mickyg

It's gotta be Michael for me. His story arc really impressed me. Going from this massive player persona to one who ended up being quite deep and caring and protective to the core. And he's got a cool name.

Is this in relation to the half plastic, half metal ball in the hip to thigh mechanism? If so, I can save you some money, that plastic "cap" is not glued in many ball joints made this way. The pressure of the walls of the socket is what usually holds it in place. I dismantled my VF-19Advance (warning: don't do this as it's a royal PITA to get back together) to see if I could loosen it up some on the side that is always too tight. It had that half/half ball like the 0D and it was not glued. And I recall some shoulder joints like this too. In short, the lack of glue is not responsible for the joint pulling out. If I had to guess, I'd say it's poor tolerance between the ball and socket sizes. As in, the socket is too big for the ball somehow. That, or the lip inside the ball, closest to the opening isn't tight enough around the post side of the ball. Glue will help with getting it back together but I don't think it'll help keep it that way.

It's OK man, all you need to know is that I'd never actually post anything if it was a true spoiler. The one in my reply is harmless, unless you've never seen any SW at all.

Really? Man, I totally missed that. All this time I thought it was there to show the "what it would look like to the cyborg pilot" view of things. And honestly, all those sequences didn't make a lot of sense to me. Brera has a flight suit/No, he doesn't. Brera can see out his cockpit because the canopy is transparent/Cockpit is completely covered. It was confusing and I just chose to view it as "what it looks like to him" vs reality.

He's a dude. This is a girl...

Because at the end of the day, it's about Stayin' alive!

Nice typo myk!

Nooooooooooo!

This is great news!

Beautiful! I wish I had the time to do mine up. Looks great!

These look great MJ! Thanks for going to the effort to both trace them and clean them up. I'm sure they'll help those wanting to spruce up the office in their Messiah Valks.

Saw it last night as well and was pleasantly surprised by it. Very entertaining and a fun movie outing.

I posted this years ago but the thread is now long since buried. And we're wandering into not quite "discovery of Macross" territory so... I watched a few eps of Robotech in the mid '80s when it was on very early in the morning. I must have been 6 or 7 years old, living in San Mateo, California and if I'm not mistaken, it was airing on channel 2 ("There's only one 2!"). At the time, I'm sure I had Transformers, and I'm sure I'd have been watching the cartoons. But Robotech was different - it was serious, and had themes that felt much more realistic, even to a young kid like I was. I can't remember if I watched anything in sequence but I remember the opening battle, the VF-1D and then at some point, the kissing scene in front of the Zentradi. So it's very possible I only saw 3 episodes in total. As I recall, we moved to Cloverdale, California and whatever television networks we had, weren't airing Robotech. But it made a serious impression. As I recall, I had one friend with a Jetfire and that was because his folks were stinking rich. I couldn't find this toy anywhere and it's likely that if I had, my family wasn't going to be able to afford it. Fast forward to when I was a teen in the early '90s, after relocating to Oklahoma... A friend got hold of the comics and VHS tapes for the whole Robo-saga. And then I discovered the Jack McKinny novels. I got completely sucked in. That same friend also managed to get hold of a Takatoku SDF-1 and though it wasn't in the best of shape, it was awesome! I had no concept of the history of the show or that it was based on completely unrelated anime series. At the time, that would have likely destroyed my interest in the whole thing because I honestly didn't understand American syndication or HG like companies and for me, everything was good and right in the world. My only physical manifestation of anything mecha related was my friend's SDF-1 and a Chunky that was mostly complete. And I built an amazing transforming "Alpha" out of Lego that I loaned to said friend. I never saw it again... Fast forward again to roughly 2005 and my interest in models got re-awakened. I'd relocated to Southern Australia and started looking for things to build that held my interest. Somehow I discovered Macross World and WM Cheng's beautiful models. And I think even before that, I happened on Captain America's amazing Alpha transforming kit that at that stage, wasn't in a finished state. At some point I started reading up on what it was that made up this amazing series I saw as a kid and at first, I felt lied to and ripped off. "How could a company cobble 3 different stories together and foist them upon my childhood in such a way and not tell me this is what they were doing?" That was my thinking. But that soon led to curiosity about the originals. All of a sudden, I didn't care about Southern Cross or Mospeada and really just wanted to concentrate on Macross. It really wasn't until about 2009 or so that I managed to watch the whole Macross series, in all its original glory. But I should mention first that I watched Frontier before that. So my exposure was Robotech, and finally Macross Frontier, then DYRL, possibly followed by ZERO and then SDFM, so I could set my memory straight about "what really happened." I think I watched PLUS after this and then moved on to 7.

