by Rich Dula

Jaylen Mo'dalar stood at the edge of the landing platform and gazed at his ship. Since the fall of the Empire, there were dozens of old YT-1300s available as companies were finally able to purchase new transports. Jaylen had convinced his parents to purchase one from a local dealer, and the price wasn't too bad. Then again, the old ship wasn't in the best of shape. Calling her a “hangar queen” would have been kind. But months of hard work doing courier runs for his father's company had paid off, and now Jaylen was ready for his first outing with his friends.

Jaylen had managed to repair most of the main systems, and he was working on repairing the subsystems, but those were minor concerns at the present time. His main goal was to get Jaylen's Jalopy airborne. The repulsorlifts were fully functional, and his sublight engines were ready to go. He had finally managed to get his custom paint scheme applied, although he'd had to sell the hyperdrive motivator to pay for it. But that was a minor annoyance, because he could still fly around the local system without problems.

He walked up the boarding ramp, sealed the hatch behind him, and went to the cockpit. After flopping down in the pilot's chair, he powered up the engines and engaged the repulsorlifts. As the ship rose into the air, Jaylen throttled up the main engines. Several loud explosions came from the aft section of the ship, caused by irregular plasma flows in the fuel system.

Startled birds took flight from nearby trees, and several members of the ground crew threw themselves to the ground, while others looked in Jaylen's direction and shook their fists. Jaylen smiled to himself, increased the throttle setting, and rose from the landing pad. It was going to be a nice day for a flight.

The Model

The base kit is the old AMT/Ertl Cutaway Millennium Falcon. I've had this one sitting in the pile for about four years. Construction was done as shown in the instructions, although I omitted the guns and the gunners' chairs. I wanted this to be a stripped-down civilian version of the ship.

I did have to scratchbuild some parts. The existing circular equipment bays in the mandible were too high to allow the top of the ship to be put in place once the interior was installed. So I built two replacement bays that were about 1/3 the height of the original ones. I scratchbuilt an instrument panel for the cockpit. I never understood why an instrument panel wasn't included in the kit. I also replaced the aft cockpit bulkhead with a new panel that didn't look like it came from the interior of a submarine.

The interior lighting system is made up of nine grain-of-wheat bulbs powered by two AA batteries. Two of the bulbs are run to the fiber optics installed in the tips of the mandibles, while the remaining lights are run to the cockpit hallway, two interior hallways, boarding ramp, and the landing lights in front of the bow landing gear.

The primary interior color is MM Acryl Wood, and the floors are Sublime Green. A wash of Tamiya flat black acrylic was applied over a coat of Future, with another Future coat to seal it, and a final coat of DullCote. The landing gears were painted Chrome Silver and Gloss Gold.

The exterior was spraybombed with Flat Dark Aircraft Gray. I airbrushed on three coats of MM Acryl French Blue and Kandy Scarlett, with each coat being lightened with Tamiya Flat White. After sealing with Future, I applied a flat black acrylic wash, and then brush-applied a heavy coat of Future to lock everything in place, and to give the ship an “over-polished” look.

Image: Left/rear view

Image: Interior

Image: Wow, that's bright

Image: Mandible

Image: Cockpit

Image: Bow lights

Image: Interior lighting

Image: Tunnel

Image: Ramp lighting

Image: All lit up