David Hingtgen

Big point: IF Also--G1 could mean toy or anime. For most of all TF-dom AFAIK, fans generally prefer/expect toy colors. Examples: Starscream. Baby-blue fists, or deep blue fists? Thundercracker: baby-blue overall, or metallic sapphire? Grimlock: yellow chest, or metallic gold chest? Prime: pale grey stacks and bumper, or chrome? "Baby blue fist" MP Starscream wouldn't be accepted any more than Greenscream is. G1 *toy* colors are what we want. Anime-accurate never looks good. Except maybe for Astrotrain.

I've lit up stuff too, LED/fiberoptic/electroluminescent. But I still don't see a way to do the landing light on the nose gear. Not to light up the whole thing like it should.

Speaking as a mod: Ummn, Haterist---why'd you perform thread necromancy, just to say "oh yeah!".

OMFG! VF-1 markings! I might have to get this for that alone. I was planning on waiting out to see if we get a VF-0 w/Ghost, or VF-0D, but I don't know if I can pass up the Wolfpack... PS--do the stickers say "Sin" Kudo? Does Yamato purposely avoid the generally accepted English spellings of pilots on all their valks? LOL--"Bewear of blast". Can Yamato just find one person familiar with English? Or just copy photos correctly? I doubt you'll find a single US Navy plane that has "bewear" on it. I don't know Japanese at all, but I can accurately copy Kanji from a pic. They should be able to copy English from a pic too. PPS--just realized the incredible irony of a VF-0 with VF-1's markings. Maybe Yamato will do a VF-1 with VF-2's markings... (I'd buy it) I am a bit worried though--Yamato seems to have made the nose stickers as large as the tailfins----so either the tailfin markings are tiny, or the nose stickers are huge. I'm thinking it's the latter, and that'll look weird. We're also missing the aft 3/4 of the nose stripe, it should go from radome to intakes, interrupted by the kite. VF-1's markings would work PREFECTLY on a VF-0, but only if they're sized right and they do ALL the striping.

I still think G1 Astrotrain was way better, and the best triple-changer ever. (Blitzwing is still my fave though). G1 Astrotrain was like 99% perfect in both vehicle modes (hey, a rocket-boosted locomotive was COOL) , yet still managed to have about the best robot mode of any triple-changer. The new one--it's a shuttle with half a train on the wings. Or it's a train with the back half made up of an upside down shuttle. The blockiness of a switcher steam locomotive really helped, combined with the boxiness of a shuttle. Going for sleeker, more modern interpretations made it worse. Plus there's only one space shuttle, and I'm getting real sick of the 8,000 quasi-shuttles they've made lately, usually as Jetfire. Either make the real, Rockwell-designed NASA Orbiter, or don't do it at all. It just looks stupid IMHO to make all these "shuttle-esque" designs. Especially when the real shuttle looks the best of all by far. "Made up" cars work fine, since there's zillions of car types on the roads, and zillions more concept cars. But there's only one shuttle, and we all know what it looks like.

It's fairly well known that Macross Plus was based off of the YF-22 vs YF-23 competition. Especially with the YF-21 being based off the YF-23. A lot of the controversy over the YF-23's loss lead to changes, which is why we had X-planes, and not the YF-24 and YF-25 for the JSF competitors--because they weren't officially competing. They were merely "experimental test planes for the same idea".

Interestingly, Classics Starscream has the same fictional conformal tanks that MP SS has. Pure coincidence? I thought Classics and MP had completely different design teams. How would 2 different new F-15 seeker molds decide to add conformal tanks, and screw them up in the same way? As for the stripes: not sure. Seem to follow a panel line, but from what I can see that's NOT how the F-15's wing panel lines are. They'd be further aft, and wouldn't "not parallel" the leading edge as obviously, if they followed the real panel line. Either way, it just looks stupid. And it's Thundercracker's wing stripes anyways!!!! SS has pure red stripes (no white border) and they don't "make a turn" at the tips and head back. TC is the one with a white border that turns back at the tips. Let's hope the recent rumor I saw (said to be from Hasbro at Botcon) about a US release in anime colors coming this way is true. We should know tomorrow for sure. Though my hopes aren't very high. With the hip and intake kibble, and the Popeye forearms caused by CFT kibble, I'd demand 100% perfect G1 toy colors to buy that mold. (Note, toy colors---for Skywarp there's not much difference, but SS and TC have SO much better colors for their toys than on screen--mainly the shade of blue---TC has got to have his METALLIC blue finish)

That's it. But as for lighting---kinda doubt it. The piece is only 1 or 2mm thick with the nosegear strut right behind it.

