[MOC] The Tie Pod

Overview :

• Star Wars MOC
• Started April 2014
• Finished May 2014
• 472 parts, supports included

This is my entry for TechLUG's 10th Star Wars contest : the Tie Pod

The Death Star II is destroyed. Every hope for the Galactic Empire and its soldiers is lost. Time to abandon ship !
Being in the Outer Rim on patrol, one lucky Tie Fighter pilot crashes on Tatooine. He's alive, but his once magnificent ship isn't.
In town, he meets a lot of strange people, quite unabashed by the Empire's demise. He learns about many things, among which races that took place across the galaxy, the most famous one taking place right here on Tatooine, aboard bizarre pods with massive engines. As theses races were outlawed when the Empire came to power, people start to regain interest in them and organizing amateur races.
Fan of engines and ships himself (that's why he became a pilot in the first place), he quickly establishes himself as a mechanic. Keen to give podracing a go, he decides to salvage his crashed Tie and turn it into a podracer from the old time.



These are the contest specifications :

• Build a podracer with 2 or more engines, linked together by 1 or more power binders and linked to a pod by cables,
• From 300 to 700 parts,
• a design that would nicely fit the Star Wars universe.

The design is based upon most podracers design : two engines, one energy binder (red of course, being made from an Empire ship parts) and the pod itself attached to the engines by cables.

Each engine is composed of four parts :

• the jet engine, powering the pod, that runs through the entire engine,
• the Tie wing on the side, for steering and protection of the jet engine vital parts,
• the energy generator that powers the energy binder,
• the antigrav generators, to keep the engine off the ground.

The pod is composed of a bubble cockpit and two Tie Defender type wings, to help stabilize it at high speed.

The cockpit is equipped with a seat, controls and readings for the pilot.

This was very fun to create. Though the contest was meant to be ideal for small stocks (limited number of parts allowed), I still hadn't the right ones within my 30K+-part inventory.

More pictures :