Valkyrie Driver

That F-104 looking VF looks like it has two really small engines in the legs that make up the main fuselage. Which, admittedly, is a pretty cool idea for a single-engine profile. Might have to think about that for low cost VF.

So what you're saying is that the OVA should have been 1-2 episodes longer and included everything... And been released in english to satisfy people like me, who don't always want to read their dialogue...

Guardian since you brought up gun pods, I thought this one was worth a mention (VF-17, and YF-21/VF-22 may have been inspired by this one). This is the semi-permanent installation of the GAU-4 (USAF designation for the self-powered version of the M61 Vulcan)(The M61 is pneumatically operated and electrically fired). Here's another view: The gun took the place of the AIR-2A genie, and the doors had to be modified to accommodate the pod. In case you were wondering the F-4 actually had two different pods, the SUU-16 which contained an M61, and the SUU-23 which may have had a GAU-4 (my source cannot remember). The F-106 was considered to be the better of the two arrangements, as it introduced less parallax to the gunsight, and was a generally more stable mount.

The toy even has the anime accurate 8 barrels. That might just be a continuity error.

You know, at first, I hated my DX VF-171, but It's kinda grown on me. THe transformation is a bit fiddly, but now that I've done it 2 or three times, it's not so bad. I do Believe that I have a DX renewal VF-25 waiting to be picked up at home. I'm at my parent's house for spring break... GAH, I can't wait.

Are there any fans of the V1 DX VF-25's? I have one, but there's so much hate for it, that I don't know if I can sell it (I'm thinking about it, but I want to get a decent price for it, I don't want to sell it if I'm only going to get $20 bucks).

These are some amazing pics. What kind of camera are you using Hal?

I appreciate the suggestions Saruta. I had toyed with Intrepid (A classic military name), and Defiant crossed my mind. But I wanted something that spoke to the idea of exploration and destinations. Frontier kinda evokes an image of the destination, Horizon kinda felt along the same lines. Starlight sounds like a good name for the fleet, especially since I was going to use the Military Names like Defiant, Intrepid, Fortitude for military ships in the fleet. Some of my other ships would be the Crimea, Kosovo, Bunker Hill, Belleau Wood, Tarawa, and Bataan. Those would all be military ships because the names all have military significance (all are sites of battles to be remembered, right along with the brave men and women involved), but the main ship in the fleet should be something that inspires hope. If you don't mind I'm going to use starlight.

So the VF-171 does everything the VF-19 set out to do, only not as good but cheaper?

I echo some of the other sentiments, I love my whole collection. I think I'd be hard pressed to choose a single example from my collection to save. Their's something to love about each example in my collection.

Nice shots hal.

I'll have to check it out...

Any Dune Fans out there... "Remember, it is the slow blade that pierces the shield..." I should ask this, does the VF-171 take advantage of AVF technologies? Can it transit Atmo? Does it utilize the Cockpit arrangement from the YF-19? Does it use the PPBS? If not, could it be made to? Is it not classified as an AVF because it's only using tech established from the 1st gen AVF's (Y/VF-19 and YF-21 & VF-22) and not the cutting edge stuff from the 2nd gen (YF-24, VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30)?

There is apparently some animation n the movie that isn't in the OVA, which bugs me, because Now I have to get the movie version, which I'm pretty sure is only in Japanese...

I like my new VF-171EX, the transformation is a bit fiddly, but that's ok, it's an exercise in patience, and I find that it keeps my mind occupied. I love the lines, and it's easy to play with like my VF-19F, so I'm really cool with it. Not my favorite, but I'll say second after my Y/VF-19's.

Holy Mother... Nice collection Benson.

Agreed, you can never have enough ammo...

Actually, corrective lenses don't stop you from being a fighter pilot. Just as long as your vision is correctable to 20/20. They'll usually try to get you PRK to get rid of the glasses or contacts, but not everyone can get PRK. My Dad has worn glasses for a long time, and he flew fighters with them. Glasses are actually preferrable to contacts, because glasses don't fall out or shift off the eye.

I hadn't noticed that. very cool.

