MacrossJunkie

If they had made this the movie version with the rotary cannons in the arms, I would have bought another VB-6.

Thank you all! If I did, I would have to keep the green sensor array piece because I never ever want to redo that again... ever! I used a mix of 6 drops of Vallejo matte varnish, 15 drops of Future, and 12 drops of acrylic thinner to achieve a satin finish. I also left the gunmetal parts and metallic painted parts like the wing nacelles full gloss, just to give more contrast and because I felt like it.

Great photography once again! I really like the SV-51. It's unique and ugly but in a badass and awesome sort of way. Quick tip: If you bring the shoulders up and closer together, it helps the look of the battroid mode quite a bit.

For a second, I thought someone had acquired Yamato's old Monster prototype. But eeeew, vinyl. That's probably not a good idea for those long barrels.

Here's how my Ozma 29 has turned out so far. I plan on stripping the purple off the fold crystals and the canopy and redoing them with a GaiaNotes clear purple which looks to be a much better match. However, since I have never worked with lacquers through an airbrush, I don't have any lacquer thinner so I have to wait until I get some to do that. Still, it's a decent placeholder until then to get an idea of how replacing the blue with purple looks if anyone is considering doing the same. Thanks to MickyG for informing me about the green sensor array having a frame. I painted that using a sticky foil as a mask which was a pain in the butt to do, painted the leading edge of the wings a lighter gray like how they should be, and darkened the gunpod to a shade that worked better with the overall color of the valk. Working on the super parts now. Will do a full shoot of the base valkyrie first once I redo the canopy and crystals.

I wonder why they didn't correct that before it went out. Surely they knew it was pinkish.

Is it my eyes playing tricks on me, lighting, or are the white missiles, landing gears and their bays slightly pinkish? I didn't really notice until last week and I thought it was just the effect of afterimages from staring too long while spraying my 19, but it continues to look pinkish to me.

Same here. The head on one of my 19s is a bit slanted compared to the other and I would love to get that corrected.

I don't think the 0D or 1D is necessarily a trainer any more than you would consider a F/A-18F Super Hornet to be a trainer. The two-seat aspect of them just tend to be more suitable for training for obvious reasons. For live combat, having a RIO is pretty beneficial as it offloads some work from the pilot so they can concentrate more in the actual flying in combat while the RIO spots other aircraft, gives status updates, handle comms, run some avionics, etc. The 0D and 1D are very much combat fighters which probably have more advanced avionics packages installed in them due to the increased workload capacity that having two people would bring and would be able to better utilize such upgrades. For the 1D, here's a snippet from the Macross Mecha Manual for the VF-1D page, So it mentions that the head unit lasers are upgraded, which would make no sense to do for a trainer only vehicle. It also states specifically that it was an active service VF and that only some number of them were designated for training purposes.

Right now the FAST packs are stock condition. I need to sticker them, panel line them (should be almost nothing to do here), and apply weathering effects and clear coat. I need to double check the master file to see if there were marking indicators for the FAST packs, but I don't recall seeing any. I don't think Hasegawa made FAST packs for the 19 either, so worst case scenario, I'll just have to use some common sense and already established conventions to determine basic placement. (Edit: There's no diagram, but the VF-19 Master File pages 60 and 62 essentially show the markings and it's not hard to figure out what they are.) For the gunpod, I was thinking of making decals to mimic the vent slots that are missing in the YF-19's because they forgot to modify it from the VF-19 gunpod. That shouldn't be too difficult and it's all black so that's even easier. Thank you. I can flip the wings in and out and all around and there are no scratches as there is pretty much no contact with the edges of the wing glove. I haven't transformed it yet as I only finished it last night and was waiting for the clear coat to dry. The main area where there will be a lot of scraping is the chest lock mechanism over the red sensor array on the sides of the nose cone so I left that uncoated, not that it needed any. The other place I identified to watch for is the area that die-cast shoulder pivot passes over when transforming to GERWALK or battroid, especially the flaps that lift up to make room for the head unit. Gotta make sure those are down flat before swinging the arms around or it WILL scrape. Everything else should be more or less okay, given careful handling.

