- Model : : Rebel Runner
- Maker : : Blue Moon
- First edition year : : 2010
- Scale : : 1/350
- Matter :: Resin
This model of the Blockade Runner (called “Rebel Runner” by Bluemoon for licensing reasons) is a collection of resin blocks hard to assemble. It’s a garage kit pretty hard to find nowadays and at very high prices, making the price of the new i-phone 43X-27 ridiculous. Like the GR-75 Medium Transport or the Stardestroyer, you may ask why big brands like Bandaï or Revell didn’t produce it already. Maybe too big and too complicated. Unfortunately the hobby modeling market targets children with easier models. No glue, no painting… We are condamned to find garage kits on the asian market for serious stuff.
Not 9, not 10 but 11 thrusters
What makes the Blockade Runner unusual are the 11 rear thrusters. It’s the designers’ choice to point out the speed of the ship. It seems a little strange if you remind that the only role of the starship in the movie is to be cought but you must keep in mind that at the beginning of the production, the design was the Millennium Falcon‘s
Knowing that, you can imagine why ILM designers wanted a speed feeling (Kessel Run, 12 parsecs and all that stuff…).
This feature is a huge challenge to the model maker : how to perfectly align those 11 thrusters ? No specific technics, it’s a question of feeling. You use epoxy glue which is very… gluing and long to polymerize. Then you have time enough to make the alignement right.
The Blockade Runner, a christmas tree
Aligning the thrusters is good. Lighing them up is better. I designed a 11 yellow LED circuit, which is not easy because 11 is not a prime number. I divided the LEDs in 3 electrical branches : 2 with 4 LEDs and 1 with only 3 plus an electrical resistance simulating the 4th LED so that the intensity is the same in every branches.
This point is essential to light-up each thruster with the same light-intensity. This quite complicated circuit requires a pre-test on an electronic plate.
A metalic structure
As it is so often the case with resin kits, brass rods must be used to strengthen the ship structure. The french term is a neologism : “tiger” what could be translated by “roding” the model. I used three rods of large cross section on this model. Indeed, the engine block is heavy and could weaken the ship integrity.
Exhibition of the Blockade Runner
This ship is now a part of a large diorama of the Sullust rebel fleet.
It has been shown during three conventions :
Click here to see the complete Sullust diorama of the rebel fleet.
by petersteven
