MacrossJunkie

Yes, Future is very glossy, but so is the plastic used in the DX toys anyway, so it's not a big deal to to coat the whole thing. You could then spray it with a semi-gloss or flat coat afterward if the gloss isn't desirable.

It seems to me that these are only for those who want to keep it in fighter mode as a non-transforming display piece if you want to use all of the parts. Can you even close that canopy with the "teeth" there? Some of those parts seem redundant also, like the UHF antennas. If I were to get a set, I'd probably just use the parts that don't get in the way like the flight stick and throttle and inner detail for the feet.

I'd say just going by availability and price, the flightpose stands are really the only option. The mighty block stands are either discontinued or out of stock on every site I've checked. The launch arm stand seems to go out of stock pretty quickly though I see that HLJ is taking preorders for a "Feb restock". Although ¥3315 is pretty expensive for a stand. However, I'm one of those who have had the paint or clear coat melted/eaten away by the clear tips of the flightpose stands so I'm fairly wary about buying more of them.

I'm not a big Star Wars fan, but that AT-AT is pretty darn impressive.

Huh? What's this about crystalized salsa? Are they including it with every purchase of the VF-19?

Oh nice.That's a nice clear pic of the PE parts. I really hope they make the photo etch available separately (and for a reasonable price).

It looks pretty good in black. Is that also an SDF-1 with its main guns destroyed in one of the other pics?

Well, here's my attempt at it. I've learned a some things in my first attempt at use of water slide decals. 1. I hate trying to work with decals. 2. This stuff has the self clinginess of plastic wrap and barely more durability than wet tissue paper. 3. I hate trying to work with decals. 4. Micro Set smells absolutely horrible. 5. When making your own decals, spray the bonding agent before cutting. Doing it the other way around doesn't work well. I had to make a bunch of 0', 1's, and 2's until I could even figure out how to get it on as well as I did. I'm sure someone with more experience working with decals would get better results than I.

Ah, that's true, I forgot about that. I still don't know what the magnet is for.

I know what you mean. Ideally, they shouldn't have put the guide rails for the attachment from end to end, but rather leave off enough to put the arm in place against eh ARMD and then slide it in sideways. I suppose it could be modded by sanding off a bit of the railings at the opposite end.

Yes, but that shouldn't be any problem using an xacto knife. I already trim the stickers from Yamato right to the edge of the print so I wouldn't think this should be much different. Then again, I haven't worked with decals before so that's just guessing on my part. I'll post the result when I get the stuff made and set on the ARMDs.

I had ordered Testor's custom decal kit from Amazon (same kit as available on the decalgear site as well). It comes with some white and clear decal paper that you can print on using a normal inkjet printer and something to coat the decals after printing. I plan on using the white paper for the numbers and use the font to print out the 01 and 02. Seems to me like it should work. My order should be coming in tomorrow so I'll know by then.

I haven't found any QC problems on mine. It's a pretty solid toy and well made. I was very happy with it.

Look in this thread for the tiny valks: Yamato 1/3000 SDF-1 Custom/Detailing by Kye

Here's what I have so far for my bridge. It would have been less of a pain in the butt and could have added more if I had some tools to help me like tweezers and some sort of fine pointy scissors for trimming. I just had my fingers to use for placement so I did the best I could and then used nail clippers to trim off the excess. I used some Tamiya acrylic smoke to tint the bridge canopy and little dabs of red, brass, tan, silver, some grays, and white scattered around. I would like to do some aztec type patterns like on starfleet ships or the battlestar galactica remake. But my skills are novice at best, so it's probably not realistic for me to try doing that. I found a lot of templates on starshipmodeler.com but they're all rounded for saucers which wouldn't do. Not to mention, I'd have to take this thing apart to do properly which I've been unable to accomplish. Decals maybe? I don't know. Still brainstorming for alternatives and need to decide on that before I do any detailing on the hull and weathering. Thank you for the idea to paint the thrusters on the ARMDs by the way. I love it. If anyone is thinking about doing the "01" and "02" for the ARMDs and don't want to try cutting out a template or doesn't have a font that looks right if trying to print out a decal, I found a font that looks like a very similar match to the line art numbers. I got the "license plate one" font from decalgear.com where the "1" and the "O" (not zero) look extremely similar and were the right width when I did a test print in red. They took $3 off the $6.95 price so I paid $3.95 for it. Not sure if people would want to pay $4 for a couple fonts, but I figured it could be handy for other things as well.

Awesome, thanks. I ordered Testor's custom decal kit which includes a couple sheets of clear and white decal paper so I think I'll print the stripes on the white decal sheet so I can skip the white paint. Looking at the edges of the 1/3000 ARMD's ports, that's still going to be a real challenge as they are very thin. Hopefully I will manage.

A friend had recommended to me to try stretched sprue as well, but I just couldn't get it thin enough while not making the strand extremely fragile. I thought about using the filaments in a light bulb but those are pretty fragile as well and I'd have to deal with broken glass. What I ended up doing was a much simpler solution. I plucked a hair from my head and coated it with some gunship gray and cut it up into smaller pieces. It has a lot more flexibility and tensile strength than plastic or the filament while still being very fine so that worked out best for me in the end. Just an idea if other people are considering adding antenna cables to the masts.

I haven't noticed anything like that on mine. The pieces all seem to match the main body very well.

How did you do the caution stripes on the exit ports of the ARMD and do you think it would be feasible to duplicate on the 1/3000 version? I want to do that on mine but the only way I can think of is possibly making the stripes myself on the computer and printing them out on decal paper.

Oh nice. That's such an easy fix for the rail guns. They must have gotten bad instructions for assembly for all of them to be like that.

Man, I don't know how you managed to get those pieces apart. I tried for a good bit of an hour just trying to take the leg apart to get at the city based on the scans and all I really managed to do was get the gray piece of the front of the leg off, but couldn't get at the screws in the back of the leg. The turret and other piece covering the screws are glued in pretty good and I'm afraid I'm going to stress the plastic or break something entirely if I try any harder. I've pretty much given up on painting the city at this point which I would have loved to do.

Blah, mine has been sitting in NY since Jan 1st and there has been no movement since as far as I can tell... The wait is killing me.

Crap... I just looked at mine and noticed cracks have started to form too. And I was careful to not screw too tight. I only screwed in the disc enough so that the arms could actually hold a toy in place.

Yeah, bare plastic should be okay. I haven't seen the stands mar any plastic surfaces. Just the paints. I was thinking of putting electrical tape on the tips of mine to stop them from damaging the paint applications.

Well, if they only had rights to D7, they wouldn't have been able to make Max or Milia's 22S or the VF-11C since those only appeared in M7 as far as I can recall. So if they really wanted to, I'm sure they could make Milia's 1J as it appeared in M7.