Star Wars MOC Tatooine Radar Base Building Review

 

Hey brick fans, welcome back to Bricks and Figs, my blog about interesting MOCs, minifigures and other building block sets.  Back in the summer, I saw this set on Aliexpress, maybe it's been there for awhile but I've never noticed it until now. It's a MOC building that you would find in a Star Wars Mos Eisley layout.  It would look right at home next to the Cantina set.

There are quite a few MOC Tatooine sets on Aliexpress that have been copied from Rebrickable, from designers The_Minikit_Guy, gabizon, and Legat_of_Legion, and others to name a few.  

This particular MOC set is listed on Aliexpress as the >Desert Radar Base , and I found it intriguing because I couldn't find where this set originated from.  I searched for Tatooine and Mos Eisley on Rebrickable, and while there were nearly 300 MOC entries, this set wasn't one of them.  I also did a google image search but the only matches I found, came from Aliexpress.

Anyways, I ordered the set to review it and it came in about a month or so.  Mine cost a smidgen over $40 CAD ($30 USD), so it's not like really cheap for the 453 pieces.  I would have preferred if this set was in the $20 price range.

You get a bag of parts and a 16x32 baseplate.  The instructions for the set are obtained by scanning the QR code on the bag and downloading it to your phone.

There are 453 brick pieces, comprised of mostly tan bricks with a few brown and gray bricks.  No stickers or minifigures come with this set.

The set isn't that difficult to build, I would estimate you should be able to finish it in about 30 mins to 1 hour.  Brick quality and clutch was generally fine.  In my picture above, I've added my own parts, namely the black girder on the roof and the brown bin.  I also added a stormtrooper minifigure so you can see the scale of the building. I replaced the original 16x32 stud baseplate with my own 32x32 stud baseplate because I wanted a display area in front of the buildings.

There were a few extra pieces leftover from the build.

This radar building set is composed of two buildings joined by an archway.  The smaller building has a doorway that is blocked by chain links.  There are a couple of radar dishes on the roof.  The larger building has a large archway with a brown door and a small tower on the roof.  There's also 3 more smaller communication antennas on the roof.

There's not much going on in the rear of the buildings.  The roofs haven't been designed to come off because there's no interior in either building.

There's some pipes on the front and either side of the buildings, the red flowers are supposed to be shut-off valves, I think.

Not sure if this is a window or door.  Here's a few more pics.

Fortunately, there are some pipes on the sides of the buildings for visual interest, otherwise this would be a pretty bland build.

If you are interested in getting this building or similar ones for your Star Wars Mos Eisley/Tatooine diorama, you can find it by searching for "Tatooine house" on Aliexpress.

In summary, while I think this building is nice enough to make a display out of it, there's not much in the way of play value. I think it definitely needs to be changed so that the roofs can be removed and furnished with some kind of interior,  like some computer terminals or monitoring stations inside the radar base.  I would also replace the pipe valves with some flat circular tiles, maybe in light gray colour.  Oh and maybe add some lighting for a nice effect.

Anyways, that's it for this post.  Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for checking it out, bye for now!

Parts came in for my not Lego Jerac Tie Bomber - Update

Hey all!  Welcome back to my Bricks and Figs blog where I show you my latest minifigures, mods and MOCs.  Today, I wanted to give you an update on my not Lego Jerac's custom Tie Bomber MOC 13952.   A couple of weeks ago, I posted my fixes to the address the poor brick clutch of the model.   As you can see from the picture above, I still had issues with wrong colour body panels as well as missing hinge parts for the engine cowling corners.

I'm pleased to report that the extra parts I ordered from Aliexpress finally arrived and I was able to replace the deficient panels and hinges.   Here's how the ship looks now.  The only thing I still need to replace is the cockpit windscreen (I'm using the round skylight from the Sanctum Santorum set, temporarily).

Here's the overhead view and you can see there's no visible off-colour body panels.

This view is the underside of the TIE bomber.
 There were eleven panels that were dark gray instead of light gray.  I ended up ordering 10 pieces of the light gray panels for $1.  As a result, I have one panel that is still dark gray that hasn't been replaced.  The pic above shows where it is.

