F/A-18 Hornet
This is my first build of 2005, and it's funny how some projects start off..
I have finally gotten around to sorting my bricks (yes, there are a LOT of them), and I would like to be able to find a particular piece. The problem I have is many of them aren't sorted. This brings up a time when you're sorting that your brain decides to work.. Oooo.. I wonder what I can do with those..
As I was going through my slopes, I was thinking about Dan Jassim's model desk fighter, which doesn't have any studs. I was thinking that making a mini-sculpture of a figher would be kinda cool studless too..
I started with the wings and the tails, and it was looking more and more like it was going to be an F/A-18 Hornet. I was debating between a coupl eof other fighters, but I really liked the way it was looking as the F/A-18.
The wings ended up being SNOT (studs not on top), and it provided the right effect I was looking for. The rest of the body is tiled (tiling wing pieces is a major pain), and other than the cockpit windshields, it's pretty much studless.
For the nose pieces, it took a while to find the right wedge pieces. I did find them, but I was bummed that they don't come in blue, so I can't make the Blue Angels version of the plane, except in LDRAW.
The other build part that gave me grief was the weapons. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how I was going to mount the bombs on the wings, but the 1 x 1 plates modified with the vertical clip sure did make my life easier. :-)
The body went through a couple of iterations to make it a bit thicker. This helped with the engine placements at the end, and to make the vertical stabilizers in the right positions.
Some stats: lots of gray plates and some grey slopes.