Starfighter!

John C. Lamarck , aircraft builder extraordinaire has once again found his way into our Nerdy hearts. He has built an excellent rendition of Lockheed’s F-104 . For those uninitiated into the world of aircraft geekery let me give you the quick tour. The F-104 was designed by Kelly Johnson’s design team in the 1950’s (Johnson is most known for working on the P-38 Lightning, U-2, and SR-71 Blackbird). Known as the “Missile with a Man in it” the 104 was design as a supersonic interceptor design to intercept and destroy soviet fighters and bombers. Starfighters were in service in the USAF, allied air forces and NASA from 1958 until late 2004 (USAF retirement was significantly early). The 104 set several aviation records mostly in climb to altitude speed. Seen here is an excellent rendition of the CF-104 built under license by Canadair for the Royal Canadian Air Force. John captures the curves and the sleekness of the Starfighter amazing well. I love the use of the classic tire to capture the exhaust cone, the air inlets are rendered very well at this scale and the custom decals are fantastic. The one limitation of this scale is the biconvex airfoil cannot be captured. The leading edges came to such a knife edge that unware ground personnel often received very bad cuts on their heads when bumping into the wing.

This Week on Nova Team

“Paladins 12 and 13 we have a distance unusual sensor contact, could be Blacktron activity.  Set course to 0.16 by 242 and check it out.  The convoy is going to prepare to jump to rendezvous site Foxtrot 6 based on your findings.”
“Roger that Convoy Control, setting course and going in hot”
“I’m on your six Boxcar”
“Roger Lucky”
“Good luck you two hopefully it’s nothing but if not we’ll see you at Foxtrot 6”

Rob Damiano’s Nova Team story telling is fantastic.  I always get excited when seeing a Nova Team thumbnail when browsing through Flickr.  After a long absence he’s back with the LL-824 Paladin Escort Starfighter.  I love the side by side seating that is facilitated by using the large cockpit form Bennie’s SPACESHIP, SPACESHIP, SPACESHIP.  The side by side configuration has been used on a few fighters but the tandem (one in front of the other is much more common), the design choice has led to a delightfully bulky heavy starfighter.  The whole build is covered in NPU but I think my favorite is the flick-fire missiles used as the core of the Photonic Missiles on the underside.  Hopefully this is the signal for the start of a new Nova Team story arc.  For those unfamiliar with Nova Team the recipe for Nova Team Punch is as follows:

2 cups excellent neoclassic space building
1 cup fantastic photography with top notch editing with special effects (both practical and digital)
1 cup of riveting storytelling
½ cup Star Trek Influences
¼ cup of custom uniform decals
1 Tablespoon each of other sci-fi influences including but not limited to Star Wars and Aliens
Serve over Ice and enjoy the tasty beverage

U-Wing Starfighter

The U-Wing is an exciting addition to the fleet of Star Wars. I will admit when I first saw it in the trailer for Rogue One my first thought was "uh oh, a new ship, this is going to get fan boys' panties in a twist." And of course soon after I starting seeing comments like "how come we don't see those in episode 4?" I don't know if it's a legitimate complaint, I don't want to take a position on it. I think it's a cool ship, and I enjoyed seeing it in action in the movie. So did builder JBIronWorks, who crafted this brilliant minifigure scale one that puts the official set to shame.