risk of dropping the height of the canopy too much, but the angle of the forward windscreen can look oddly acute. Basically, the same trick doesn’t play out so well with this canopy piece and you can lose far more on the swings than you gain on the roundabout. At least, that was our impression... Also, we didn’t want to change the look of the side panels of the front fuselage section so much that it was no longer recognisably Henrik’s X-Wing. Our whole design philosophy was after all to maintain his aesthetics as much as we could.

Really appreciate your sentiments ClassicLook! Thank you!! 'The Gents' are sometimes a little irrationally on the fence as to whether it's classified as a MOD or MOC but, realistically, given it is based on all the elements we loved most about 75355 we always came back down to Earth and accepted that it's just a MOD. Admittedly though, a thoroughly comprehensive one. We're just being a bit cheeky calling it a MOD/MOC! I really hope you enjoy the building experience when you get around to it. There's plenty enough new there to surprise those who have already built the original and lots of homages to and inspiration taken from Henrik along the way as well.

Cheers stevej. It's certainly proven to be a most unexpected way to make friends around the world. Gives me an excuse to hit a Greek beach & a Scandinavian mountain while 'The Gents' plan our next MOC or MOD in person! The whiskey will flow.

I had a little play in Studio and recreated Red 3's port side using a 2x2 half wedge. Collisions caused by the 2 x 3 dark red plate with our modified build meant the original mounting approach for the 2 x 2 tile from 75355's had to be restored. Importantly, what I refer to as 'the band' which softens the transition between the angled forward top fuselage plate and angled top plate of the nose cone, is maintained. It's this 'band' that helps the 1 x 4 width of the fuselage on top to become a 1 x 3 nose cone. It isn't a significant modification to our nose cone or side fuselage panels. Adding the additional half wedge for the lower rear section present on Red 5 is easy enough too. However, the underside fuselage plate would then need to be adjusted to account for the widening gap again. As to whether it's better shaping? Well, there are pros and cons here that are best left to the eye of the beholder.

Thanks MBrick.... It certainly kept us busy when time permitted & we're relieved to have completed it by our self imposed deadline of May 4. As for the io file, well, after discussing with it with 'The Gents', we're of the opinion that handing it out felt like giving away our first born! The umbilical cord is strong with this one! Apologies!!

Cheers Sucram! I must admit I'm having fun here & I'm chuffed to read you are too!

Yep! Me too… The online debating discourse has been rife with critical posts on this set beyond the usual price tag complaint Lego invariable brings about. I guess we just ‘own’ our own concept of what an X-Wing should look like, even if it’s a vintage Kenner X-Wing with an oversized R2 unit. (Mine had the 'battle damage'… always regretted adding those stickers dammit)! 75355 seems to suffer from its own sense of ‘The Uncanny Valley’.

