Minifig Collector Series - Build Notes
TIE Interceptor
Battle of Endor

Once I had started work on the X-Wing, well you had to have a 
worthy opponent and the TIE Int was always my favourite ship 
from the Star Wars Universe so off I went.  The 7146 set was 
once again lacking in my opinion as it was too blocky, and only 
after I had it for about a year did I realise that there were 
Ion Engines (albeit small and somewhat hidden).

Gotta love trying to build a perfect sphere out of square bricks.  
I've lost count of the number of prototypes I had done for the 
cockpit of a TIE that I was happy with.  Most of my effort was 
directed at getting the rear of the ship looking right with the 
Ion Engines (as what is a Twin Ion Engine fighter without Ion Engines) 
and the Reactor in the right place and to scale.

In the end I have cheated somewhat and tracked down the seemingly 
rare 3x3x2 Facet bricks that seemed to be the right scale and gave 
the ship the important sense of sphere.  The front was usually ok 
as the canopy does a good job of letting you know it is a TIE fighter 
anyway.

Wing pylons on this V3.0 are back to being round and although I am
not happy with the final attachment, they look better than my earlier
square pylons.  The original round pylons are present on the TIE Fighter, 
and will retrofit this design to the TIE shortly.  

The ingress hatch was moved to the top of the fuselage though it now has
a seat/slide for the minifig though it can be tricky to get out.

The dark grey around the front-side of the canopy is meant to be 
the sensor array and is really the only colour change you can see 
on the fuselage of the original models.  Colour of the models and 
what you can sometimes see in the movies is a light gray/blue and 
hence I would like to redo these TIEs in a lego light blue/gray 
and then my work here is done...

David