 Finally, here is how the rear of the ship looks after replacing all the hinges on the corners where the fuselage meets the engines.   The hinges cost me about $2 for 20 hinges, so the total cost of the fixes for the TIE bomber was around $3 shipped.


Here's the link for the parts I used.  They were the cheapest I could find off Aliexpress, but if you see a better deal, go for it.

Two piece hinge (set of 10).  https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_dSixodA

Light gray curved panels (set of 10).  https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_dXI0T7e

Well, that's it, just a short little post to let you know that I've fixed most of the issues with not Lego version of Jerac's TIE Bomber.  Thanks for looking!

If you are interested in getting the not Lego set of Jerac's Tie Bomber from Aliexpress, please follow the link below.

AliExpress.com Product - 1494Pcs DIY MOC TIE Bomber Small Particle Building Block Model Compatible Legged 13952

How I fixed my not Lego version of Jerac's Tie Bomber - Part Two

Hey there, welcome back to the Bricks and Figs blog, where I post about my not Lego MOCs, Mods, and Minifigs.  Don't forget to check out my other blog called Its-Not-Lego where I give you honest opinions about my latest not Lego set acquisitions.

Today, we will take a look at some modifications I made to the knockoff/bootleg version of Jerac's Tie Bomber.  Check out all of the build pics here.

As I previously mentioned during the building of the non branded Jerac's Tie Bomber, there were a number of issues I found.  Most were related to the poor brick clutch of the off brand bricks, and those are easily rectified.  The one area where I tried to improve the design was the angled corner pieces that make up the tapered engine cowling.  I just want to point out that I have absolutely no issues with the look of the engine cowlings, just the method of implementation.

For reference let's take a closer look at the area in question.  The little T-joints at each of the corners of the fuselage are where you clip the curved bricks for the tapering.  Admittedly, there's not enough clutch for the clips to grab onto the T-joints.

The result is that anytime you accidentally touch the curved corners, they fall off immediately as evidenced in the picture above.

To mitigate the problem, I decided to attach the curved corner directly to the fuselage using the two piece connected plate.  The lower part of the pic shows you how the curved piece was originally connected.

Here is the result of the fix.  The curved brick can still tilt inwards, but it's more sturdy and won't fall off.  Note that this solution works perfectly for all four corners of rear engines.  Unfortunately my brick stash didn't have enough of those two piece joiner plates, so I've had to order the extra parts so I can re-work the bottom corners of the fuselages.

There are two more similar connection points at the front of the ship above the cockpit, but those seem to be sturdy enough so I kept the original setup there.

Since we are looking at the cockpit, as I mentioned in the Tie Bomber build post, the provided windscreen of this knockoff set was just a plain 6x6 circular part with no design. I've temporarily subbed in the 6x6 glass from the Sanctum Santorum roof until I can find a replacement Tie Cockpit windscreen.

Another change I made was at the lower hinge that attaches the windscreen to the fuselage.  I swapped out the single clip for a double clip plate, so now the windscreen doesn't fall off anymore.

Speaking of things falling off, the technic plate that attaches the engine flames to the engine would not stay attached.  I added a single round stud in between the connection and that fixed the problem.

One can barely notice the difference.

More bits that fell off include the circular plates attached to the wing detail.  To rectify this, I first attached the circular piece to a 2x2 plate and then attached that to the wing.

This is what it looks like now.

Finally, the last issue I had was also clutch related. There's four triangular sections on each wing that kept falling off due to poor clutch of the stud brick.

 I replaced each of those bricks, eight in total, with a technic pinned brick.

Problem solved!

With all these fixes in place I can display and swoosh the model without the worry of losing any parts.  I've already ordered replacement blue gray curved pieces to replace the dark gray plates that clad the hull of the Tie Bomber.

Please enjoy the rest of the pics!

Thanks for taking time out from your busy day to check out the pics of this knockoff version of the awesome Tie Bomber originally designed and built by Jerac.  What did you think of the fixes?  Did you have similar issues with your non branded Jerac Tie Bomber?  Please let me know in the comment box below. See you next time!

Building Jerac's Tie Bomber using not Lego bricks.