I guess it's like how, officially, the F-15 "Mod Eagle" scheme and the standard F-22 scheme are "the exact same color" according to the Air Force. Nope, no special heat-absorbing shimmery metallic paint on the F-22, not at all. These planes are all painted exactly the same. Officially.

Irony: The original low-vis is supposed to be the two colors that real F-15's were for most of their existence. And wow, he matches the FAST packs almost perfectly.

I bet we see Shin's when we get the Ghost.

Looks like a last minute change, both the early pics and the pics with the Ghost show a GREY wing stripe, not black. Now it seems to match the black leg armor stripes. Still, they at least did the more important IMHO "subtle" grey differences for the flaps, rather than the high-contrast of the early pics. The best though was the one with the Ghost. Even lower contrast, and the dark grey was less intense. THAT was the most low-vis valk we'll ever see.

The Bandai site doesn't have the 0D Shin nor 0A, so no "alternate" pics for thsoe.

My fave valk in all of Zero. Color seems off though, especially the belly. In the anime, it struck me as much more of a "steel grey blue" with grey belly. Very very French in color. (France loves painting their planes steel grey blue, often with grey bellies).

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I just used IrfanView to screen cap them. Also, I note the ones from the Bandai site are different, so here's those to start.

Which begs the question--does anyone actually HAVE one? They're all in box for sale---seems nobody actually owns one to open up and take pics of yet. C'mon people, set it free!

The feature that I described in the post---painting the landing light on the nose gear door.

Yup, I overdid it too on my Milia, and built it back up with clear nail polish. Clear nail polish is the toy/model equivalent of duck tape. I think everyone over-does it, you always want "just a little more" of that gap reduced. It's especially bad on Max and Milia, as they have white stripes there, but the gap-shadow is black. It's less obvious on a Roy etc, as the black stripe hides it some. I also put white paint on the insides and edges, to help---it not only eliminates the red plastic showing of the gap edges, but by thickening it slightly, helps with that last .1mm of gap. Tires: in real planes, tire size/shape is pretty dependent upon landing surface and method. You can tell carrier-based from land-based F-4's by their tire width. The F-15 has pretty skinny tires, and it's much larger and heavier than a VF-1. Also, "number of wheels" is rarely influenced by the plane's weight, but the limits of what it's landing on (see above). It's usually purely PSI limits of the concrete, etc. Weight-wise most planes would love to have as few wheels and axles as possible, but a 747 would crack the runway apart if it only had like 10 tires.

I think Wm Cheng has done it, and I did it when mine was like 6 hours old: Paint the landing light in the nosegear door silver, then use kristal-klear etc to make a lens over it. It's that that big round depression on the forward door that's attached to the strut. It'd be impossible to get the exact effect I want without using like Alclad, but it's not worth the effort on such a small area. If they made super-slim MV lenses that'd definitely be the way to go. Maybe I can drill into the area to make a recess for a MV lens... Also, the "Hurin mod" where you shave off a bit of the cockpit well to allow the top and bottom fuselage nose halves to close better, minimizing the diagonal seam gap. Though that one is VERY touchy--the line between "not enough" and "too much so that the gear collapses" is about 2 seconds' worth of sanding.

Yeah, NOW there's pics at Yahoo Japan, like 3 hours after I posted there weren't any...

Quick point: leaving the hip kibble on the legs doesn't work well, as the tailfins are too low/aft to allow it to stand right. The original mold had a not-too-obvious sliding hinge that moved the entire tailboom assembly up a bit in robot mode, so he could actually stand on his feet/nozzles, not his tailfins. That was eliminated in the new mold, since the tailfins are supposed to hand off the hips now. It'll work, but not nearly as well as the original.

The only up-close pic I've ever seen of the track itself. (Every other pic is always the shuttle)

Remember the "airliners as firefighters" discussion? Well the first one (a DC-10) is working on the ones in California, and doing well. Seems the firefighters are impressed to the point of mentioning it by name and practically crediting it with saving Ojai.

Need a pic of the catapult track itself?