Anasazi37

Oh yes, I definitely did that. With all the catalogs that had toys in them. I once worked at a Toys R Us over the Christmas shopping season. Needed some extra cash to help pay for school. I wasn't fully prepared for how horrible the parents would act, towards the employees and each other, as they tried to find the popular toys for their kids. The kids themselves were great, and it was nice to see their excitement as they wandered around the store. The one real perk of the job was that the manager let us set aside items we wanted as we were stocking the store each morning--as long we weren't too greedy. Got some nice stuff that way, but since I was saving for school, I missed out on a bunch of things.

Don't forget the catalog they mailed to your house several months before Christmas, packed with pictures of all the new toys, so you could get excited about them and then mercilessly try to convince your parents to buy them at every possible opportunity. My parents quickly learned to hide the catalog when it arrived, but I always managed to find it.

Bundle a decal sheet with a future TWE release to fix recurring issues with previous releases, but not actually address all of the issues? Bandai would never do something like that....

https://www.shapeways.com/product/G8D52LFAX/pilots-set-for-vf-1j-dx?optionId=91611789&li=shops

It likely evens everything out by filling in the low points left by the brush strokes. That would reduce or eliminate the kinds of subtle changes in color (due to illumination differences) which make handbrushing more obvious. And if you're using a flat clearcoat, there's less reflected light overall. Just my quick semi-informed take on the subject.

Well, shoot. Assuming my printer is still working in October, and that I've completed the orders currently on my waiting list, it sounds like I might need to make a set for this like I did for the non-PF version of the VF-4.

Since I'm passing on the WWM VF-25 and the Max YF-29, which my wallet appreciates, I was able to justify PO'ing this from HLJ

I'm probably several poor abused ALPS printers past the one used to create those stickers, but yes. Down to my last one, though, and I'm way behind on the small number of projects that I've taken on for some MW members (who have been VERY patient with me)

I think Complex can be pricey, too, because it's their main Akihabara location and it seems like everything in that part of town is more expensive. I vaguely remember some MW folks talking about avoiding Complex because of its shipping prices. The one advantage to Sahra is that you get a shipping estimate right away (granted, not a low one) and if you order, they ship without the usual back and forth about them needing to check if the item is still available, verify its condition, etc. The place is basically a warehouse for the stuff they don't have room for in their stores but still want to sell. They probably use an automated system to estimate shipping based on size and weight, which is what HLJ also does. HLJ likely has better rates with the various services, though.

Yeah, I am waaaaay behind on customs. Got massively sidetracked by my 3D scanner project, which I started in order to make parts for my 1/55 customs. That scanner has been my nemesis for over a year. I'm down to what is likely my last attempt to make it work the way that I want. If that fails, I'm going back to making customs, so either way I'll be updating that thread in the next few months.

I can't see any layer lines when I use my high resolution resin printer (Elegoo Saturn), and it can print really fine detail. Parts look like they've been casted. The printer can also crank out a lot of parts, fast. The downside is all of the prep work and cleanup that resin printing requires. I've printed several really large, complex kits recently, and they were a mix of filament (PLA) printing for large pieces like wings and structural components and resin for the smaller and more intricate pieces. When the kits are designed well, the results are really nice. You do see faint thin lines on filament pieces, but those can be sanded out.

Adapting the existing 1/72 sheet to work with the 1/60 DX would not be easy. I'm guessing that the DX is not simply a scaled-up version of the 1/72 model (or vice versa), so you'd be dealing with differences in the size, shape, and proportions of individual markings. Scanning the sheet and magnifying by 1.2 won't cut it. That would give you a decent starting point, and you could maybe hack away at the markings to make them fit, but my instincts tell me that you'd end up doing a lot of redrawing driven by trial and error fitting of draft markings. Having a very accurate ruler and a set of digital calipers on hand won't hurt, either.

better shipping = the packaging used by every other reputable online store when shipping items overseas without asking customers to pay extra for it

She's been eyeing the two Bandai SD Special Sets that arrived during the holidays, and I was looking at the box art for the Max and Milia Egg Planes the other day and she said they looked adorable, so I might be in trouble....

That actually worked for me (she named ours "Hello Kitty-San"). Not that she's actually building Macross kits now, but I get far less crap about them showing up at our house and she occasionally asks really good technical questions about the build process.

That's what I assumed. They have a huge pile of stuff in their warehouse, some of it sitting there for 2+ years now, but they're a business and need to keep selling stuff to survive, which means adding more stuff to the pile, but they also don't want to alienate longtime customers who have been waiting for shipping prices to drop to more reasonable levels. It's not a great position to be in. At some point they might have to start automatically shipping items that have been collecting dust to make room and/or start collecting fees for leaving stuff in your Private Warehouse. I don't like either of those options, and neither will customers, but they're going to lose money either way.

Added benefit of a more granular term like "channel" is that you can describe the different variations of the head laser: laser with wide channel, laser with narrow channel, etc. Term then also applies to other parts where there's a linear indentation. At some point, though, a channel probably becomes a groove when it's thin enough. So, in your original picture, the one on the left could be a "channeled" laser and the one on the right could be a "grooved" laser. We're basically talking about a creating a consistent taxonomic system.

Well-played, sir

HLJ is getting a lot more pushy about shipping now. I ordered a few things before the end of December, using one of those unlimited discount codes they were handing out, and I parked them in my Private Warehouse because I knew that the Regult would be coming out in February and I wanted to save on shipping. Got an email or two in January that tried to nudge me to ship my stuff, then it felt like every few days this month they were bugging me. They even tried to fake me out with a "48 Hour Shipping Notice" email, which when you read it after thinking, "crap, they're going to automatically ship my stuff," was them saying, "we can ship your stuff in two days if you act now." I've been a customer for 20+ years and have never seen them resort to tactics like this before. Makes me not want to shop there.

Channel?

According to the Google translation on Dengeki Hobby Web, it's actually Borg Confart.

I just can't get excited about this release. I've tried. Giving my wallet a break.

Arcadia does tend to put a lot of thought into their designs, so I am optimistic as well. Hopefully we'll never see another production QC issue like the SV-51 Ivanov "two left feet" fiasco, but that wasn't a result of bad design--just bad execution.