LEGO Dreadwind

Inspired by G1 Dreadwind, the idea to make this MOC came suddenly when I disassemble a recent official LEGO creation to be put back into  my pile-of-bricks.  (no points for guessing correctly which set I am referring to!) . It had been on my display shelf for more than a year and I was in the mood to do some housekeeping. In the midst of wondering what can  I do with such a huge pair of wing parts, Dreadwind appeared into my brain. (before that I was contemplating on making a jet plane MOC ... and shortlist a few "contenders", namely Windsweeper ,Dogfight and Needlenose )

Anyway, original G1 Dreadwind (above)  is a powermaster figure,where a human-like figure (An alien race called Nebulon actually) transform into an engine-block-thingy , plugging into the toy, to unlock the transformation.  Since I'm not too keen of making a LEGO equivalent of that using minifigures, I skipped implementing it. But fear not! I have something else up my sleeves ... do read on =)

Introducing.......Powermaster Drone!

To compensate for the lack of powermaster figure.....

...Dreadwind can eject a hawk-like drone for recon missions. 

The hawk-drone perching on top of the jet.

Transformation

The transformation sequence is very similar with the G1 toy, as you can see. The legs are tucked in the undercarriage of the jet. 

The arms are visible underneath too. They are unpegged from the legs before the latter are swivelled out.

When the legs are folded out and the feet formed  securely, now we stand him up and fold the nosecone down. The head automatically revealed itself. 

It took two hinged mechanisms to swivel the nosecone 180 degree to the front.

The back is flat-out ugly literally, just like the original G1 version. Time to improvise!

The wings, tail fin and jet boosters can be folded up.

Worthy Mentions on the Engineering

Initially I padded the sole with an extra plate each but I decided to undo it because they caused the heels to be tall and body slanted forward.

Here's how I design the peghole to accomodate the head. The hole is the underside of a 1x1 dark grey brick with one stud on its side. 

The reason  why  nosecone looks "chipped off" beneath*,  is to allow it to peg securely onto the pelvis balljoint.

*Trivia: I actually tried to pad the nosecone to look fuller during a last-minute touch-up /improvement (using a 2x2 plate + 2 tiny cheese bricks) , and then proceeded with first photo session , starting with jet mode. Then I found out the transformation has been compromised. The whole set of photos were scrapped (they wasn't that  good either as I've used the wrong aperture and ISO level , making the photos "noisy")

The blue fins on the nosecone is a good way to partially hide the ugly pelvis balljoints . 

There is one pet peeve with the legs though. Everytime I tried to pose him like above (left), the back of the leg will rotate out of it's original alignment . The corrected pose  is shown on above right photo.

 

No guns, no fun!

This is another back configuration, where the boosters are facing down for robot mode flight capability.

Due to the nature of his transformation and the  iconic nosecone-as-chest, he can't sit down properly ! The poor dude!

With hawk-drone perching on his shoulder.

Ok. Before I end this page, I know most of you might be asking.... where is Darkwing?  Yes I'm planning to build him too! I have made special provisions in this MOC to accomodate the future merging with Darkwing, but I foresee minor redesign will be necessary. So stay tuned, guys!  

As usual.... thanks for your support guys.. wherever you are!