And we have! Thanks so much for your observations! Let me expand on some of our decision-making processes behind the build…. An argument can be made that the way we have approached the nose cone’s side ‘transition’ is a clear deviation from the appearance of Red 5 – and they’d be right. However, it is worth pointing out that the four hand sculpted fuselages used for the hero models in ANH aren't identical and are also somewhat asymmetrical. For our Lego rendition we hit the research road. What we came to truly appreciate about the hero models of ANH & ROTJ (none were made for ESB as they used an MPC model kit instead) is that there are few X-wing nose cones that are alike! These differences are found primarily at the rear of the cone where it connects to the fuselage. However, port and starboard sides could also have discrepancies between one another on a single model too! 'Broadly' speaking there were three variants in particular within all these discrepancies that caught our eye... The first, I’ll call Type 1 (as depicted in Henrik’s original build) has an upper section with a wedge-look, the angle of which pretty much continues to the lower section creating an overall swept back look. Type 2 has a slight concave upper section and a more acute angled lower section when compared to Type 1, giving it a softened swept back appearance. Type 3 depicts a deeper concave shaped upper section and almost 90 degree angled lower section. The ‘swept back look’ has gone. How they blend with the fuselage also differs for this lower section. Some are quite distinct, appearing to be almost a separate component to the fuselage while others have little distinction at all and gently merge into it. Notably, the hero Red 5 nose cone is wildly different to the hero Red 3. Red 5 has the more swept back look on top and semi swept lower section. Red 3 on the other hand has the deeper concave upper shape (at least on the starboard side) with a lower section dropping suddenly (port and starboard). Both models have nose cones that remain distinct in form where they connect to the fuselage. The million-dollar question is - which nose cone can be best replicated in Lego form at the scale we were working with? The answer is Red 3. Thanks Biggs! The reference used for our nose cone was therefore the hero Red 3 model (Type 3) from ANH rather than the hero Red 5 (Type 2). Our take here was regardless of call-sign, if ILM built it & we use it for reference, then it would be right for our project! These differences to Red 5 allowed for treatment of the cone as a complete & separate modular build for better integration with the rest of the X-Wing’s dragster front. There was less call for a diagonal half-tile on the cone’s upper section and none for the lower. The use of the modified tile with curved cut-outs on the upper-rear section also proved a fair match to the concave look of Red 3 while allowing too for a streamlined flow into the side panels of the fuselage that compared well with the broader source material. Personally, I’m really enjoying the look and clean flow of the ‘roundedness’ of our cone as it segways into the X-Wing’s angular hexagonal silhouette. Scaling the schematics (while using the canopy as a reference point) to an orthographic top render of the front fuselage also proves an interesting reveal... This is a render of our first prototype nose to explore the solution. It's not identical to our final take (the above has a slightly different top panel) however it does show not only how close we got (proportionally a 1 x 3 rather than 1 x 4 nose cone top plate is the way to go), but that the front fuselage of 75355 is really at a different scale to it's rear due to the width of the canopy piece. That said, it's quite remarkable what the original designer pulled off!

Thanks mate! I was a little intimidated by using BL too.... Ordering the parts for our MOC/MOD was the largest order I'd ever attempted to date. But, once I'd set up my wanted list in Rebrickable before I knew it I had'em! Five orders in total, all within my home turf of Australia for $247 AUS including postage & handling. Four days later and they're all here! I'm ecstatic to finally be converting my virtual build into the real thing! The link should be up BUT, to quote it "....we are currently in the process of setting up a distribution point for the package including the building instructions and sticker sheet in PDF format, together with the parts list available for ordering through Bricklink or Rebrickable services." Our May 4th celebration is complete! Stay tuned!!!

PM sent! :) And thanks for your message. It means alot!

No worries!! :) Final product! Wings fixed!! Nose appreciably sculpted!!! Hope you all like it.... We've got instructions and stickers sheets. If you have the official set then just another 1260 pieces or so completes our MOC/MOD. Please check out [MOD/MOC] GotB’s UCS X-Wing Starfighter 75355 for more details. Photo shoot of the final model to follow soon... Not that you shouldn't MOD your set to your happiest UCS standards but based on the X-wing schematics available in the ‘Star Wars: Rebel Starfighters: Owner’s Manuel Workshop’ the size of the R2 minifigure isn't so much the issue here as is the width of the top greebling panel located between the side rear fuselage ones. It should be closer to a 1x3 brick in width rather than the 1x4 used in the set. This ultimately ends up playing tricks with our eyes. Assuming the schematics are accurate then a 3x3 dome is a tad on the large size and disproportionate in scale to the overall model. A 2x2 dome, though not absolutely perfect, is closest. My understanding too (could be wrong) is that the orthographic images of the T-65 in that book are based on scanned 3D models from one of the film's original X-Wing props. Regardless, it certainly beats what older material was available out there prior to its publication.

