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Yeah I love it! I can watch stuff in bed while the wife sleeps - and up close with such a high resolution screen, its like watching a 60" 10 feet away! I've already got Macross DYRL ripped to the iPod and its clear enough to read all the subtitles (but I'm lazy, its the subbed version on). Plus with the widescreen option - I ripped mine at full resolution when viewing in the 1:33 mode so there's full sharpness. Plus its always nice to hear Wrath of Khan in the car stereo when you're on a long trip!

Same here - two extra smalls and two extra large. Wow! what a toy! Can't wait to do an oil wash and dry brush treatment on this baby... but need Anasazi's decals!

I WISH!! Actually got a real job now that actually pays money, so the boosters might be on the slow burner now...

You lucky man!! I'd love to see some pictures of it when you finish. Man, I'd need to work and save up for this puppy. By the way, great work honneamise - looks absolutely fantastic.

Cool! maybe a bit too many wings though...

Hey David, whats the XFA-27? Is it from Ace Combat oir real? Any pictures?

Yay! finally decals... I think I'll start with the Valkyrie first, then moved my way to the boosters. There's still a final weathering over the decals to tie them all together and a final clear-coat over the decals to protect them, the Boosters will get a final coat of clear flat and some drybrushing before I actually glue the nozzles on. While the Valkyrie will get a semi-gloss final clearcoat and some light grey oil wash over the darker decaled sections. Its important to keep piecing together the various components so that you get a sense of how all the colours and weathering goes together. The blue in the engine bells picks up on the blue in the grey boosters. Can't wait to peel that masking away from the three meshed grilled portions! Its like peeling the canopy masks (the best last steps)

Hey great to hear you've rescued the melting putty model - how did it dry out? Did you have to fill and resand it or did you just leave it alone and it dried on its own? Good to finally see it, looking good - you should post more photos of it when you get your stand completed. Good idea about the magnet thing for the stand, will it be strong enough? Let me know when you try it, I'd be interested in ripping it off if its sucessful Ok, I added some pencil crayon silver to the edges of the scribbed lines - its pretty subtle though, the pencil was a little too hard to really bite, so it just really cleaned off some of the oil wash at those areas. It wasn't too bad, but it didn't work the way I thought it should. I sealed in the oil wash and pencil crayon and brown/black conte streaks from the boltheads in with another coat of ModelMaster semi-gloss clear. Overall its not too bad, it was a little too heavily weathered (great for rebel starships though...) but when I placed it next to the blue/grey boosters it seemed too heavily used. So I gave the nozzles another dusting of Alclad Steel to brighten it up a bit, tie in all the bluish panels together and hide some of the darker weathering. I like the fact that you can just make out that the nozzles might be made from several different types of metals, instead of one big sheet of some non-descript metal - but it doesn't look patched together from junk.

Oh! MAN! I so want that!! That's great news, it will be to scale with my Yukikaze Bandai stuff, the molding detail is so crisp on those planes. When is it out? Any plans for an X-02? I just finished Ace Combat a few days ago, now I want to get back to earn enough money and obtain the pieces to buy a Falken. I love the aircraft designs!

Thanks, I tried to wipe some more excess oil wash away today - but even after 24hrs, its still too wet (I guess I laid it on a little too thick) it just smears... a little too evenly. I wanted sections to wipe off while leaving other sections intact - when its too wet, it just evenly smears - so I just wiped in the airflow direction so that the smear lines are in a single direction and I will have to wait till tomorrow. Hoping that it will dry more thoroughly - and I can remove some of it in patches.

Now I've applied a thick black oil wash over most of the bell nozzles. It will seep into all the rivet and scribed details as well as provide a darker base for me to wipe away to reveal the metal panels below. I made the wash much thicker than I usually do, because I want some of it to stay behind (not just in the crevices). Now I'll let it dry over night (so it doesn't all get wiped away so easily).

Now to add the clear blue and yellow to various panels to denote different materials and various stages of burnt staining. I masked off a few panels, and I reused these masks in various places to get all the "random" panels. Then I thinned down Tamiya Blue Clear and Yellow Clear and lightly sprayed in the panels. I think I might of over done it with the blue, but the yellow looks convincing. Although the panels might seem a little too random. However, I'll reserve judgement till after I weather it, I may need them to be a little overly contrasty or strong for it to show through after the weathering.

For the real anal freaks out there - I guess I should of applied a thin coat of Mr. Surfacer to seal in some of the resin surface imperfections, but I didn't mind it, it will give it a worn patina when I'm done with the weathering. I've been asking myself whether I should weather or not, since the Booster is probably not a re-usable piece of equipment, so the engine bells should look new. But hey, I've been dying to try out the SU-27 techniques, its more fun to weather, and it gives it a sense of scale. Now I took the last colour; Jet Exhaust and started to airbrush burnt markings and streaks and darkening the tips of the bell nozzles with this colour.