Oh you're more than welcome. While I'm currently in my second go at the University thing, I never really stopped reading. It's been my experience that good writers that really want to tell a good story, seek out people with the experiences that they themselves don't have, and integrate them. For instance, Blaine Lee Pardoe, a writer of many Battletech novels, sourced much knowledge from other people with varied backgrounds (I have a metric ton of Battletech novels, one of my other collections, from which I derive much pleasure). In fact, another Battletech example, Michael Stackpole, actually read the paper "Modelling the Revolution in Military Affairs" By Dr. Mark Herman, and spoke to the man, while doing research on military planning for 'Grave Covenant" which extensively deals with that subject. If only hollywood had that sort of diligence when producing a military movie (there are good examples, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, We Were Soldiers, Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor, Act of Valor to name a few), and then there are the glaring failures like (TopGun, Stealth, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Behind Enemy Lines, The Siege, Crimson Tide, to name some) that fail to humanize the military characters and just don't quite get it right. TopGun was a sappy love story with the US Navy Fighter Weapons School as a back drop. Most commanders would have grounded Maverick and never let him fly again after the crap he pulled. The dogfights were bland and uninteresting (you want good dogfight sequences, play Ace Combat:Assault Horizon, or watch the History Channel's Dogfights. All they do in TopGun is bank and aileron roll. That's not dogfighting, a dogfight is like a wrestling match, never quite finishing a maneuver, because you have to react to the enemy). Platoon and Apocalypse Now, are good movies, and they get some stuff right, but the overall tone of the movie and the way it portrays the characters is a bit wrong. It depicts soldiers as Psychotics and addicts, broken mentally and morally. Hollywood also tends to depict soldiers as stupid, and the dregs of society. Some of the most intelligent people I have met were soldiers (When I say soldiers I mean anyone in the profession of arms, not just the Army, but Airmen, Sailors and Marines too, even though each of them would argue about it, even though it's not worth getting knotted panties...). I'll be the first to admit that those of us that have put on the Uniform come out a bit twisted in the humor department. We find humor in the strangest places, and often times we laugh at things that mortify most people. Warriors live their lives knowing it's finite, and that it could be gone tomorrow. So we don't really put a lot of stock in social morays. We don't put much stock in paying it safe. In fact a company called Ranger Up! has a T-Shirt (they make clothing and MMA apparel that is geared towards current and former military) that says: "Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intent of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside thoroughly used up, totally worn out, leaking oil, on fire, and reeking of Gunpowder, Women, and whiskey, loudly proclaiming, Wow, what a ride..." That about sums up how warriors feel about life. You only get one, and you ain't making it out alive, might as well have fun along the way. Thing is, Roy Focker pretty well lives it. He's a professional, and he does his job the best he can, and all he can do is live from one day to the next. I praise Kawamori for this, Roy's attitude is bang on. HIkaru, joins up to protect Minmay, a little misguided sure, but everyone joins for at least one reason. He found his calling, and turned out to be fine officer. Max proves to be an able pilot, but he's also intelligent, and he even goes toe to toe with Kaifun idealogically, and wins (Kaifun resorts to an ad hominem attack on Max's character, and uses hasty generalization to apply said attack to all in the military. Kaifun couldn't debate, his arguments were all based on fallacious logic). For guys like me, kaifun is partially right. I do enjoy fighting. I enjoy the contest, and the thrill of victory. I like winning, I like to pit my skills against another, it's competition and it's fun. That said, I don't enjoy inflicting pain, I don't enjoy having pain inflicted on me, but a good fight leaves me satisfied. Even going home or to bed, battered and waking up sore the next morning, makes me feel alive. I play airsoft for the same reason, I may come home bleeding, and sore, and exhausted, but God it was fun. Sadists, Psychos, Sociopaths, they don't make it. They get found and booted, because they're a detriment to good order and discipline. I have not seen anyone in the Macross Universe that exhibits those traits (maybe some of the villains but that's expected...) so Kawamori gets mad props for that.

Yeah, no swords in my macross please. Knives, bayonets and batons fine, but no swords. Though looking at my VF-171 toy, I had the though of using the PPBS to reinforce the fin on the arm, and use it like an axe...

