ISD Avenger Design Notes vA01

This is my early prototype for an eventual MOC of the ISD II Avenger.  Thus far, 
this has been primarily a feasibility study to see if this was doable and if I could 
get it to scale properly.  Thus far, I've been concentrating on overall shape and size 
and as such, I've only worked on the top half and the interior support structure.  
I have the design elements fully worked out at this point, but budgetary issues have 
forced me to shelve this for the last few months and I likely won't continue until 
sometime next year (i.e. massive Bricklink order), so I'm posting these for posterity 
in the meantime.

I originally started working on this back in May when I grew increasingly despondent 
that LEGO was never going to release a properly sized Star Destroyer model (*very* glad 
to have been proven wrong) since I had worked out that to do it properly, it would wind 
up being 3 feet long and that was just way bigger and more detailed than anything they'd 
done to date.  While I do have my design fleshed out, I'm interested to see how LEGO 
solved some of the more interesting engineering issues when I get my 10030 set.  I'll 
continue my first version of this based on my own ideas, but I'd imagine that a fusion 
of the two designs would make for a worthy revision of the model.

Aside from the base differences in the Devastator and Avenger models, I've noticed a 
few other differences in the 10030 set and my model:

- LEGO "cheated" and went with a 15degree slope off horizontal centerline since that's 
easily doable with existing pieces.  Being an anal-retentive sort, I've gone with the 
12degree slope that blueprints and the actual models seem to use.  Would be *alot* 
easier to stick with 15degrees (I've had to do quite a bit of technic voodoo to get 
that angle and keep it sturdy), so I hardly blame LEGO there but it does tend to make 
the model a bit too high and makes it look a little less sleek.

- Interestingly LEGO put the slope-edges of the hull wing plates together along the 
centerline whereas I had gone more "standard" and put the vertical edges together 
and left the slopes on the edges.  The advantage of LEGO's clever design is that it 
gives you a horizontal building surface on the edges of the wedge.  The disadvantage 
is that you wind up with the whole surface of the wings being tilted off horizontal 
and therefore it's hard to generate an edge that's true to absolute horizontal.  
I'm going to go ahead and finish mine off as-is because it makes the surface texturing 
more true, but it would be interesting to try it as LEGO has done it.

- I'm not using magnets to hold the 2 sides of the hull together, although that would 
likely be a good way to do it.  The biggest challenge of the hull interior is to get 
both the horizontal and vertical slopes accurate and still get the top and bottom 
halves to be solidly together.  I'm using interlocking technic arms, but a pneumatic 
system with magnets to allow you to pop open the top would make it a darn lot easier 
for final assembly.