J'Deet Mantis long-range survey vessel

The Mantis

Very little is known about the Insectoid J'Deet (mostly cause I couldn't be bothered creating a back ground for them...). They are an inquisitive and cerebral race, their fleets consisting almost entirely of Survey and Science vessels. The 'Mantis' class (human name, J'Deet name unknown) is a long range survey vessel, and is fitted with the distinctive flat panel sensor arrays of the J'Deet.

The Model

This model was built fairly quickly out of anything which came to hand. The hull is composed of the upper hull of an SdKfz 223 armored car which I'd chopped up for something else years ago. I started by sticking thick card over the bottom of this piece so I had something to attach the engines to. The engines are made from the wing pylons from a TIE interceptor, which also yielded the dome shaped part used to fill the turret ring opening on the armored car's hull. Details on the ship mostly come from either an AH-64 Apache or an SR-71 Blackbird (I got very, very cheap kits of both from a craft store some years ago.) There are also wings salvaged from a couple of 1:144th scale MiGs my brother was throwing out, and a lot of plasticard. I didn't really have any plans when I built this ship, I just stuck on anything which looked right.