MacrossJunkie

Q1: Those ideas sound pretty good. Except for Grand Cannon. It was supposed to be a secret weapon so they probably wouldn't have plastered it on the valks. I'd be more inclined to say put "Alaska Base" on the vertical stabilizers and leave the SDF-1 markings on the thighs blank. Grizzly sounds good. Alternatively, you could also consider Eagle (plenty of bald eagles in Alaska), but it could be rather overused. I've seen customs that used U.N. Navy and U.N. Air Force, but you're pretty safe sticking with U.N. Spacy. Q2: That's the real dilemma isn't it? Acetone would likely dissolve the super glue or at the very least, soften it, but it also partially reacts with ABS plastic. And even if you were to try to force it open and not care about snapping connecting pegs inside and planned to glue it back together later, I'd be worried about stress marks showing up on the outside and that would be the least of the risks. There are other people with much more expertise in taking apart valks though, so maybe someone else can chime in with some good ideas here.

I bought about $1000 worth back when the stock was less than $6 a share. I imagined it would probably peak around $30. I never imagined it would double that at $60, to say nothing of coming close to $70 now. I knew I should have bought a lot more...

Somehow, the first thing I thought of when I saw this:

Probably. It might also help if you send them a picture of yourself doing a dogeza as well.

Being a huge fan of WH40K, I'm cautiously excited for Darktide. It's being made by Fatshark whose Vermintide games were excellent and a lot of fun. If they can improve upon what they have in Vermintide II, but in the 40K setting, then I'll finally have a decent 40K based game to play. Been so disappointed with so many of them as of late. The last good one I played was either Dawn of War II or Space Marine. Dawn of War III was trash, Inquisitor was trash. BFG 1 and 2 were mediocre and repetitive at best, Gladius was boring, Space Hulk: Deathwing had good graphics and got the look right, but the gameplay was garbage... sigh.

Those seem like pretty decent prices. Especially for the missile set. Tempting, but I think I'll hold out for re-issues and try to get the SSP and missile set in one go to save on the ridiculous shipping prices these days.

Hmm, I looked at mine and it turns out my SV-51 has two of the same ankles as well... I did get mine from HLJ, but with it being so many months since it had shipped, I wonder if they can/will still help. I sent them a message to see.

Wow, Hound just came out not too long ago, right? Makes me wonder if someone mistook a bag of flour for a bag of plastic powder and threw it in when they were mixing the batch of plastic.

I've had plastic parts literally crumbling like they just decided to disintegrate. I find tiny broken bits and particles like what happened with a leg for one of my Yamato VF-19S. I believe a 1/72 VF-11B I had also partially crumbled in the hip.

Is there no way to re-assign that key to function as the power button? Samsung did the same thing with their newer phones like the Note 10 series where the side button is no longer a power button, but rather to activate their ever so useful *cough* Bixbi voice assistant. To turn the phone off required going into the menu and selecting to power off or restart the phone. I quickly went into the settings and fortunately found a setting to map the side key to be the power button instead. Otherwise that would have annoyed me to no end. These companies keep making stupid decisions to put form over function or replace a key function with something inane again and again.

My Yamato VF-0's still seem to be fine, though a bit of a floppy mess in battroid mode. My guess is that it could be from any number of reasons ranging from environmental factors to luck with the batch of plastic used.

What about using something like Plastruct Plastic Weld to fix the cracks in the plastic? It melts and bonds the plastic back together.

I'm hoping Bandai plans to re-release the SSP and missile sets to coincide with future DYRL and other VF-1 releases instead of paying the inflated prices that places are selling them for.

I wonder if any of the articulated gundam hands in 1/100 or 1/144 scale would fit into the backpack area when in fighter mode. If they did, you could probably file down the ball joint into a peg and customize the back of the hand. I'm completely ignorant in how big such hands would actually be though.

^ Pretty much everything you find is going to need some painting.

Bandai's DXs also don't have option parts for a baby carrier and the upright single/double seats for exiting battroid mode. I doubt they ever will either.

Thanks! that helps a whole lot! Up until now, I've been referencing translated ones like this http://www.mech9.com/2016/09/172-vf-31s-siegfried-arrad-molders-ver.html?m=1 but I couldn't find ones for every bandai macross kit. Also good information. This is good to know. Thanks, I might just do that.

