pengbuzz

Personally, I'd LOVE a kit of the VF-1 that you put together yourself at that scale. I know that Yamato had 1/60 kits, but I could never get one.

EXACTLY, MechTech. You'll find that in the Valkyries for example, where the arms shrink ridiculously in fighter mode, and the lower legs just balloon out in Battroid mode. It often makes me wonder if they should show the transform scenes with the parts expanding/ contracting and internal plates sliding in and out to account for this. If you REALLY want to drive yourself bonkers, watch an early transformers cartoon where Megatron transforms!

Excellent points, Chronocidal. Honestly, I'd like to see them do some Zentraedi stuff, especially the capital ships and whatnot (I don't recall Yamato/Arcadia doing any, please correct me if I'm mistaken).

I have to agree here: these small parts require a much better plastic. Having taken apart a Yamato valk or two in my time, you can really see where materials failure would be catastrophic on joints and whatnot (indeed, the shoulder and hip cracking issues on several Yamato valks IIRC was a major snafu for Yamato). But on that note, it also depends on how easy it is to get high-quality virgin ABS. If that plastic is in high demand, the price could be considerably more and make a cheaper substitute (with less strength) a more attractive option.

Yeah; that was in the background, as I had to repaint a scrape on the underside of it. The landlord has people working on installing new windows in the apartment building, and the vibration from the electric saw they used to cut the frame out vibrated the model off the table. So, some emergency painting was needed along with a quick spray of clearcoat.

Okay, got the rest of the parts primed and base-coated. So far, the Vf-1J is going quite well and has it's landing gear now. missiles originally intended for the 1S before the armor were put onto the 1J's wings instead. And since the paint isn't somehow or another seeping off to create a new life form (lol) and is actually staying in place, i think we can safely call this Hikaru's VF-1J. As for the gunpods... 1J: "Why's yours bigger than mine?" 1S: "Genetics".

Thanks Thom! Meantime, the other valk kit you sent is in progress, and indeed, progress has been made: I still need to do the legs, arms and gunpod (primer and white for the gunpod, just white and a little touch-up primer for the arms and legs, as evidenced by the left leg "landing light" door). I also need to touch up some of the areas like the left wing, the tip of the nose and a few other spots where overspray and wearing away of paint has happened, then clearcoat and detailing (black stripe around nose, red stripes on bottom of arms, etc.) But this model is MUCH lighter than the Strike VF-1S; even without the armor, that one gained weight! O.o

Okay.. the reaction weapons just "came out of the oven":

Thanks xigfrid! Meantime.... some new...fun: Okay...who wants to play? Stay tuned...

Hmmm.... I just built a 1/72 Strike VF-1S, and I have a 1/72 VF-1J on the table right now. I think I'm gonna pass on this, seeing as also, I'm broke.

UPDATE: I finally got more decals put on the Strike Valk; as it stands, this one is now a member of VF-33 "Starfighters", a name I thought would be fitting given Space War One: Also, I finished construction on the RMS-1 "Angel of Death" Reaction Weapons: Just an old pen wrapped in masking tape, glued to some spare missile pylons I had lying around. I plan on spraying these (hand-painting white in large swaths just doesn't work very well, as I found out the hard way recently). But once these are painted and detailed, they should pass suitably for some nuclear-tipped "love" courtesy of U.N. Spacy! Stay tuned folks... next up are some "care boxes" of micro-missiles...

WOW!!! MT, that's just going to be all too awesome when you finish it! I love the details you're adding here!

Thanks MT! A lot of credit really goes to Thom though: his kindness is what allowed for this! I'll have some updates for this thread in just a bit folks...stay tuned...

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHhhh.... SHINYYYYYY!!! That looks almost like it is made out of jewles and precious metals! REALLY nice, NZEOD!

Yeah... even though the first one is pretty clean now and packing a METRIC TON o' firepower! Speaking of which folks: guess what just got finished? Here comes 'da BOOM!

Early morning take-off. Hope Dunkin Donuts has a "Gerwalk lane" in their drive-thru...

Yup; they are actually just printed up on paper and heavily clearcoated. Since it was a flat surface and the edge would have served as a hard border anyways, all i had to do was cut it out and glue it into place with elmer's and clearcoat over it when dry.

Thanks Thom! Your parts truly brought this back! This one has a specific character attached to it, and is a tie-in to another creation of mine. ALl I have to do with it really now is just the weathering and to find suitable materials for the reaction weapons (still looking).

Well, got some decaling done on my Strike Valk over the past couple of days: Of course, my other project needs...er... flying lessons... Seriously though: what Thom had sent me, I didn't need everything for repair parts, and when I went through some stuff, found I had enough to pull off an OOB build of the VF-1J: Cockpit went together pretty well, and I'm doing this one up as Hikaru's plane from SDFM: Not going to do any "heroic" mods, just pretty much out of box on this one. Seams need to be addressed, but that's it for me on this... ...Although it did NEED a chin. That's not major, unless you're Jay Leno.

Looking pretty tight on that paint job, Thom!

Or just about anywhere else that they don't want an explosion, fire, people running around screaming as their clothing is burning and all-out chaos. O.o

Okay folks: I started a new model (another VF-1, go figure!) and found this on the inside packaging: I'm guessing that pretty much settles the debate, huh (although ti still seems to be a setup for a landing disaster of epic proportions!) .

You know the scene in "Jaws" where Roy Scheider says "We're gonna need a bigger boat"? THIS is what he meant!!! Nice job on the ship Nyankodevice (and on the lady; you have good taste in both mecha and women! )

Thanks! It took a little Dremeling, but mostly the parts fit pretty well. The biggest issue was the leg side armor parts, as they had one entire side of the leg built into it. But I just cut down those areas until the armor fit over what I already had. I also took a good look at the head on this and it had several coats of paint on it that obscured details. So i went ahead and stripped it down, re-primed it and repainted it. I also took the liberty of breaking up the paint job on the head a bit so it wasn't a monolithic blob of grey-white: While I was at it, I did a little work on the arm launchers as well, adding the "circle" impression at the elbow-end of it as you can kinda see in this pic. I still need to make the missiles for it, and get some other stuff done as well. Stay tuned folks...

Excuse me...I need to go pick my jaw up off the floor just now. It fell when I saw this!!! Awesome work so far, wmkjr!!! Looking forward to the updates!!