This is one of those kitbashes that was a long time coming. I originally
bought an Ertyl Tie Interceptor model back in the late 80's. Nice for its time, it looked horrid next to my other models. So I came up with the idea of modifying it into a Tie Defender, from the Tie Fighter PC game fame. Well, it turns out that there were two versions of the Tie Defender, the finalized version that had the solar fins attached to an engine block in the rear of the main pod, and the prototype version, which had the solar fins attached directly to the pod. I went with the prototype you see below.
This model is made from two Ertyl Tie Interceptor models, with the arm and fins from my old model being attached to the top of the pod of a new model. The two main arms were heat bent to roughly 45 degrees, and all resulting holes and stretch marks were repaired with Testor's plastic putty. The top of the main pod was cut off and sanded down before the third arm and fin were puttied and glued to the top of the model. For those of you who don't know, the clear plastic stand that Ertyl made for its Star Wars models is horribly weak and fragile. Regular plastic cement will not work on it, either being too strong and melting it (like Testors cement will), or not holding at all (like most bottle cements). I ended up using a super-glue derivative called Plasti-Zap.
