David Hingtgen

Yeah, I know they should be a bit bigger. With my meager photo-editing skills I could pretty much only do shape OR size without really screwing up the other.

One thing that's always bugged me is the quasi-canon side view of the VF-11. The tailfins are just plain wrong. I looked through every VF-11 drawing in the Design Works and M7 Animation book, and they're all quite consistent--and very different from what you normally see. It's almost as if the side view was drawn not taking into account perspective or something. Anyways, here's my re-drawn tailfins. Original on top, with "how I think it REALLY looks" on the bottom. Agree, disagree? Go look at the VF-11 drawings in Design Works or M+ TIAS or M7 Animation books and compare to the "official" sideview you find in most of those books etc.

Well it premieres this weekend most places. At least in my city it's replacing when they showed ENT.

Military fighter jets kits? I can talk a long time about those. Here are my opinions: Academy: High *quality*. Accuracy is something to watch for. Some are excellent, some good, some suck. Trumpeter. Exact same comments as Academy. Just FYI, Academy and Trumpeter are the main reason every other company is scrambling to catch up nowadays---model companies have been VERY stagnant the past 20 years. Then Trumpeter and Academy show up on the scene with high-quality kits cheaper than most everything else. Hase and Tami are still at the top for the most part, but the gap closed a lot. Revell--most of it sucks IMHO, but the new stuff is very good. The 1/48 F-15E is very, very good. Same for 1/48 F-18E. And the only actual F-15E, period. Hasegawa---even the old stuff is better than most company's new stuff. Price has exploded upwards lately, for no apparent reason. Watch for "decal" boxings---the $8 and $28 F-18 kits are EXACTLY the same. One just has VFA-195's 1998 markings, and the other has VFA-195's 2001 markings. You're paying 20 bucks for the decals alone, when after market decals are twice as good and half the price. Italeri. AKA what Testor's reboxes and sells as their own. Decent all around, though their 1/48 F-14 is to be avoided. Also makes the best YF-23. Tamiya. Best fit and quality, period. Just low selection of subjects. The thing is, a lot depends on the KIT, not the company. Even scale can make a significant difference, for the same subject from the same company. For models, accuracy outranks most everything else IMHO--that's why they're model kits and not diecast pre-painted. If it's plastic and I build it myself, I expect it to be right. FYI, no F-14B/D other than Hasegawa is correct. Revell's closer than most, but they did a "just plain stupid" mistake. Honestly it's a lot easier if you specifically say what you want a model of, and in what scale. Then I can help even more. But first, go here: http://www.modelingmadness.com/ Left column, kit previews, and kit reviews. That's most every kit out there.

The combiners were about the only Energon I bought, and were the best part of the line. Barricade is just ingenious, my fave TF in years.

I know, I always mention to people about Praxis' explosion being the first "big shockwave effect". Gritty=heresy apparently. Most people find the new CG 1701 to be too "grid lined" and varigated color-wise---they apparently want the saucer to look like it's molded from one vac-formed piece of grey plastic. I like the new CG one, better than the previous one from DS9's Trials and Tribbleations. The new one is every so slightly plated, with very faint grid lines. The DS9 one was pretty heavily paneled in comparison. My only real complaint (and many others') is the lighting. Every window GLOWS with a halo surrounding it like it was a million candle-power beam. Or the light of God. It's a WINDOW. Not a SEARCHLIGH. Nav lights have the same problem---real nav lights don't glow so bright they illuminate their surroundings. They're small pinpoints to identify attitude. Just watch the movies---1701 refit and A have tiny little lights, not blazing becons. And the windows are lit, but don't themselves emit light.

Being a big Trek fan and reading about it on a Trek forum, I gather the change is 99% only remaking exterior planet and ship shots. And there won't be any artistic/drama changes----they will try to do them exactly the same, star-by-star, only with CG. No "let's add a shockwave ring when it blows up and then have the Enterprise bank away dramatically " SW stuff. And the mirror universe ep of ENT was almost certainly their "test-run" for a Constitution class CG. Replacing other effects with new ones will be very rare. There will be a few corrections made--CORRECTIONS. Like there's a time where Scotty welds a bulkhead together with a phaser---but there's no beam coming from his phaser. They'll add the beam that was originally supposed to be there. And at least few times where the Enterprise was supposed to be firing phasers---but torpedoes came out.

Well the weird thing is---some people think Tenax has a distinct smell, some people (like me) cannot smell it at all even when trying. Basic fact: all solvents are bad.

I wasn't the one who moved it to "Other". It was like that when the board was restarted---I simply posted an explanation for why I thought it might be here instead of "Toys". My best guess was that this was one of the "lost" threads that Shawn had to restore/title/place manually. And I was reluctant to move it from where Shawn personally put it. Note that, the title is simply "1/100 Toynami valks"----if Shawn's not up on them, he most likely assumed they were Robotech toys--I know he had to re-do hundreds of threads himself and probably didn't read through them to analyze, and placed them simply by their titles. Otherwise the board probably would have taken another 5 days to repair. And that goes with my earlier explanation---if you hear "Toynami" you probably think "Robotech"----and that's probably why whoever put the thread in this forum did so, without knowing they are technically Macross toys this time around.

