Graham

I really can't express just how excited I am about this now. Graham

Many small and medium-size toy companies contract out design work. This is fairly common knowledge. They cannot afford to emploe a full time designer. It's been no sectet with Yamato since they first started . Billy Wong for the 1/72 Mac Plus toys and 1/60 V1 VF-1 and Nishikawa-san (Flex) for the 1/48 VF-1 etc. Graham

In real world terms, I've always considered the VF-4 a bit like the F-104 or English Electric Lighting. Good acceleration and top speed, but otherwise lacking in most other areas, especially weak in air combat maneuverability and extremely limited weapon carriage. Graham

Opening cockpit hatch in batroid mode, opening leg missile bays, opening speaker shoulders............this toy is gonna have it all. As long as they can make it with nice tight joints, I will be extremely happy. Very curious now about the split LERX. Graham

Fantastic pics Save. Great job. The sculpt looks amazing in your pics, so much better and less chucnky than the earlier somewhat blured pic posted from another site. I'm really looking forward to this to now. The detail looks amazing. can't wait for the inevitable Blazer version. I'm gonna be drooling over and studying these pics for a long while. Grahm

From what I've been told, the idea is to have the price at a reasonable level. And yes, unless plans change, it should be sold assembled and painted. Graham

I've always thought that the reason beam guns were not adpoted in the Macross universe as main-armament on Variable Fighters post-VF-4 and the reason that shell firing gunpods were kept as main armament is that beam guns must be inferior in some way compared to shell firing gunpods. Possibly, this could be insufficient (kinetic/heat) energy on target compared with shells, or possible overheating after a relatively small number of shots have been fired, or perhaps too slow a rate of fire to enage fast moving aerial targets, or perhaps insufficient capacitor technolgy resulting in a relatively small ammo capacity between recharges. The above reasons, I think are why we only see beam guns, whether mounted on head, chest or arm, as second or third line weapons, designed for anti-missile fire, or anti-mecha fire only if the main shell firing gunpod and/or missiles have already been exhausted. I've always considered the VF-4 something of a failed experiment. Good acceleration and thrust for getting in and out of trouble quickly, but relatively weak armament (only 2 beam guns and twelve semi-conformal missiles) and not particulaly maneuverable in an atmosphere (the phrase "turns like a dump-truck" comes to mind, at least in the various games). Now given late 2050s advance in beam gun technology applied to the VF-27's gunpod, which allows both rapid (fully-automatic) fire at normal gunpod power levels, or the firing of a more powerful single (semi-automatic) shot, we may see a switch to pure beam armament on future VFs. Graham

Ditto, same from me. I hope Save managed to take some pics and posts them soon. Graham

Sigh, very disappointed if so much of set 4 is really just repeats from set 3. There's still so many VFs yet to do.....cough VF-11, SV-51, VF-5000, VF-17 etc. Still, looking forward to the VF-171s. Graham

As mentioned, a very early pre-tooling prototype, so a lot could still change at this stage. Also, as is common, it may have been sculpted in a larger scale than 1/60, so may appear chunkier than the final product will be. Graham

Nice, but even chunkier than I expected. Be very interesting to see what the fighter mode is like. Graham

My current bedroom TV-top display is very Macross 7-centric. Graham

I'll pic up that magazine today, but I imagine it's just a photo of a Konig test shot. Most test shots just use whatever color plastic the factory has laying around, so often tend to be in weird colors. Graham

It's far safer if you remove the back of the head part during transformation. You need to swap out the battroid head part for the more flat sided fighter mode head part anyway. Graham

Where did this happen? Graham Never mind, saw where on the vid. Pilot was very lucky. Hope he's OK. Graham

Gotta say, that VF-1S Strike is looking nice (not as nice as the Blazer tho!). Graham

There, corrected for you. Graham

Squeeze the legs together from the sides, then push down on teh shoulder in fighter mode, that helps it click into place. But yes, the do pop out by themsleves from time to time, both on the Kai and the Blazer. Graham

Yes, the VF-19F/S should be no slouch in an atmosphere, with its extra verniers, powerful engines and large control surfaces on the wings and tail. With option longer wings shown in VFMF it should be even better. However, asking whether it is the best of the 19 varients is opening a can of worms, given the controversy that exists regarding what is an accurate engine thrust rating for the VF-19S. In theory, the alround best 19 variant would be a VF-19P, fitted with VF-19F engines. This would give the highest thrust and the largest number of atmospheric control surfaces. Graham

Well, I like this toy so much, I just picked up my 3rd one. Got this one from the Causeway Bay branch of Animate for HK$499. Was shopping around Mong Kok last night and the Blazer seems to be sold out everywere but Animate and also one shop in the basement of the 111 Richmond Center on Argyle Street. Heh, I just noticed the box art picture of the VF-19F has the large triple vernier cluster aft of the cockpit, whereas the actual VF-19S toy lacks it! Graham

Well, we see a variant of the VF-5000 in non-UN Spacy use, in service by a law-enforcement agency on a sleepy little back-water planet. In the big picture, that doesn't really tell us much. Graham

Wrong forum. Please go to the games forum, we already have a thread on the new Another Century game there. Graham

While the VF-11 was designed as a duel environment (space and atmosphere capable) main fighter and technically doesn't 'need' FAST Packs to fly and fight in space, it certainly like any VF will benefit greatly from having them. As you mentioned, without FAST packs it is extremely limited in it's internal weapons carriage. And although I'm sure it must be capable of having external hard-points fitted to the wings (likely 2-3 per wing), we have not yet seen any evidence of this to date. However, it's interesting to note that in both Plus and M7, we always see the VF-11 fight in space with FAST Packs fitted. On the subject of the VF-11's internal leg bays, did Macross Chronicle clarify whether these were in fact canon now or not for both the VF-11B and VF-11C? IIRC,didn't Kawamori previously state his line art of the bays was only a concept drawing and the animation of them in M7 was actually an error (or something like that)? Graham

Beautiful photo of a beautiful plane. Graham

Let's hope they can actually hit what they are aiming at this time and no longer look like rejects from The Village People! Graham