Well, hello there! There’s a story behind every Lego build so, please indulge me, and let me tell you ours…. It’s a beautiful seriously wet night here in Australia where I find myself gazing riveted to my computer, with Studio 2.0 open, marvelling at the final depiction of what represents a year’s work between an odd coalition of adult Lego lads. Hovering virtually on the screen in all its three-dimensional splendour is the cumulation of our little brains trust, our version of Henrik Anderson’s 75355 Ultimate Collector’s Series X-Wing Starfighter. Somewhere in Sweden though is the real thing. Our prototype. It sits solidly & gracefully in a professional photographer’s home reportedly receiving the lens love it deserves from his deft touch and eye. More importantly, he’s our team’s test builder, coder and (for all intents and purposes) Lego ‘Sugar Daddy’. I say this with both the full respect and appreciation as a man who barely had to fund this project even a few cents or break any Lego lift arm pieces along the way. For that we can thank this professional photographer. A determined dreamer who both initiated and pushed this venture forward with a maximum amount of swear words in toe and a minimum amount of doubt in hand! And, he’s probably had to fork out enough cash to almost build three different variants of UCS X-Wings along the way! Thanks ‘rde’ you’re a champ! But wait! There’s also a chap quietly celebrating somewhere in Greece. He’s just finished an instruction manual for our build in addition to overseeing the first print run of its sticker sheet. Now, when I say ‘quietly celebrating’ I mean instead rather ‘loudly’ with that measured quality you can sense in someone that betrays the fact that they tend to generally know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and just how to get it done at the same time. This speaks volumes! He also flies helicopters for a living so you’d hope he’d have all those qualities in abundance otherwise your life insurance premiums would be through the roof! He’s also ‘The Fixer’ and goes by the handle ‘Rilted’. That trickster that finds a solution just when all seems so dark, and your floor is dangerously strewn everywhere with a minefield of Lego pieces that obstructs your path to the bathroom you now so urgently need to use. He’ll find you a safe way there and faster than your bladder can say “Too late!” And then there’s old Aussie me, ‘Aeroeza’. The VFX guy with a penchant for accuracy and tendency to see the tree for the wood and sometimes the wood for a forest full of hungry arborists looking for lunch. I’ll make a meal out of anything ILM jerry-rigged in 1976 and try to build the equivalent in polygons and Lego form however structurally unsound and physically unsafe. That’s a great place to start when you know your ‘back ups’ can both build and fix it no matter the price and broken piece count. Together we formed an international brood of Lego devotees nominally referred to as ‘Gentlemen of the Brick’ a.k.a. GotB. A name mostly chosen because ‘League of Gentlemen’ was already gratefully taken, and ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, although a good graphic novel is still mostly remembered as just a bad film. Introductions aside, behold our first project! GotB’s UCS X-Wing Starfighter! 75335 Original vs 75355MOD-GotB (excl. minifigs): 1949pcs vs. 2711 pcs 1.80kgs vs. 2.0 kgs 563x443x118mm vs 576x495x112mm (without stand) Well, that’s only a photo of the previous old prototype. The one that worked really well and then we made better…. Turns out ‘rde’ is also a busy responsible dad (not just the ‘sugar’ type) so I can only assume photos of said final prototype promised in my preamble above have been slightly delayed... So instead have a sexy render of the final model! We’ll update with new shots soon…. Is it a MOD or MOC? Hard to say but we think it deserves centre place on your coffee table! Certainly, its external appearance owes much to Henrik Anderson’s original but that was always the point! We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel so much as make it spin faster, have juicer suspension, and enough tyre tread for urban assault expeditions. At the same time though, we wanted our X-Wing to look at home sitting alongside its UCS cousins while honoring the original set and Lego artist that inspired it in the first place. Admittedly there were a few concerns for 75355 out there amongst Adult Fans of Lego that also inspired and galvanized us into getting this project off the ground. Chiefly amongst those was the set being a little too flimsy and somewhat fragile. There were also those who felt its accuracy lacking or even unsettling in critical ways. The nose cone was clearly very stubby for a vehicle inspired by a 70’s dragster car and the front section’s side profile was rendered a bit clumsily using stepped plates that were in dire need of streamlining. The engine intake cowlings also appeared either too big or too small depending on whether you thought the wings were long enough or just too short. The same could be said about the R2’s minifigure scale. And the general greebling, when compared to many other recent UCS models, was also often deemed more ‘creative’ in execution rather than intentionally ‘accurate’. In truth we think Henrik got so much right and with a ton of tricks and wizardry on display for us to enjoy along the way. Where 2012’s 10240 UCS Red Five X-Wing Starfighter had seemed focused on improving choices made for 2000’s 7191 UCS X-Wing Fighter, 75355 proved a radical departure altogether in techniques and design sophistication. It bristles with effective ideas made real for a commercial product and clearly pushed ‘The Bricks’ boundaries further than had been commercially possible before. We really do like it! But it did depart from 10240 in one critical way… The S-Foil. 75355 has a rather snappy, dramatic action when deploying the wings. This is a novel approach and fun alternative to the slow thumbscrew-like turning mechanism the older UCS versions promoted. However, this S-Foil system is perhaps a bit too clever as the action comes at the cost of a more stable platform 10240 generated with its lift arm