[451 style uniform CRL]

As one that has been studying to pursue an Imperator level ANH Staff officer (I'm mildly OCD.....which sorta sucks for costuming), it makes a lot more sense to have the CRLs separated or at the VERY least have the two pieces listed as "options"/variants.  Thanks to the help of a few, I hope to have a start on requesting submissions for Executor and Imperator levels in very short order once the ball gets rolling.  I'm thinking I definitely want to start with the ANH staff officer...because of the challenges that it presents.

v/r,

Jon

[DL-44 Optics]

So for those that haven't read my intro, I'm looking at doing both a 181st TIE squadron pilot and a routine TIE fighter pilot.  For the weapon, I had looked at the DL-44, and initially found the ever-popular Han Solo variant.  However, I'm trying to balance what I know of the military (I'm an Army Reserve officer), and the various other things.

 

From reading the DL-44, it says that it was highly customized, so I thought of getting the DENIX C-96 with wood grips (I'm really hard on things, so I'm trying to get metal where I can, 'cuz I've destroyed some indestructible things), with the bull barrel/flash hider in silver/aluminum like the 501st page shows, but then mixing that to use the ESB style mount with the M38 tank scope as on the E-11 blaster.  I know that the default is the M19, but with the 501st page not specifying optics, it lends me to believe that as long as it is not the Han Solo weapon (from reading other forums, I recall that using the exact weapon is frowned upon since it was customized by Han), but also only slightly variable from exact, I'm not sure if it'll cause an issue.  There are some gorgeous M38 replicas, and I think it'd be best to use the M38 over the M38A2 (longer yet).  But since both the M19 and M38 use the same base and have minimal length/structural difference, and the M38 is used on the E11 blaster it would be highly plausible to have the optics mounted to a blaster.  (Army logic:  use what is available/familiar).  I chose to go with the DL44 because of it's compact size, as UH-1 pilots in Vietnam often chose to go with the M1911 Colt or a .38 special as the sidearms, whereas door gunners and others often had carbines or other weapons available.

Does anyone have any experience with this?  I'd love to hear someone inside the 501st as well, so that I'm not just throwing money out the window on "thinking wrong".  Thanks for your time.

v/r,

Jon