I'm not sure what you mean about not being sure about my last shot's inspiration. It's the iconic pose that Hikaru's 1J takes in the very last part of the intro to SDFM. Since the the time the Yammie 1/48s came out, I've tried to duplicate that, and haven't been able to get close until now. I wasn't trying to do anything from DYRL, I just happened to only have Hikaru's 1S so I was using that in place of the 1J in duplicating it. I just used the CG remake version because it was more mechanically and proportionally consistent aside from the shoulder glitch and easier to gauge the positioning. Anyway, if people think the DX is a marginal improvement over the 1/60 v2, it's all good. Everyone has their own metrics and weighting for what features are important to them. I personally was impressed with: the overall proportions the metal content and heft the extra articulation and the range of motion without having to make a lot of compromises it having the best hands out of any valkyrie toy release yet with every finger and knuckle having an articulated joint. My only nitpick about it is that every finger is the same length, which you can say it doesn't have to be because it's not a human hand, but it's not line art accurate either which in the design works book, shows fingers with lengths mimicking that of a human hand. But I can understand why because it would be tough to have a jointed finger like the pinky when it's so short otherwise. the extra detailing like: details inside the visor and shoulder lights the vents and such that show on the underside for GERWALK mode instead of just flat plastic a pilot figure that actually holds the controls which is a first that I can recall out of all valkyrie releases by Bandai, Yamato, and Arcadia bringing back the air brake and wing flaps of the Yammie 1/48 minus the radome (which never looked good anyway) better built in ability to fill in gaps like in the top of battroid mode. Anyway, my previous posts were just to illustrate the differences in articulation and center of gravity which affects posing. I believe that having more options is usually a good thing. So people can take it for how they want. If they found it informative or useful, then great! I know I'm late to the game and I'm sure all this stuff likely has already been discussed before somewhere in the thread, but 500+ pages is a bit much to go through for me and I'm guessing it's the same for other people who came back recently or are new.

Thanks! It should, it's not using any joints or movement ranges that the 1/60 can't duplicate. While on that note, I did realize one point of articulation that the 1/60 has that the DX can't duplicate properly. The DX arms can only move up and down and requires the folding hinge to give the arms side to side movement. The 1/60, on the other hand, has that AND the shoulder joint is a ball joint, so you can angle the arms inward more. So the shoulder piece can be moved inwards toward the body or outwards from the body independently of the folding part.

How do non-Japanese reading people go about reading or translating that though? I had the same issue with the color guides for some bandai Macross kits. They tell you the percentages of what colors to mix, but I can't tell what colors they're saying to mix.

What if you stuff some putty into the hole and then put the vf-1 hands in?

Honestly, Yamato/Arcadia really sucks at making poseable hands. The only actually decent looking ones they've ever made were the hands for the YF-21/VF-22 and the VF-17. The rest were either passable or just outright bad. A great deal of them look like the original proportionally tiny gnarled chicken fingered hands of the 1/48 VF-1 with little improvement.

Nice! It looks better than the original. I plan to paint the bike and pilot figure also when I eventually get mine, but I need to find or mix the right colors for it and I hate mixing paints.

Thanks Hopefully I've done a passable job in illustrating my point and pointing out things I could and could not do that I shouldn't really need to. I imagine GERWALK mode more-so illustrates the benefits of a better center of gravity and the benefits of the non-ratcheted feet.

Well, I guess I didn't really get the purpose of my post across. You said that you didn't notice any advantages at all other than its larger size, so I was trying to illustrate the wide range of motion in the arms, legs, hands and head that could be done on the DX but not the 1/60 as well balance advantages due to the low center of gravity. So I put it in exaggerated and silly poses to illustrate said poseability. I threw together a couple more pics with some side by side this time. I posed the DX first and then tried my very best to get as close to it as I could with the 1/60. In fact, I had to cheat a bit on the 1/60 to make it look closer than it was. Side strafing while aiming at the enemy: Here, comparing between the two, I could cock the head a little bit to get a better angle. The fingers and thumb on left hand on the DX could fully conform to the barrel. Even if I put fixed pose hands on the 1/60, it wouldn't conform nearly as well. The DX left leg could be angled out to look like it's pushing the valk ahead as the right foot is lifting off the ground. Due to the ratcheted feet with very few selectable angles, I couldn't do this and achieve balance at the same time so I had to find leg positions that allowed it to stand, thus the right foot is planted and the left leg had to use the gerwalk joint to simulate pushing off the ground, which works okay from this angle, but doesn't look right from the side. Also the 1/60 legs can't achieve a 90 degree bend or less. More like 100 degrees or so. The DX waist is tilted away to the right so while the legs are mostly facing forward, the torso is turned so it can fire forward. The 1/60 has no waist pivot so I had to turn the entire body and place it at a different angle to achieve a similar effect. Overall, I believe the DX looks more dynamic here. Just another pose with similar leg positioning for comparison. Again, I believe the DX could achieve a more dynamic look. Okay, now people might be saying, well MJ, you're probably just picking poses that favor the DX greatly. I'm really not. I'm just trying to showcase the advantage in poseability, but let's pick something that came out long before the DX was ever a thing: The end of the intro to SDFM with Hikaru's 1J pose. In this case, I picked out the CG intro remake since it uses a CG model which has more consistent proportions and doesn't have the exaggerated proportions of the hand drawn art of the original, so it's easier to get a feel of what's going on, but the pose is pretty much the same between the two. I don't have the 1J unfortunately so I'll have to made do with my 1S. I did my best to duplicate the limb and head positions. The right shoulder was impossible because the CG model is glitched there and while the arm is moved back, the shoulder piece didn't budge. I tried to duplicate this with the 1/60, but I really couldn't get it to look right to a degree that I felt was passable. Edit: Oh yeah, I also made the pictures smaller this time.