design. We felt our version needed to restore this lost stability. Which leads me to highlight the heart of our build under all those external similarities. This is a feature very different in approach to the official set but harkens back to the solutions of old. An S-Foil system whose conceptual genesis lies in the form of a MOC designed by an American named…. well for the sake of privacy let’s stick to his Reddit username of Hypodorious. This nifty little 40-tooth gear and worm screw mechanism promised to address some of the concerns regarding 75355 out there. We managed to make it a little more compact, move past its chain link driven mechanism and install cogs for the use of a dependable rear ‘thumbscrew’ to deploy the wings. The result proved a robust and reliable one that was still able to split open to a screen accurate 36-degrees or close without leaving a gap. This proved only the beginning of our journey though… We were also able to expand the internal space found in the engine bays, enough to accommodate two 31mm technic wheels. These directly link the lift arms of the S-Foil through a variety of pins and axels to the technic bricks and plates of the wings, simultaneously providing both stability and a degree of accurate detailing to an area of the build that the official UCS X-Wing’s have consistently overlooked. The wings themselves can droop ever so slightly toward their tip but this is not noticeable when they are in ‘attack position’. When deployed the S-Foil appears a pretty gravity defying construction that closely matches the external appearance of the hero model X-Wing Fighters from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Our wings have been lengthened by three studs to better match the source material as too the rear of the fuselage by one stud. The lasers have also been corrected. Schematics from the book ‘Star Wars: Rebel Starfighters: Owner’s Manuel Workshop’ were referenced to get these dimensions as close as Lego bricks could get us. It turns out that the width of the engine intakes Henrik designed are perfect when compared to these schematics but, his wings being a bit undersized, confused these proportions. Our new wings resolve this characteristic. Another area we wanted to nail down was the forward section of the model. Getting the front fuselage’s top and side panels to be smooth, angled and gap free has been successfully implemented by several MODs out there and ours is no exception! But it was the front nose cone that really needed to be right. The solution we found took many iterations and additional research to refine but we believe it to be a nose cone worthy of any true 70’s dragster! We had a lot of fun with the rear fuselage’s top panel. The vertically oriented technic 6 x 8 technic bricks with open centre, that provides a framework for our S-Foil system, allowed too for a degree of height differential when mounting the details of the top fuselage panel, making for some subtle ‘greebling’ accuracy to play out. The rear fuselage side panels have also been completely redesigned and are pretty robust. The back panel has similarities to 75355 and the ‘thumbscrew’ integrates nicely here, passing for greebling that is also found on the screen model, just like 7191 and 10240 does. Which brings us to the cockpit. We’ve done our best to scale its details correctly and to utilize every millimetre of space. Control surfaces were incorporated into the side panels of the cockpit and unsightly gaps found in the forward avionics area closed. We even designed additional stickers for placement on these consoles that wonderfully match the style of the official UCS set’s decals. The rear avionics of the cockpit also went through many iterations. In the end it was decided to incorporate a couple of play features at the expanse of a little accuracy. The targeting computer has been kept and can swivel, retract, and angle into a stored position while allowing the canopy to still close. For further information regarding our instructions, parts list and sticker sheet please visit our MOC's page at Rebrickable or our website at jedi.se. May all our UCS X-Wing dreams come true! Cheers all, Aeroeza, rde and Rilted – GotB May 4th 2024 P.S. More images to follow & Happy May Fourth!! UPDATE 1!!!! Allow me to present to you our NEW Directors Cut of GotB’s 75355 UCS X-wing Starfighter... Although these ‘add-ons’ are not critical to the completion of the model found in our main instructions, what we have endeavoured to create with this additional free release is basically a smorgasbord of display choices and optional little ‘extras’ for you to enjoy should you be wanting to push the potential of your X-wing to its absolute limits! Hopefully you’ll find something in our Directors Cut that floats your boat, elevates your heart rate or simply pushes all the right buttons in all the right places because it sure did for us! To begin with we’ve added a couple of additional ‘greebles’ we just had to throw in at the last moment. Our initial build succeeded in keeping much of Henrik Andersen’s DNA intact but there was the odd personal preference we had left out in deference to his build which we’ve now decided to present here for your consideration. Next you will find a modification for properly incorporating Luke into his cockpit. Although not to mini-fig scale we’ve come to appreciate that many AFOL’s would enjoy this UCS with our erstwhile hero at its helm. This MOD wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds but we are ecstatic with the result. Again, not a necessary change but a welcome one for many. But the biggest challenge we set ourselves for you to explore is a display variant of our model with ‘accurate’ and stable landing gear. It seemed only natural for a UCS X-wing to have this capability, especially as we had already hidden a little ‘Easter Egg’ into our build’s cockpit to augment this very display potential. You see, there are already 3L bars in place which can be extended to ‘hold-up’ the canopy much like the pneumatic pistons present in the film’s full-sized cockpit mock-up. What a feature to waste! So how did we go about making our landing gear? Well, let’s make a short story long