The first ship I bought when I got into X-Wing was a HWK-290. I had played Dark Forces as a younger fellow, and I was excited to fly something that I felt personally connected to.

I made a pretty big mistake, though—and I don’t just mean starting with one of the most underpowered ships of 1.0. No, when I was trying to decide how to store my first couple of ships, I briefly considered keeping the plastic packaging that the HWK model rested in, but ultimately tossed it and just put the model in a box.

Big mistake.

Six years later, my poor HWK has had several of its tiny guns bend and/or fall off, and I’ve had to glue its back fins on at least twice. All the while, I’ve made several attempts to store the thing properly, but it’s just big and oblong enough to be difficult to situate well in my case without bouncing around and taking more damage.

I recently arranged a trade for a new one—and you can bet that I’m keeping the packaging this time! But I want the old one to live on in some useful capacity, even though it’s mostly good for scrap.

Which brings us to this thread. Long story short, I want to be able to fly my Resistance Transport as both the Transport and the Pod at the same time. To do so, I’ll need to put something in place of the Pod. I figure the HWK is kind of weirdly shaped for that job, but what the heck—it’s available. And this is far from the first time I’ve converted a model, though it’ll be the first time since my past life as a 40k addict.

The only thing I don’t really know how to do is get pictures onto here. Any help with that?

Do you mean putting image here at forum? There is a insert other media option around the box you type into. From there you can add images from links. Also you can add the images Just from your PC at the Click to choose files underlined text.

if you have an imgur account it's pretty simple:

click on your username and a drop down menu appears.

click on images.

then add an image.

then click the image you want and a pop up window appears, example:

I click the "copy" button on the one highlighted in green and then paste that into my message.

That's it!

By the way @CoffeeMinion someone on FB made a mold of their B-wing cockpit and made that into their alternate cockpit for their Resistance Transport. Very similar to your idea, but I definitely want to see what you've cooked up!

Thanks @Minaith and @Force Majeure ! Since there’s an easy way to put pics right into forum posts, let’s get this party started.

First, let’s meet our prospective lovers. He’s a tough old bird who’s ready to make a connection and hopefully lose some weight along the way:

She’s vibrant and young, but all too accustomed to getting the short (and we do mean short ) end of the stick with her “Big Deal” of a boyfriend who she’d like to cut loose:

Now, you wouldn’t think these two would pair well together. It’s not just that they’re from different eras, or even different sides of the tracks; it’s that he’s got this massive—dare I say hawkish —nose. Whereas while she’s no petite princess, she’s at least got a pretty face. Or does she? Take a look at this side-by-side:

As it turns out, when you factor in her big antenna (no judgment here, folks; just observing a fact), these guys aren’t such a mismatch after all. It’s really just a matter of getting him to lose that junk in his trunk.

Tune in next time as the extreme weight-loss program begins...

And we’re back! Let the bloodletting begin!!

...a sentiment that would soon become all too literal, as I discovered just how tough these X-Wing Minis ships really are. I have a couple decades of Warhammer 40,000 experience under my belt, so I felt absolute confidence as I grabbed my hobby knife and started cutting away the underslung turret mount.

...which didn’t cut away. I put a new blade in the X-Acto #2, went at it again... and DANG but the mount was not cutting. See, I was trying to preserve not just the gun, but the circular point where it connects up to the hull, as that would make it easier to repurpose for this or other projects. But it WOULD NOT CUT.

One of the back fins snapped off while I was fussing with it. I shrugged and snapped the other one off, figuring maybe it’d be easier to grip if I could get rid of the other extraneous pieces. So then I went to cut the engine mounts off...

THE DANG THINGS WOULD NOT CUT EITHER

Nearing the end of my rope, I just used brute strength and snapped them off without clean cuts. Then after a few more minutes of frustration with trying to cut off the gun mount, I just grabbed the stupid turret and started twisting until it too came off.

Here was my pile of shame and frustration:

I figured things had to get better from there, though. Surely now that everything was off the hull, I’d just be able to cut right through and get the basic shape this thing figured out.

Frickin’ nope , it just stuck on the knife but would not cut through.

Never in my 20+ years of hobby gaming have I encountered a tougher model to cut through. Not even the metal ones. FFG should consider repurposing old HWK models for the bulletproof vest market, because I think I might actually trust my life with this thing. It was not cutting, no matter how much force or other dirty tricks I used.

I did, however, have a happy accident as one particular bit of wrestling snapped off something at the back that I didn’t realize was a separate piece:

Oh yeah, check out that engine grille! I can use that. But first I have to actually cut this stupid hull. Time to give up on the knife and turn to a nastier tool:

WAAAAAAAGH!!! (Sorry, wrong game)

It was after this point that I started shaving down the grille section... and made my sacrifice to Lord Khorne. It’s been a while since I last stuck a hobby knife in my finger, and it was a weirdly familiar experience, even though I could’ve lived without it. But when all was said and done, I got things cut down to these two pieces:

And here we must pause, gentle readers, as I did not have superglue enough to continue. Suffice it to say that these two pieces will form the core of it, but I’m also looking at options for how to mount this onto the side of the Transport. I think it’s ultimately not going to look amazing, but I don’t need it to; I can live with this bucket of bolts looking quirky.

