Lego UCS TIE Advanced (Part 2)

Here's the next set of pictures from the TIE Advanced assembly. If you missed it, part 1 can be found here.

The pictures above focus on what I affectionately refer to as "the shoulders" (they remind me of shoulder pads, for some reason). The first image, which is actually taken from the underside of the craft, shows the detailing that hides behind the shoulders and peeks through the holes in the front. You can also get a sense of how they are attached to the main body, partly because you can see the hooks on the left, and partly because the manual snuck into the picture in the background. The third image is the fully-assembled mid-section of the craft, seen from above and behind.

It's at this point that the instructions have you assemble the stand. I'm assuming that this is due to the immense size of the wings, but I personally found that it made attaching the wings more difficult than it needed to be. As the TIE is significantly wider than the stand, it tends to wobble a bit, and this is exaggerated when the while kit is lopsided with only one wing attached.

I'm not sure if it's by design or just a side effect, but as you can see above, the stand is capable of maintaining two positions. The second position offers an inclined view of the kit, but I found it to be a bit too dramatic.

What you don't see in these images is that I've made a small modification to the stand. As designed, the two posts on the top of the stand insert into two matching holes in the bottom of the midsection (you can see these in the very first picture in this post). One of these holes happens to be right under the seat of the cockpit. The problem is that the full weight of the TIE fighter places too much pressure on the front post, and any physical disturbance to the kit (and probably just enough time sitting around) will pop the seat out of place. You have to completely remove the face of the cockpit in order to replace the seat, and even then, it's a tight squeeze. Fortunately, the rear post is in a much more stable position on the craft and is more than strong enough to support the full weight of the kit.

The change that I made was to simply slide the front post down one notch. This is enough to relieve the pressure under the seat, but not so much that the post is no longer inserted into its hole, so it still adds to stability.

Unfortunately, I'm short on time and have a few too many images left to cram them all into this post, so I'm going to cut this one short.  The last part will show the wings and the final assembly.