in the expectation that you’ll enjoy the ride…. There’s a plethora of differences between the original four ILM X-wing models, their pyrotechnic copies, the life-sized soundstage props built, and the off-the-shelf commercial modelling kits used for filming in the ‘Original Trilogy’. That’s not to mention a simplified 3D version found in Star Wars: A New Hope’s ‘Special Edition’ and a whole new era of practical, digital and full-sized assets and props created for the Disney era. Luckily, we had been spoiled for choice when it came to available primary source material with our initial X-wing project regarding the very era of Star Wars that mattered to us the most. First, there were fantastic orthographic blueprints reproduced for the Rebel Starfighters Owners’ Workshop Manual which, as we had come to understand it, are at least in part based on 3D scans of the ‘Red Three’ hero model. Second, but by no means least, were high-resolution images of the hero ‘Red One’ which had only recently become available due to its auctioning in the United States. These all proved an invaluable prize for detailing our X-wing and in understanding the more esoteric oddities of ILM’s masterpiece just when we needed clarity the most. However, there is no equivalent primary source material available for an X-wing’s landing gear. Of course, there are images and scenes from several of the films you can gaze at as well as toys and model kits, BUT no Lucasfilm blueprints existed publicly providing their dimensions or angles for what would truly satisfy our thirst for accuracy beyond Steve Gawley’s initial X-wing blueprints from 1975. And these had long been superseded by what eventually appeared on the silver screen. Furthermore, not only did the original and ‘Sequel Trilogies’ differ in their depiction of both gear and corresponding undercarriage details but even the computer game Star Wars: Squadrons has its own ‘take’ on the look of it all! To be fair, when conceivably supporting the weight of a Lego model that tips the scales at just over two kilograms, some of these takes are more forgiving than others! For instance, the gear found on the full-sized studio prop of the X-wing in Rogue One has less ground clearance to that found on the prop in A New Hope. Also, its front gear’s main strut is strikingly beefy, angled more directly to the ground with a skid constructed to hide a wheel underneath so as the prop could easily be towed around a sound stage. In contrast, the full-sized prop used in ANH sat higher above the ground and being built from less robust light-weight materials, was designed instead to be re-built in situ and then lifted about by crane for a ‘Repulsor’ lift-like effect in the movie. It seemed to us the wisest candidate to base our landing gear on would be that found in the Disney era of Star Wars however the purists in us were compelled to attempt the dimensions found in the original films. After all, it was Luke’s Red Five we were recreating here, and our own ‘love note’ on the subject matter demanded its full pint of blood, sweat and tears! Having made this decision our second problem to solve was to work out the length of the primary, secondary and even tertiary landing gear struts with their respective skids and undercarriage doors from ANH’s full-sized prop. It’s a given that at this scale Lego can only really approximate these, but we still wanted to get as close as feasible and in so doing understand our own margin of error. But how could we maintain our own high standards of reference material for this phase of the project? Well, given none existed, the simple fact of the matter was we just had to make our own…. Time for a little context! Stage H, Shepperton Studios, Surrey England, June 1976. A solitary full-sized X-wing prop has been transported in various parts from Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire where it is then rebuilt beside a full-sized Y-wing. The Y-wing’s starboard engine nacelle is altogether missing but, never-the-less, both constructs prove a convincing facsimile of the draughtsmen’s plans especially after receiving their final dressing from the prop-department. Stage H is the only soundstage both available at that moment in Great Britain and large enough to accommodate Lucas’ vision. The hanger set’s temple columns stand over ten meters tall but still, despite the size of the space, only via the art of filmmaking can a vast fantastical Rebel hanger-bay, and the squadrons of snub fighters it is meant to house, be fashioned convincingly enough for the overwrought, budget conscious production to pull off. Forced perspective, the use of a matte painting and five wooden cutout fighters carted about on shopping trolley wheels complete the illusion. It stands to reason no one on set that day could predict just how iconic a design these two fantasy starfighters would soon become or how much the zeitgeist generated from this film would capture the imagination of so many throughout the decades that followed. And it’s within that blissfully unaware moment that a quick anonymous snapshot was taken of the X-wing prop, levitating gracefully above Stage H’s floor, with a 35-mm camera lens. It turned out that a poor low-resolution digital copy of this snapshot was the best reference for us to use in our particularly geeky mission. Screen grabs of the Rebel hanger scene from our Star Wars Blu-Ray disc collections either did not show the fighter from the best angle or the focal-length of the camera distorted its fuselage too much for our use. Basically, the solution posited by us was to build our own 3D model of an X-wing using the Rebel Starfighters Owners’ Workshop Manuel orthographic plans and then match that as best we could to the photograph. Once done we could generate 3D topology of the gear itself from the overlaid ‘match’ and finally render out new orthographic portraits of an X-wing with its undercarriage doors and landing gear deployed. There could never quite be a perfect overlap between our model and the shot used though as not only did ILM back in the day have rather poor trans-Atlantic communication with the carpenters at Elstree but each had their own take on Steve Gawley’s