Before you begin:

• Corran Horn's Rogue Nine X-Wing Fighter w/ Light & Sound (sorta)

  Okay, now it seems that a lot of us have had fun making the pilots who are the best of the best; Rogue Squadron. Now you need X-Wings for them to fly. I decided to use a Luke's Red Five X-Wing because it is much closer to the scale the figures are, and I got it for a really good price (damaged box). The biggest problem with this custom is the electronics. Hasbro/Kenner did NOT do a good job with the planning for this toy as you will see when you open it up. If you want to customize so you can actually fit a figure in the cockpit, then you will lose the electronics because to battery case is in the way of where you'll fit you're figure. If you're MacGyver you might be able to figure out how to save these functions (I'm working on it).

Step 1

Take 'er apart. There are a lot of screws, so I'd suggest you have a plate near by to put them on so you won't lose them.

Step 2

Get rid of dorky imitation Luke figure. This cheap piece of crap makes me sick. Get rid of it and the stupid little thing he's glued into, but you may want to take the time to steal his arms. You could use them for a future custom.

Step 3

Get rid of the targeting computer. This is too bad. It's a neat little thing, but there just isn't enough room in the cockpit for it if you want to be able to put in and take out pilots. Just cut it off of the lever its on and leave the rest of the lever present.

Step 4

The fun part. This is the part that is time consuming. You have to do a lot of cutting and grinding on the inside of the fighter so you will be able to get you figure in and out without a problem. I thought the easiest way was to get rid of the battery case, so that's what I did. This is the best I can give you. You'll have to use your best judgement. Don't forget to make room for a seat. As far as a seat goes, you may have to build one. I destroyed an airspeeder to get one, but the seat in the old X-wing might work well.

Step 5

Painting. The first thing I did was paint the inside of the cockpit flat black to help hide the inside of the ship. As far as details, I went according to how Stackpole described Corran's X-Wing in his books, and how it appeared on covers, not by the comic book. Basically I completely masked the areas I planned on painting. After that I put the decals on over the mask and used them as a template for cutting with my X-acto knife. So, I basically ended up with a stencil type pattern that would allow me to airbrush using a dark green to get the id marks I wanted, and the rest of the ship would still be its correct color. I don't ever remember seeing any X-Wings in the movie that had markings higher than six, so what I did to get Nine was make five stipes like Luke has on his fighter, except I made only one solid, and the other for were separated kind of like this |:::: .

Step 6

Reassembly. If you if you removed the battery case, then you will have to glue the cover into place. Put all the parts back where they belong and screw it back together. Now you have a new X-Wing fighter to take on the Empire.

Tip provided by:  crimsonforce@death-star.com Dan Kmiecik