Using the Captn's scribed rings as a guide, I sprayed varying patterns as I moved forward - I masked the next section, trying to make a random plated pattern.

That looks great Brett! Well, got a little time to get back to work on these Boosters. I wanted to experiment - learn to age/weather the booster nozzles like the SU-27 references I got from the tips section of ARC (Aircraft Resource Center). So I started to layer up the multiple shades of metallics I had lying around. First I masked off the nozzles starting with the bottom working my way up towards the front. I only had on hand four Alclad colours.

Yay!! May I be the first guinea pig!

Back finally... in keeping with tradition, I have posted the finished pictures of this model in the Model forums; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...&st=0&p=364161& Please visit there and leave me your comments. Now I want to see your launch arms, don't be shy and post them - there must be someone else who have finished thier's too.

And finally some closeups against a dark background. Thanks for tuning in... now I want to see what you guy all do with your launch arms! The no-brainer would be to scratch build a full hanger interior and put the launch arm on a retractable rail (like a kitchen drawer bearings) but I was too anxious to get this built to go into all that scratchbuilding. But I know someone here is crazy enough... Now its back to the Boosters...

Okay here are the stand pictures I took today. Its very simple, I went to Home Depot and bought a 1/8" thick aluminum flatbar. Aluminum is a good metal to use since I can display it bare finished without having to paint it, also its a non-ferrous metal (without iron) so its soft enough to use woodworking tools on it. I used a chopsaw to cut the flat bar down and a drill to drill out the back to allow two screws through to attach to the resin base . You can see in the photo behind, I have four washers between the flatbar and screw, basically I didn't have screws short/shallow enough to not poke through on the good side of the resin base, so I used the washers as spacers to back the screw out so they can't been seen from the front. I also put the flatbar in visegrips between two blocks of hardwood to get a nice clean bend at the desired angle. And thats it!! The new photos were taken with available diffused/cloudy daylight against black foamcore boards (everyone wanted a black backgound!).

Here are some close ups of the Valkyrie itself and the launch arm claw release mechanism.

I did say finished... sort of... You may notice that the signal lights themselves are not done yet, I have the silver undercoat for the three big squares, which I will finish with a blue clear coat over top and cover it with windex for a lens effect. However, I am still going to try to replicate all the little red and white graphics on the side paddles of the signal lights at some point with decals - but that may be a bit away.

Hmm... those small click to enlarge thumbnails doesn't seem to have the old impact of the old boards where you'd see the large post (although I've resized them down to 1024x768). Here's just the resin kit (this is what you get without the Valk) - minus my work of course !

Hi all, Well... Christmas/New Years holiday craziness has finally subsided. After a little hiatus, I finally got back to finishing up this amazing resin Launch Arm and base by our very own Gundamhead & Myersjessee. If you haven't bought yours yet, then hurry up; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...3&hl=launch+arm I also created a buildup thread here; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...6&hl=launch+arm that outlines my process with this baby! I wanted to make a stand for it so that it would be free-standing instead of being hung on a wall or placed flat on a table so that the arm and valkyrie are perpendicular. I'll start with a few final workbench photos that I'm pretty proud of - unfortunately, I never got these cool angles again when it was time to properly take photos of the completed kit. (The Max VF-1A super was completed a few years ago, and that build up thread unfortunately is locked away or lost on the old MacrossWorld boards for the moment)

AHH!! no wonder! I loved Equilibrium... very much underrated film. I will definitely see it now. Fantastic facist visuals!

Good review, I can see your points - but I did enjoy the film. I didn't think I was going to like it as much after seeing the trailers, but I did thoroughly enjoy the first outing that I couldn't let this one pass. I have to admit to being a rabid Kate Beckinsale fan though, and that black suit is inspiring. Also being an art director for film, I found the art direction quite good in the film - although the final battle castle was very much over the top I(but hey, its a fantasy - everything else is over the top!). However, it would not of been the same set as the first film - sets are always wrapped immediately after shooting - its just too expensive to tie up studio space to keep any set up for longer than the shoot schedule dictates. (They had to completely re-build the Millenium Falcon between the first and second Star Wars). However, the part I liked best about the first movie was the idea that these Vampires had co-existed in our society right under our noses for all these centuries - and established themselves in our societal structure (ie; bloodbanks). I like the urban settings (even though they stole every set out of the excellent German photography book "Underworld") which unfortunately was missing in this second film. With all that said, did I mention that Kate looked amazing in that black skintight leather corset?! and guns... p.s. anyone catch the trailer for "UltraViolet"? talking about another genre stealing KillBill/Matrix/AeonFlux film!