production blueprints. Throw in some lens distortion and an unknown zoom setting and you end up with quite the challenge! However, those inaccuracies aside, our photogrammetry proved useful enough for the task at hand and we now had our own schematics based directly on primary source material. Judging by the latest measurements cited for the length of an X-wing fighter we could now confidently state just how high the gear held the X-wing above the ground, the dimensions of each skid, the length of each strut and what angle they should ideally be positioned in. Having just solved our second problem it only remained for us to build the damned things in Lego! Did we happen to mention already that the model weighed two kilograms? Okay, well we knew we wanted our landing gear to be modular so as it would be simple enough to swap out and return the model to its flight stand. This sounded like a plan! We did however ponder for a long time on whether to use a base plate or small stand as the primary source of stability for the undercarriage or rely instead solely on a trio of robust gears to support the whole model. Gears alone would be ideal, but we had learned through several iterations of our undercarriage MOCs that the whole thing tended to sag sadly over an hour or two of pained observation. Even the subtle draft of a passing cat added cause for anxiety, promising imminent catastrophic collapse of struts or skids with sudden force and equally bruised aspiration! Weight wasn’t the only obstacle. When it came to pins and bars and such Lego’s building software, Studio 2, wasn’t always as helpful as you might think with its confusing array of connective possibilities and impossibilities. The preponderance of old variant friction pins in our Lego collections was also an early unexpected obstacle when problem solving the build. We quickly learned that only through prototyping with the newest available pieces could we bring reality to a promising Studio 2 hypothesis and then again of course only when the cat wasn’t in the room or had instead found a possum to chase away during the witching hour of a frenzied Lego building night! Only in our wildest dreams did we think we could engineer a solution strong enough to support this UCS without the constant use of a baseplate or stand for stability. But we like to think we got there! We certainly knew we had hit a home run when a solitary rear gear MOC held aloft a 2-kilogram laptop! With the benefit of hindsight, our solution now seems all so obvious. Make each primary and secondary strut reinforce one another, fully weight bearing and firmly connected to the fuselage. Lock the rear primary struts into their skids as though hammering in the foundations of a pier. Remove any sideways give and use friction pins where possible to prevent forward lean. Finally, take no prisoners regarding the strength of the lower forward gear as it will need all the help it can get! All this had to be combined with an eye to accuracy and scale, not to mention our hope to execute it with a degree of pleasing aesthetics which could be in keeping with the colour of the source material and overall style of our X-wing MOD. In the end, regardless of strength, we decided to include an elegant stand to use with the three gear modules. Its purpose though is primarily for long term display and storage. We know the rear gears are as tough as a proverbial tough thing armed with a list of proverbs long enough to startle a hibernating sloth from a cryogenic deep freeze sleep! However, the front gear just might not enjoy the cruel test of time as much as the rear ones will. Don’t get me wrong, it is very strong, especially when combined with its two laptop bearing cousins, but it would be remiss of us to assume it could win every bar brawl that came its way over the length of time it might take for Lego to release another UCS X-wing. Even Rocky Balboa had to call it a day eventually! To make the Landing Gear Stand a bit more useful we threw in a modification for it so that when it wasn’t acting as a walking cane for an aging geriatric MOC it could moonlight as a flight stand that angled the model parallel to its display surface. The centre of gravity of our X-wing MOD is pitch perfect for just such a pose and positions it purposefully for a Death Star trench run. For those of you who dig our landing gear solution but prefer to keep your 75355 UCS X-wing in all its fragile, un-swoosh-able original glory, we’ve designed a conversion kit! So, for a few dollars more and a fist full of extra bricks any 75355 can perch atop our MOC and rest those weary S-foils from their droopy tendencies. But why end there? We thought it prudent to also update our initial instructions based on fabulous feedback and support we’d received from the community over the last two months. This has further strengthened and simplified our build, making it fair to say that this final incarnation of our X-Wing MOD is not only even more solid but also gets a fair number of bonus kudos points for extra swoosh-ability when compared to its namesake! There are also new custom printed stickers, including an updated placard design, offered by our friend Stefan over at CustomStickersGermany. Bonus Tip!! We cunningly used a 1 x 8 rail plate for our greebling on the wing tips so as the wings can be closed flush with the help of a rubber band or a slightly modified paper clip! And that’s it!! This is not only the end of my diatribe but also our first, hopefully not last, project. We would therefore like to shout out a big thanks to folks like hypodorius and ron_mcphatty who have generously shared their ideas with the MOC community. We are also very grateful to mountainridernzl and jmkiska who have contributed directly to the success of this project and really helped us fine tune our processes. It’s done now and with it too an era within our lives that allowed the three of us to pool our talents, hone our art and make new friends…. Gotta love The Brick! Download GotB's 75355 X-wing Starfighter UCS - MOD on Rebrickable. Also, checkout our free Landing Gear MOC and 75355 Upgrade Kit here. Cheers all, Aeroeza, rde and Rilted – GotB September 20th 2024 UPDATE 2!!!!