Noticed that too--the Gerwalk sketch seems almost out of place and based on the early version.

Every day I alternate between preordering, and waiting. I'm a HUGE YF-19 fan (my all-time fave valk in my fave scheme), but for the same reasons would be incredibly disappointed if mine was flawed.

Pure MEK is pretty nasty, to the point of "outdoors only on a windy day" for some people. It's one heck of a solvent. But there are many useful glues that are part MEK---many somewhat rubbery "all purpose" glues fall in that category.

Is there a date for the rough battroid sketches in the Design Works book--bottom page of the first VF-4 page? There's a few differences from the actual shapes of the valk itself from the finalized VF-4 fighter mode--I always interpreted that as meaning the fighter mode hadn't been finalized at that point either, meaning those drawings were fairly early.

Yeah, I would have just gone for a pure G1 cartoon Skyfire mold. Why not? It's never been done, and should please about 99% of the fanbase.

That reminds me--anyone have shipping estimates for Toy-Wave? We can assume it'll weigh less than a 1/48 w/FP, probably around the same as a VF-0. BBTS estimates 3.5 lbs. (I've never understood Toy-Wave's UPS shipping chart--what is First vs 1Kg vs +0.5---I get the other ones as they are "first kilogram, plus each additional kilogram"---but having First, 1, and +.5 messes me up, especially as 1 is 3x that of the .5 column) And does Toy-Wave have "straight" credit card acceptance, or is it the credit-card-via-paypal type? (another consideration is customer support---frankly this is Yamato QC we're talking about, and smaller retailers that post here are more likely to help those of us that get valks with backwards magnets, 2 left hands, missing heatshields, etc--than mega-stores like BBTS and HLJ)

Anyone have shipping estimates for places? I plan to pre-order soon. HLJ's already out as I doubt I'd be in the first (or second or third) shipment of theirs at this point. TMP already pre-sold out, they were high on my list. Should have just gone with them when they first offered. ::edit:: Now TMP has it available for pre-order again. Did they get a bigger allocation, or is this "second shipment"? (Because I want to be in the first shipment of wherever I get it from--and I also want somewhere whose first shipment won't be like 2 weeks after everywhere else).

Looking through the Design Works pages on the VF-1 mentions the F-14 numerous times. The only F-111-ish part of the valk IMHO is the nose. Or, it may have been inspired by, but ended up incorporating details of others. I think the best VF-1 explanation is that--after a while, he eventually saw some F-14-ish areas, then made it F-14-ish on purpose, detail-wise. May have started with another plane in mind, but it sure ended up looking like an F-14, from overall aspects to tiny little details. Kensei---the F-14's tunnel is inherent to the design and rather unique (Flanker has it too). Basically, you can't mess with that area without making it look VERY different and changing the overall configuration/shape of the plane.

General term for a doppler-evading turn is an "F-pole" manuever. Here's some choice quotes from the Iranian defense ministry regarding the modified F-5 called the "Saegheh": "Meantime, air force experts also tested their optimized F5 fighters successfully. The optimized version of the fighter uses a wider variety of weapons, enjoys higher operational power and is more difficult to pick up on the radar systems compared with the normal version due to its higher maneuverability" ...quoted the commander of the Iranian army General Attollah Salehi as saying their new indigeous Saegheh [DID: "thunder" or "lightning", reports vary] aircraft is "similar to the F-18 fighter jet, but it is more capable and has been manufactured domestically... designed, remodeled, optimized and made more capable by our engineers... no country has aided us in its production." Yeah, so it's the new stealth F-5 that's superior to the Hornet. Those must be some AMAZING canted fins---not only does it endow the F-18's looks, but its abiities as well!

Nexus, where I became one of the all-time top 10 posters in like 4 days...

I'm sure mikeszekeley will post. It's supposed to be out tomorrow? I wasn't even aware the JP release had happened.

Well, Iran says it makes it so manueverable that radar can't pick it up, thus a STEALTH F-5...

I would guess due to the fact that it's Toynami. Their stuff is inherently "tainted" with Robotechiness by this point. Changing what name you slap on the sticker on the box doesn't inherently change the company/product. Plus AFAIK it's been here for a long time. That means people look for/expect it here.

Wouldn't that be kinda pointless, as well as possibly a conflict of interest/copyright issues? Jetfire the F-14 instead of Jetfire the VF-1S, yet still Kawamori's design? Also, if you want a pure F-14---where would the arms go? The F-14's belly tunnel pretty much precludes arms, and is the main difference between a VF-1 and F-14. F-15 works much better for arm stowage--see MP SS.

I thought the whole "VF-4 had no battroid mode until recently" thing was only a widely-believed myth. http://macross.anime.net/fallacies/index.html Scroll down to near the bottom.

Exactly--the latest pics are likely 99% final, and there's not anything under the wings to attach to. And magnets won't work, they'd have to be like 0.5mm thick and imbedded into the wing during molding. Still, there better be SOMETHING other than the gunpod in the box for that much money. I'll make the comparison for the zillionth time: The VF-0 is almost identical in size and complexity/detail, costs less, yet included FAST packs and many missiles.