SebastianP

For once, some actual pictures of actual models that I'm actually building... A while ago, a friend of mine bought me a VF-19A "Lightnings" w/High-maneuver Missiles, which I set aside for a couple of months to concentrate on the Gundams and VF-25 kits I'd bought for myself. A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to building it, and got to this point: When I discovered this: Yup, that's a short-shot. I was all kinds of miffed at this, since it's a rather prominent piece and I am *not* up to fixing it with scrap plastic. The next day I took a break and went to the local model show, where I found another VF-19 kit (actually an YF-19 "Demonstrator" kit) that I got for 30% off of the already lowered show price. Since the kit scheme isn't my cup of tea, I'm painting it up in the "Lightnings" scheme (black and yellow over gray) instead: Here's where I am right now. In case it's not obvious from the picture, I'm brush-painting the second kit (the first one I'm using for airbrush practice - it's been stripped a couple of times already, and I'm not really getting what I'm doing wrong - the paint just clogs up way fast no matter how thin I mix it), and I haven't gotten around to the black parts yet. The exhaust bits are painted with Humbrol's metalcote gunmetal, which is wonderful when it works and terrible when it doesn't. To anyone thinking of trying it - despite being in the same kind of tins as Humbrol's enamels, you should *not* thin this with white spirits/naphta. Use alcohol. White spirits is good for stripping it off, though. (lesson learned the expensive way - the gunmetal was drying in its tin, so I poured white spirits in to thin it back to usable a year or so ago. Big mistake - the pigments don't dissolve properly now..) I have way too much crap going on right now - there's a 1/1300 Bentenmaru (from the Mouretsu Pirates anime) awaiting painting or decaling (not sure whether to paint it actually - it's molded in color, and the colors are strange mixes like a very dark burgundy and a dark pink for most of the fuselage and bits), a 1/25 Corvette ZR1 that I finally managed to get an even coat of paint onto, an Airbus A400M that I'm still working on the interior for, and three different AW101 Merlins at mostly that stage as well. Plus I have a Super VF-11B and an F-14B Tomcat that are singing "build me, build me"...

I have finally gotten an airbrush! Need to get some cleaning supplies for it this weekend and some practice time, but everything is set for actually making some decent models now.

Well, aside from the original VF-1 ordnance pack, there's the missile pods for the VF-0 (no longer available IIRC, was in the A/S + Ghost and the C), the High Maneuverability Missiles (VF-19A "Lightnings" kit), and now these for the VF-25. I'm hopeful that there will be RMS-7s in the Super or Armored versions when they're released, as well...

The official tech specs (I think) are on the Japanese wiki page for the YF-30 here: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/YF-30_%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AD%E3%83%8E%E3%82%B9 Open the page in Google Chrome to have it auto-translated, it works well enough for the stats box, at least.

Nice! Where did you get that five-inch X-acto blade in the last pic?

My biggest beef with the landing gear is that the main wheels look tiny. But I think Hasegawa's mainwheels are either larger than Bandai's, or their nosewheels are smaller - and while the main struts are't much thinner, all the other details are. I foresee Hasegawa receiving a tidy sum from me via HLJ this winter, at any rate. I need two of these, a Super VF-11B, and if they're still available then, a Thunderseeker...

EXO: I have a color laser printer, so I could theoretically print my own stuff, but I suck terribly at 2D graphics and I don't think anyone in my entire country actually stocks blank decal paper. (My *kit assembly skills* themselves are only marginally up to OOB Gunpla building, but I'm at least trying to improve... ) On the other hand, if someone *does* have source files for finished decals and is willing to share, I'll order some decal-making supplies from Hannants next month. One of the print shops in this town is bound to have an ALPS printer... Vifam7: Thanks for the offer, and I'll keep it in mind. Going to see if there's any way I can avoid Bandai's decals first though. I'm going to order a few things from Samueldecal anyway (I have, aside from the three Messiahs, three Master Grade Gundams that are waiting for paint and decals - a 00 Raiser, a 00 Seven Swords/G, and an Exia - plus a dozen or so HG kits that will be used for painting practice...)