Final touches to the prototype build being addressed. Optimization of parts list in terms of expense & comparison with the original build being finalized. Sticker sheet additions complete. Instructions have begun. The nose cone? Well, it ain't terribly flat! 3 rather than 4 studs wide, smooth & fully integrated with the rest of the nose section. No gaps! 😁

@mcphatty Yep! Here ya go... Thanks for the thumbs up! The design worked as hoped. The gaps are closed & the MOD is solid. It holds together without concerns that it will fall apart if held firmly. I've also removed the 4 x 6 plate from the nose tip/cone to better fit the the new angle... I'll certainly be building your stand. It's a fabulous solution. You've also taken some gorgeous shots of your MODs there. I've only my phone camera , renders from Studio & a tiny touch-up in Nuke to work with so you've certainly put me to shame!! Not to mention your excellent instructions. Your efforts are a real boon to the Lego community in general. Thank you!! As for me, I've not yet finished with this UCS. Alongside @rde, I've also been tackling Hypodorious' S-Foil MOD. More to follow soon methinks!! He's on the case like a howling gale at the proverbial gates of Lego stardom!! (I'm the slow one).

Cool! This floats my perfectionist boat!!

Done! And built in the real world!! Version 3. It is over engineered but the aim was for strength & stability. Technic Liftarms attach the nose plate at four points. The brackets aren't a stable base for the nose tiles & needed vertical support from opposing jumper plates, an underpinning 2 x 16 plate & below this & also 3 1 x 2 slopes. The combination of these supports resolves the brackets stability issues & allows for significant stresses to be applied to the overall structure. The side panels sloping toward the nose tip pretty much worked as per my original Studio play.