I think these panels are not very good. Well, until I realise how small they are! Still I bet they can benefit from some cleanup.

Hot water from a cooler? Wut....? Messing with you! I did exactly that. But I think it would depend on how hot the "red" side is on the water cooler. Mine is hot enough for a nice cup of tea, or bending soft plastic back into shape. Pity you can't get that laser off the head. I'm guessing pulling the head off is out of the question? I could swear my Isamu version's head will pop off the ball joint, but don't quite me on it.

It's the thought that counts!

Anyone interested in these things to print for your VF-25 Bandai Valks, please head over here. MacrossJunkie or Froy, your Vector Skills are very much appreciated and needed again.

Just like I did in the Bandai VF-19Advance thread, here's a couple of macro shots of the VF-25 instrument panel from the Hasegawa kit's decal sheet. In Green: Red: Back Console in Green: And Red: The size works as is for the Bandai Valks and as I requested for the other thread, if someone with Vector Graphics skills and tools can retrace these, that'd be awesome! The size reference is the circle for the decal number. That measures very close to 2.5mm in diameter in real life. These are very small!

My experience with head lasers and other softer plastic parts is that if the water is hot enough, the part will go back to its "as-cast" state all on its own. But that assumes you can get the water hot enough and that you can get the part into it OK. I did this on a VF-25G part, and that was easy because the part comes completely off the head without any dramas. A word of caution about temps being too hot or possibly just the composition of the softer plastic - my RVF-25 antenna array on the bottom was severely bent in a shipping mishap from Mandarake, so I decided to use the water trick on it. To my surprise, the part actually shrunk. No big deal except there was a very tight tolerance hole in it, to mate up with the mounting point in the arm. This no longer fit when I was finished with the straightening. On the bright side, the part was perfectly straight! So just bear that in mind. My recommendation would be water that's not quite to boiling temperature, say 180 F or 85 C? And for anyone concerned, I managed to drill the hole out in the RVF part and the fit is so good, you'd never know it had a problem.

FYI on the shoulders: the triangles hold the pauldrons to the shoulders. That's the only structural thing they do. They aren't responsible for holding the arms or shoulders to the valk. It ain't pretty but if one completely crumbles the arm doesn't fall off, you just have nothing to hold the pauldron on.

I haven't voted, simply because I only own one and it doesn't seem fair. For the record, it's the Bandai. I couldn't afford the Arcadia when it was released and sure can't now on the secondary market. And after reading about the ankles, I gave up on justifying purchasing (back when it was released originally). I like the pros and cons people are listing, though.

And the rest is failing? That is a real shame.

Seconded. She's a purdy valk. Mine had a shoulder 'splosion but only after I disassembled it to get a better look at all the cracks in the part. I'm sure it would have cracked sooner or later but there's no doubt I accelerated it.

The biggest difference, visually, is the cockpit/canopy. It's easy to tell by looking at it. But why is it different? Because the EX (Alto and co's version) is built to use the EX-Gear. So the whole cockpit/canopy section had to be based around that piece of equipment. It looks more VF-25ish too, if you look at them side-by-side.

Dammit guys - SPOILER TAGS!!! Saddest part of the whole TV series and easily my number one reason to like the movie version.