20 Chickwing

Build: Summer 2002, Pieces: 211, Steps 37, 3 submodels
LWH: 36/24/14 studs, 28/19,1/10,92 cm

Switching to photos to avoid "milkyness" of the green cockpit.

Name: First model out of the bag after four years was this one. it got its name due to the wing's resemblance to the ones found on plucked (and roasted) chickens; thin at the inner part, but with a thick (and pointed) outer part.

With this model, I embarked on a very long trend of building Clawstyle with jagged claws or teeths sticking out in every direction.
Furthermore this model was the first one photographed with my fathers first camera, and the last one I recorded on graphpaper.

The sudden upscale to larger size together with some horizontal building (middle part) resulted in the largest brickuse at the time: 211 pieces.

Big again: As most of the models I'd made in the past were rather small (at least the ones I was satisfied with), I decided that it was time to try and build something bigger and more colourful: After all there was always one or two big ships in every Lego space theme, so I had to get some experience with building something bigger than the small grey one man fighters build hitherto.

This model was heavily inspired by one of my favorite official sets, the 6891 Gamma-V Laser Craft, and like in that one, I used the black cornerpieces to make the central part of the craft:
It's a huge capital ship grade laser (shield buster) pointing forward through the nose. With such a weapon the craft turned out combine a fair agility with an ability to cut through capital ship shields and damage vital components inside, like shield generators, while escaping fire by dodging. 
Due to it's size and slow recharging rate of it's weapon, it has poor dogfighting capabilities and needs to be defended against fighters.

The wings with the lid off. The frontal anchors of the jumpertechnique didn't really function primarily to keep the direction, as they sit halfway outside.

Building technique 1: Double sandwhiched jumpertechnique both in wings and nose.
The angling was achieved pretty simply by using ordinary technic bricks and pins with friction. This created the major flaw of the model: The quite unaerodynamic, squarish gable colliding with the otherwise slender central part. I tried to cover this up with the use of black ladders (in the front of the picture), but without much luck.

Single hinge technique fixated between hind wings and top of cockpit.

Building technique 2: The tail is restricted to very small movements by the wings below, and the plate above the cockpit.
I really like this tail! Very spiky, very Clawstyle.

Thanks for the arrow plugin for MLCad Willy and Michael.

Building technique 3: To integrate the vertically builded central part with the rest of the model or the central and frontal part, I used a lot of 1x1 bricks with headlights, which took up most of the inside space in the nose. By using the forward pointing stud of the headlights, I was able to extend the vertical part of the construction far enough forward to be able to fixate the coneshaped forward part of the gun to it. 

Luggage compartment, unfortunately I don't have these in other solid colours than blue.

Luggage: Because the cockpit is so high compared to the central part of the craft, a compartment for luggage could be fitted in beneath, rounding the craft off nicely.

Note how the air (or space debris) from the grilles in front of the cockpit is led on each side of it under the black strip on top of the wings back to the (black) engines: Very pedagogical....