I do have some experience yes. I served in the US Air Force for 5 years, the last 2-ish with a Battlefield weather unit working with the US Army. It was a combat arms posting. Even though there were no soldiers directly involved, doesn't make the story any less real. Soldiers are real people, and they have the same problems as anyone else. As a whole military personnel have their own set of unique problems, but there are parallels to any civilian career. Musicians actually have some of the same problems, like being away from home for long periods of time, sleeping in something other than their own bed. It's nowhere near as stark as on deployment (I never actually deployed, just speaking from my experience with wargame exercises), where at best you might be sleeping on a cot, at worst you're curled up beside a rock. They don't face the constant peril and fear of death, but the experiences are parallel. Business executives can end up away from friends and family for extended periods of time, and it can be wearing on relationships. Again there is a stark contrast in the experiences in terms of consequences, but none the less they're parallel. The thing that is unique among the military is that every 2 years or so, you can expect to be uprooted and moved across the country, or even across he globe. Your mileage may vary, I spent 2.5 months in Texas, 10-ish months in Mississippi, 2 years in Louisiana, and almost 2 years in Kentucky/Tennessee. I moved around a lot in five years. That's not counting schools I attended, or exercises I participated in. So there's a lot of travel involved. Some folks never leave their first base. Others move every year. Being uprooted and moved to God-knows-where is just a fact of life. It's uncommon for that to happen in the private sector. As for hitting the target, it's somewhat off base. Hikaru is what 16 during SDFM? Professional Soldiers are usaully 18 by the time they hit the operational side of life. In order to be a fighter pilot in real life, you have to have a Commission, which means a Bachelor's degree (at least in the United States Military). The only non commissioned officers that fly are Warrant Officers in the US Army. Every other branch requires a commission. The army allows enlisted personnel to fly UAV's but those are not armed, and they're little more than glorified R/C planes (the RQ-7 I swear is powered by a weedwhacker engine, it's high pitched and sounds pissed) with cameras on them. But, in times of great need restrictions can get lax, people can lie about their age, people can fake their education credentials. It becomes obvious and they don't last, not to mention the consequences of fraudulent enlistment. There are probably a million things I could do to dissect this but suspension of disbelief aside, it may not be accurate, but it is plausible, and believable, which is the most important part to me. If we had perfect realism in our entertainment, it wouldn't be. Military life is boring, standing around for hours in for a parade, or showing up 3 hours before the commander to commander's call just because everyone higher in your chain of command keeps adding 15 minutes to the in-place time (Commander says, commander's call will be at 0800, the DO says be there at 0745, the flight commander's say be there at 0730, the flight chief says 0715, the section sups say 0700, the team leads say 0645, and then your supervisor tells you to be there at 0630, leaving you to say, gotta be there at 0615...) Then there's the hours of boredom between things happening. You end up playing cards, or Xbox, or whatever because there's nothing to do, and the NCO's and Officers can't even come up with something to occupy you. But you can't just go home because there's nothing to do, because that would make too much sense. You don't see that in Macross, thank God.

Agreed Spanner. That lumpy cockpit screams parasite drag...

From what I've seen, the Arcadia VF-1S Focker had the same level of Detail that my v2.1 Yamato VF-1S Focker.

Last thing coming in is a VF-25F renewal. That's the last of it. The only other thing inbound is a Replica AN/PRC-148 from ToySoldier Workshop out of Hong Kong. Hobbies pretty much consumed my tax refund. After transforming the VF-171, I'm a bit exhausted. That's pretty much been my only gripe about the Bandai toys I've had. The Yamato Y/VF-19's I have are the most complex transformations of any of my yamato toys. Indeed the VF-19 is the most complex transformation I had ever dealt with considering where all the parts go. The VF-171 had to be the most fiddly transformation I had ever experienced. It's pretty straightforward in terms of what goes where, but the thing just doesn't quite work the way you think it should. I just wanted to transform it I didn't bother taking pics. I'm not at home right now, so I can't get pictures of my whole collection yet, as I'm out of town. I'll get pics up sometime in the next couple of weeks.