David Hingtgen

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?

EXO--those figures are awesome. It says a lot that everybody can tell who they are, based on unpainted unfinished sculpts an inch tall!

Me. Not a ton, got out of it for a while, but bought GilDragon when it came out.

I'm currently voting that the VF-0A isn't out yet. HLJ etc still list it for pre-order, none for auction in Japan, no pics at any of the Asian toy sites.

PS--I still think there's a good chance that's still a prototype. We've seen far less "green" ones that had a cleaner look, closer to a final version. My hope is still that Hasbro somehow got the original version (technically the resin prototype) and decided to produce their own mold off that, and will make an Alternator version. Just get rid of all the gimmicks like the opening nosecone and airbrake, and you could reduce the cost a lot. And the transformation's a lot simpler. G1 colors, reduced price=lots of sales. Still, MP Prime didn't do that well here AFAIK. But combined with the movie and a presumably lower price, an Alt SS could do a lot better.

Those of us in land-locked states had few opportunities to see Navy planes... F-14 never did many airshows (1/4 that of the F-18 it seemed).

Found it: http://www.hlj.com/product/FUJ35003 Hmmmn.

Any PG hands that'll fit? I was going to try putting my PG Wing Zero's hands on, but they are far too "integrated" with the wrist/forearm to be able to swap. Are all PG's like that, or do any have a "simple" connection to the wrist? Because PG hands are perfect. (I really hate "combined" fingers, they never work--not on a valk, not on a MG---having independent thumbs and a finger or two is completely counteracted by having 2 or 3 others linked together IMHO---fixed ones work better). Either have no articulation, or 100%---anything inbetween is an inferior compromise. Now I have to go hunt down my MG Zeta and see how its hands work. I might have actually gotten rid of it...

EXO--the drawing from behind, helmet in hand?

Or real-world colors. "Green grey" is neither G1 toy nor G1 cartoon nor current-gen real world. Anyone else think the wing stripes are messed up? They don't follow the leading edge--they're off by like 5 degrees--they're too far forward as they reach the tip. Looks stupid/careless IMHO. "No step" way too prominent IMHO. They're quite subtle in real life. But even most model kits have them way over done, so I wouldn't expect a toy to do better. And I still think the big-ass gaps between the engine nozzles and the shrouds looks godawful. Surely there's a way to get rid of that gap while allowing articulation. It'd also prevent that "hanging at odd angles" look every pic of the nozzles have. And the color's off, too. Nozzles usually match the shrouds decently, shouldn't be too obvious of a color change. As opposed to silver shrouds and dark bronze nozzles.

This is the biggest one I know of for the purple one, I really don't have anything for the red/white.

Look at the nose. Anyways, I think the story goes: It was originally based off the F-111, but by the time he got done with the overall design it looked more like an F-14, so he incorporated all the little F-14 details, like the beavertail and glove strakes. Anyways---while I don't have any pics of it flying (I was taping it) here is one of my own pics of the only F-14 I got to see fly (drove 6 hours across 2 states, and got there while it was starting its engines!) F-14D, VF-101 AD167, Bu No. 163417, back-up demo plane for the Grim Reapers. Converted from NF-14D, VX-23 SD231, did a lot of weapons testing for the Bombcat program in the 90's. After I saw it they transferred it from demo duty to front-line, and served with VF-31 in Afghanistan as AJ112. If you want a really cool pic not taken by me of it flying: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0347196/L