Written by 4:34 pm My Builds

Completed : Bandai 1/48 T-47 Snowspeeder


Kit Info
Brand: Bandai
Scale: 1/48
Media: Injection Plastic

The Subject
The T-47 airspeeder was a model of low-altitude vehicle manufactured by Incom Corporation. When the Alliance to Restore the Republic was stationed on the icy planet of Hoth, a contingent of T-47 airspeeders were modified to become assault fighters called snowspeeders. A small, wedge-shaped craft, the Alliance snowspeeder was a two-man ship, with a pilot and a rear-facing tailgunner. It had two heavy, forward-facing laser cannons and a harpoon cannon fitted in its rear arc.

During the Battle of Hoth, snowspeeders were deployed to delay advancing Imperial forces and buy enough time for the Rebel forces to evacuate Echo Base.

Info adapted from Wookieepedia.

The Kit
I’ve taken a look at this kit here.

Construction
This being a Bandai kit, everything snaps together without need for cement. The seamlines are for the most part nicely hidden or form parts of the natural panel lines with the the barrel tips of the laser cannons having the most obvious seamlines.

I decided to model this kit banking and lifting towards the left. It’s slightly more dynamic than a static straight flight pose. To do that, Bandai provides the flaps for multiple options. I hope I got the physics right though. 😀

Everything else fell together pretty much with a snap (no pun intended).

Colors and Markings
Bandai provides 2 pretty detailed figures which I took the opportunity to get more handpainting practice on. Colors used for the figures are:

  • Game Color Bronze Fleshtone
  • Game Color Dead White
  • Game Color Orange Fire
  • Model Air Black Grey
  • Model Air Light Grey
  • Model Color Basic Skintone
  • Model Color Green Brown

Colors for the snowspeeder are quite straightforward: it’s basically all white or a very light grey. Bandai only gives you the option for Luke’s snowspeeder which has dark grey panels. I decided to take some creative license and give Luke a more colorful ride to attack the AT-AT with, so this snowspeeder would have orange colored panels. So instead of the decals, I masked and sprayed the orange panels. The colors I used for the snowspeeder are:

  • Game Color Dead White
  • Game Color Orange Fire
  • Mig AMMO Light Grey
  • Model Air Black Grey
  • Model Air Light Grey
  • Model Color Dark Seagreen
  • Model Color Desert Yellow
  • Model Color US Tan Earth

Finishing
The biggest challenge for me is getting the patchy and beat-up look of the snowspeeders as they appeared in the movie. So I decided that this kit would be the first build I’m doing with heavy weathering. I have a post on how I did it here.

So the build is complete. Perhaps the chipping/weathering is a bit overdone and if it makes any sense, too random. Really not bad for my first weathered build though. It was also pretty much mistake free so I’m very happy how it turned out.

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Number 5 of 2016

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Tags: , , , , , , Last modified: 13 August, 2020
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