AMT / ERTL's 1/48th
STAR WARS EPISODE I
Trade Federation Droid Fighters

By Jason Gillard

Introduction

The new 'Star Wars - Episode I' line of models from AMT / ERTL continues with the release of many smaller kits of the various fightercraft used from the prequel movie. One of the subjects captured in the current range are the Trade Federation Droid Fighters.

Background

The Droid Fighters are used in 'Star Wars - Episode I' as remote-controlled drone intercept vessels, owned and operated by the bad guys of the story, The Trade Federation. Like all Trade Federation military hardware, they have no living pilots, but are instead fed orders from a central Command Ship, to the individual craft's onboard automatic slave-circuit electronic 'brain'. This then, in turn, executes the mandate in the field. This tactic ensures the Trade Federation does not have to risk losing experienced pilots in combat, as only robot drones are destroyed, and keeps production costs down by not having the additional expense of training new pilots to replace those who fell before them.

The Droid Fighters themselves are just a cheap and fast gun-platform (similar in principle to the later Imperial TIE Fighter design). They are, in theory, the perfect weapon. They possess good battle prowess, are light and agile, but are totally expendable should the need call for it.

The Kit

Before I even opened the box, I was apprehensive. Neatly stencilled on the lid was the word 'Snapfast'. Any Sci-fi modellers who are scarred veterans of the old AMT / MPC range of kits know this word means that usually the model within is anything but, with yawning cavities left after basic construction to have to fill, usually with a concrete trowel!.

Upon examining the contents, I was pleasantly surprised. Inside you get three 1/48th scale Droid Fighters, three plinths and a base...a grand total of 16 parts for the entire kit! That's an average of four pieces per construction if you include the stand structure for modelling the Fighters in flight. This is far and away the simplest model I have ever seen in this format, and ideal for beginners in the genre (which is the intended target demographic of the manufacturers, I'm sure).

A big disappointment was the instruction sheet, which, while adequately doing the simple job of getting the models together, fails to supply the modeller with a color reference chart. I turned the box upside down for half an hour looking for it, too! I guess the box art will just have to be enough for now, but for a beginner's kit (rated Skill Level 1- the lowest in the range) this is not a nice way for anyone to start, and a bit of foresight in these matters on the manufactures part goes a long way to deciding the overall enjoyment of the finished product.

The Fighters themselves fit nicely together, and with care you can get away with the bare minimum amount of filling required to seal any minor gaps. Surface detail isn't 100% accurate, as upon closer scrutiny some of the inner wing structure and body panel lines are not quite right. It is, however, close enough to be a good representation, so I shouldn't be too harsh on this very minor point. The panel lines themselves, as I have noticed on the other recent AMT/ERTL models, are, to my eternal gratitude, recessed. It's about time Science Fiction models were made universally without raised panel lines, and the new AMT/ERTL kits are leading the way in this department admirably.

There are also some injector-pin marks on either wing, which while being annoying are easily cleaned up. If you don't want to represent the vehicle in flight, you also have to fill in the plinth hole on the underside, but as this is a very small model (8cm in length x 4.3 cm in width, to be exact) this is simple to modify.

That seemed like the end of my job, until I put the newly-built Droid Fighter I used to test the dry-fit with back on the box top. My eyes kept going from the model, to the box art pictures, over and over again. Something was missing from the body, something important, but I had no idea what. This bugged me a lot, as the answer wasn't immediately obvious. I looked on the sprue...nope, didn't miss any extra parts. What in the hell was wrong with this thing? Was it just me being paranoid??

Then, as I started to doubt my sanity, I finally nailed it. The model's central horizontal frame is too short, giving the craft a thinner look than it should normally have. The box art isn't a perfect measure of accuracy, I know, but this and the movie images I can remember are much more correct than the model sitting in front of me, so I chose the lesser of two evils! I confirmed this theory by making some very rough plasti-card extension splints and checking this dry fit again with the box art. Yep, much better. If you care about the correct dimensions of the model, you would be wise to extend the platform connecting the wings together by about half a centimetre either side to get it's width back into proportion. With a small model like this, the error is very noticeable (eventually), and the hassle of gluing and rescribing a little bit of plastic styrene is minor compared to the final result.

Conclusion

Overall, despite the odd kink, this is a good effort, although room for improvement still exists. It is almost the perfect beginner kit, with easy introductions into basic fit techniques, small imperfection corrections and even a minor scratch-building task for the ambitious. In the painting department, it profits from moderate weathering, another area for the novice to try their hand at. With multiple subjects to practice on, there is plenty of room for error, so go for it - the sky's the limit!