Very interesting. I can't wait to see how this ends.

You'd be better off using a small saw to cut through the ship body.

Honestly as a big fan of the HWK-290, arguably the biggest aside from Millennium Falsehood, this is seriously really frakkin' cool to watch. It hurts to see the girl get gutted. But it's great to see it get use this way.

TBH might just run the HWK-290 as a Resistance Transport anyway. You know, uh, when I have my collection back.

Gentle reader, before this chapter of our tale begins, I must warn you of the peril that lies ahead. For just as on the path of love there are innumerable pitfalls and temptations, so too in the saga of our lovers has misfortune come to call. Both eyes and hearts shall wander before our time today is over, and you may yet leave wondering if this tale is doomed to tragedy.

I urge you to take courage, for what you are about to see is dark indeed—but as they say, ’tis always darkest before dawn.

Let us begin as so many conversions have over the years: by gathering and taking stock of likely conversion fodder. This humble grist was drawn from my entirely-too-huge stock of Warhammer 40,000 bitz, which was both daunting and exciting as I considered how much I could get away with using. In the end I found a few things that looked Pod-like, and a few things that looked engine-like, along with one or two things that seemed like they might fit nicely onto the peg coming off the Transport’s hull:

“Y’know, I wonder if that ammo box just fits on there,” I said aloud.

Hee hee hee . Success! So much for having to scratchbuild some kind of mounting point; I already had one .

Giddy with this revelation, and perhaps feeling a bit of hubris, I began to fly closer to the proverbial sun. “Maybe I don’t need the HWK body at all,” I uttered, as the glamour of Slaanesh charmed my eyes. “Maybe I could build the whole thing out of bitz!” And so I proceeded too build... a thing . A thing indeed:

Yeah.

Nope . It’s pretty ugly, ain’t it?

I had to leave it for a couple hours at this point, and boy did I end up feeling glad that I did. It was actually @Captain Lackwit ‘s comment in the interim that helped make me realize how the aesthetic of the little thing I’d cobbled together fell short of my original plan. And really, the bottom-line aspect of my plan was that I wanted to give my first X-Wing ship a chance to live on and be useful instead of going purely to the scrapheap.

So I needed to change things. Fortunately, even with all the other junk I’d added, I still had a functioning mount point. I just needed to make sure it wouldn’t look too bad merging that onto the HWK body:

Yeah, all right; seems legit. So then it’s time to cut things down to size...

... and make a huge mistake .

Hobbyists with fragile constitutions should look away now , because the next picture shows a train wreck right about to happen:

Do you see the problem? It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to look at it again. The knife is lined up, the angle’s perfect...

...if the cut didn’t need to go in the opposite direction!

* insert musical sting from Psycho *

Fair readers, I must leave you at this place of peril, for the forum tells me that I’m not allowed to add more pictures to this post. But again, take courage as we head into the darkness, for this tale is far from over.

I leave you with a hearty thanks for reading thus far, and with a special shout-out to @Minaith !

Looks good, but buy a razor saw. It will cut through that quick and straight, no problem.

I'm interested to see how this turns out!

Seriously. Buy a razor saw.

Or even a junior hacksaw would be better.

Chainsaw. With diamond tip chain. Using avgas.

Don't hear them! Resist with the knife! Bow to the Omnissiah, don't trust the saw-felons!

By the way. Looking again at the Crow and the transport, may it be posible to made just an entire transport from the Crow? Helping with bitz. Crow's body doesn't look extremely different to transport's body. Only need to build the weapons module.

18 hours ago, CoffeeMinion said:

the forum tells me that I’m not allowed to add more pictures to this post

How are you adding images? I have an imgur account where I upload pics, then copy the gibberish of the particular image and paste that into my post.

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Riveting write-up by the way.

On 9/14/2019 at 7:07 PM, CoffeeMinion said:

Oh yeah, check out that engine grille! I can use that. But first I have to actually cut this stupid hull. Time to give up on the knife and turn to a nastier tool:

Tip I use: hold a lighter on your X-Acto blade for a couple few seconds. Slides right through the plastic. You’ll have to clean up the cut a little but works good.

Enjoyed the post!

On 9/17/2019 at 10:54 PM, JBFancourt said:

Tip I use: hold a lighter on your X-Acto blade for a couple few seconds. Slides right through the plastic. You’ll have to clean up the cut a little but works good.

Enjoyed the post!

Genius. This is exactly why I lurk these forums.

Loved reading through this. How did it turn out? Final pics??

Hey folks. I know the forums are not long for this world. Wanted to bring a little closure to this before the end comes. Hopefully @Roast Porg and anyone else who remembers this will go in peace knowing something came of this project.

I ended up scrapping what I was up to with this and converted my chopped-up HWK back into a mini-HWK. I also came up with a snappy name for the thing.

Enjoy!

What a cursed little thing.

It's valid though. Good work.