Yeah, I have the pylon attach labels next to my hardpoints as well. I know exactly what you are talking about for the VFC labels. You went with how the master file has it while I took the Hasegawa route for those. Thank you. For the rub on transfers, is it something like this? http://www.pulsarprofx.com/decalpro/Vertical/1_MENU/1b_Overview/Overview.html I had been debating trying out this particular product, but I wasn't entirely clear on how it worked. I wish I had any skill/knowledge in designing and making decals or I would go that route as well. If there were some company that made printers like the ALPS dye sublimation printers at an affordable price, that would give me enough incentive to learn to make my own decals. I can't believe there's no market for something like that here. Now I need to find time to do the other one, the FAST packs, and gunpods. This is why I tend not to buy multiples of the same thing, aside from cost. It becomes tiresome doing the same thing more than once...

Stickered it based on the markings in the VF-19 master file and Hasegawa, oil wash and mechanical pencil for panel lines, mix of airbrush and Tamiya weathering kit powders and some use of a Mr. Clean magic eraser for some weathering effects, and a clear coat. Thanks. I tried to make the clear coat around the same level of matte-ness as the base toy.

I just finished weathering one of my 19's. I still have to work on the gunpod and the FAST pack and the other 19 and its accessories as well. But with this discussion on the included stickers and such and lack of people using them, I figured I'd take some pics now and put them up as an example of carefully cut stickers applied to the toy. Other modes to come after I finish the other stuff.

Most likely they were pretty loose already. Mine were as also slightly loose already prior to the super parts being added. My Ozma 29 seems tighter though. The addition of the parts just made it more prone to moving, due to the slightly more mass added. But it's no looser when taking them back off. Just reiterating the previous two posts, there's really no significant stress put on the outer nacelle pivot. If you want to put on super parts, go right ahead.

Man, I wish I had those. As always, great shots! So did VM just bring over his entire collection one day for a shoot or was this done over time?

Well, if it looks so terrible, maybe I should take you up on your offer. You're too kind! Now I'm trying to figure out these white stripes on the leading edge of the wings on the super parts: In the game, the leading edge of the wings are pretty thin, but the one on the toy is pretty thick so I'm not sure if it would look silly or not painting it white or even light grey.

Those videos need to be at least 10 min longer or something. They're way too short!

Got my super packs much earlier than I expected to. Yay! In other news, I tried out spraying a dark filter on my gunpod to see how it would look against Ozma's 29. You can compare vs the handle which is the original color which I didn't spray since it would be prone to paint chips and it's hidden either in the hand or in fighter mode anyway. Gave it a quick oil wash too to bring out the details, particularly the inside parts. Sorry, I can't have the 29 holding the pod or do a better pic since it's all in pieces right now so this is the best I can do at the moment.

That's a pretty clever mod!

Thanks. As is yours. It took me a while to get mine all sorted out, but it's nice being able to sort the pics into multiple albums and such and the tags work, which is nice. Still trying to get used to it though.

Or I suppose it could end up in the new upcoming Macross series.

Not soon enough. Your pics made the wait that much harder It will be some time before I have pics to show since I plan on painting the missing colors and redoing the purple on the canopy and fold crystals with a clear purple Gaia Color paint, which the delivery estimate given was a huge range of Oct 6th - Oct 23rd... So worst case scenario, I could be waiting almost another three weeks for it or it could come tomorrow.

Yeah, but 3 of those repaints were tied to major characters and one was a special case 30th anniversary repaint. The only thing I really see going for the chances of repaints is making more use of the mold. Thus far, I haven't seen Bandai release anything Macross related if it wasn't either tied to a character or featured in the show or elsewhere. I just don't have any idea if the repaints like the black/purple or red/black versions fit any of the above. But like you say, one never knows. It's the first time, I think, that they released a whole new design (YF-30) plus variants of a pre-existing design (new heads for YF-29) that was only in a game.

What do you guys think the odds are that they would release repaints of this in other colors? I haven't played Macross 30 so I don't know if those other colored versions are attached to any characters or not. If not, I think chances of repaints are very slim.

Probably a week from now. I picked EMS shipping but only got the shipping notice on Friday.