Gotta say I love this X-Wing… Having built the first two versions, I was happy to see TLG address many of the inaccuracies of the past & at the same time engineer something very different. Kudos to Henrik! But, ideally, there's a few changes I'd like to make to this UCS beyond a small MOD here & there, the S-Foil system being one of them - those wings ideally shouldn't droop when closed & that gap between them is problematic. It would be great to display this set without those features being so apparent & McPhatty's new stand, incorporating the landing gear, goes a long way to solving this problem. An inspired solution! And, once you've seen those renders with that top plate tilted slightly downward toward the nose tip, well, you can't un-see it. This set needs a new nose section! ChemicalWorld & JabbaTheHatt have collected together some great tweaks to the set but the nose section is a bit of a rebuild. So, in the spirit of giving it a crack myself & putting a few ideas out there, here's my tinkering in Studio thus far... Version 1 1. Uses two vertical 1 x 4, thin Technic Liftarm to mount the tilted top nose panel at an angle of 3.4 degrees. This still incorporates the Technic Pins with Tow Balls to continue providing some lateral support to the side panels. 2. Given the loss of the original upper technic beam structure, a series of horizontal liftarms, connected both forward & rear of the two vertical liftarm mounts are integrated with the lower technic beams. Two layers of plates complete the reinforcement & still provide plenty of room for however you may want to build support for the tilted nose plate. It’s probably overengineering but this solution fits snugly & still allows for the light grey ingot bars to add their worth to the job of the red tow balls. 3. The lower side panel has had the transparent 12L bar shifted half a stud back via the use of a 1 x 2 jumper plate, allowing for the nose cone/tip to fit just that little bit closer on its two red 4L axles. 4. The upper side panel has been divided into two sections. The lower section here still uses the tan wedge to slot into the nose cone. It also provides a channel for the topmost side panel to slide into. Hinge plates & a 1 x 3 double jumper plate have been used to lift & align this topmost side panel with the tilted top nose panel, closing the gap between them almost perfectly into an overall hexagonal form. 5. The only way I could get the top nose panel to fit so snugly to the side panels & still provide all the room required for the internal structure to fit was to use both 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 inverted & 1 x 2 - 1 x 4 brackets. These provide a bed of studs for the tiles rather than using studs provided by a layer of plates. Even a single layer of plates is simply too thick to use here. It’s worth noting that I’ve also been very careful to make sure Studio hasn’t tricked me with any hidden collisions or strange connections. What I don’t like about the result is that the top nose panel is raised almost one plate above the base of the canopy piece. It’s a small complaint but ideally this component should be in line with the canopy for a nice, clean profile. Also, the use of brackets, although critical to the success of the MOD, are awkward to connect with a good amount of clutch power to all the supporting plates, hinge & technic bricks which form the rest of the component. I’ve yet to test it, but I suspect you would need to handle the top nose panel with care. At least it does tilt nicely with closely fitted parallel side panels to match. In addition, the whole nose section, with all that liftarm support, shouldn’t sag over time or separate from the rear of the model when moved about. Version 2 1. Retains a similar technic support structure but uses two 1 x 3, thin Technic Liftarms to mount the top nose panel instead. This lowers it to be in line with the base of the canopy for that clean side profile I prefer. 2. As an alternative approach, the tan wedges can instead be incorporated into the upper side panel. This should better hold this panel in place than the design used in Version 1. So long as the clutch power of the hinge plates is enough, then the channel which the upper side panel slots into should also lock the other side panels in place as the tan wedges slide into the nose tip to form the X Wing’s hexagonal front profile. 3. Unfortunately the upper side panel must also be lowered as the thickness of the top nose panel is now too great, even with the use of brackets. The jumper plate is removed & a straightforward connection to the hinge is made. Only tiles one stud in width are required here rather than the two studs in width used for Version 1. The upper side panel is lowered by half a stud, remaining nicely parallel to the top nose panel but more of a gap is revealed by the side tiles at the corner of the hexagon where the two panels meet. It is still most certainly an improvement over the original build but doesn’t look quite as elegant as Version 1. 4. More gap means fewer brackets required. The top nose panel can now provide more clutch power & greater stability all-round via the use of larger plates. Only a single hinge brick has been used, an approach worth exploring for Version 1 too. I'd also like to give a shout out to Hypodorious on r/Lego Reddit whose MODs for this set are really next level. Go check their work out folks!

Wait for it!!! :) https://forum.brickstuff.com/t/x1c2g3/new-ucs-lego-star-destroyer-75252

Thanks for the clues guys. I'm keen to apply aspects of this MOD. I'm no fan of stickers so it will be fun to take advantage of your hard work!