I'm finally getting an airbrush in the next couple of weeks, and with it I'm planning on repainting my Bandai VF-25s (Ozma's Armored and Super Messiah, and Alto's Tornado Messiah). The problem is though that I've already used much of the basic decal sheets for one S and the F, as well as the Super Packs, and they were as terribly fragile as everyone says. And I'm not using stickers on a painted kit... So, where can I get some decent replacement decals for these things? The options I've found so far are SamuelDecal, who has sheets for the basic Ozma and Alto kits, and waiting for Hasegawa's kit which comes with nearly enough decals for both an F and an S (since very few of them are common between the two, AFAICT). Neither option will give me what I need to replace the Super Pack decals I've used, though. Are there any other options that I don't know about yet?

Since I don't own a PS3, I've been reduced to watching LPs on Youtube to get my info on this game so far. One thing I really liked was the mothership, which is a modified Northampton-class of some sort. Does anyone have any good pictures and/or official specs on it (the specific variant of it, that is)? It looks absolutely perfect for a Macross RPG campaign, if you want a ship big enough to handle VFs but not so large you'll need a thousand page manifesto to cover the crew...

This months paycheck hasn't arrived yet, but as soon as it does I'm ordering at least one, probably a pair, and permanently turning my Super VF-25S into a battroid. Maybe then I'll get around to putting the decals on it. What's the usual schedule for variant releases at Hasegawa? (I.e. when can we expect Super and Armored VF-25F/S, VF-25G, RVF-25 or VF-27 kits to show up?) (Edit: The preview image at HLJ says "Illustrated by Hidetaka Tenjin", so we'll most likely be getting traditional Hasegawa box art for this one too, no worries...)

The Zentraedi sourcebook for the Robotech RPG by Palladium (yeah, booh hiss and all that) had an illustration of a Glaug facing off with a Monster that put the two of them at more or less the same size, IIRC (I think the Glaug was taller and the Monster fatter). I can't find my book right now, nor a scan of the back cover (the front cover is available all over the place though), but if my recollection is right, it should be one of the better pieces of Macross art out there. (It's plain black and white, and I have no idea who drew it...)

Pretty much anything that isn't hard - I'm fairly sure a lot of dolls are made from PVC, for example. Think Barbie and Cindy, Regular model kits are made from styrene (PS), and pretty much any brand of styrene cement will work - that's what it's for. Depending on what I'm doing, I use Revell Contacta in the needle applicator bottle, or Humbrol Liquid Poly from a glass bottle with a brush in it. Generally, the latter is for big seams like gluing airplane halves together. It is actually safe to use styrene cement for clear parts - apply the cement to the non-clear part, blow on it for a couple of seconds to get rid of the worst fumes, then press the clear part on. Works better than trying to use non-solvent glue, in my experience. Bandai kits are made from mixed plastics, and for those you need either extra strong solvent cement or superglue. I suggest the latter, because the extra strong solvents are nasty and do awful things to styrene, plus they're hard to come by. Vinyl reacts poorly to solvents - either it doesn't react at all, or it goes completely melty. Or worse, it might crumble to bits after it dries. IIRC, you can melt vinyl bits together with something hot, but it takes a bunch of practice to do right, so I wouldn't try it with anything important to start with.

I finally got around to getting myself a VF-25, and I figured I'd start with the most difficult one: The kit has pretty much only been assembled at this point, and transformed a couple of times so I could figure out how it worked, so it will be disassembled for final cleanup, panel lining and decalling later. I'm not sure at this point whether to go with stickers or water slide decals, I'm leaning towards using the stickers to start with and saving the water slide decals for if I ever get around to actually painting this beast. While the kit feels somewhat sloppy with the super parts on (it takes a bit of fiddling to get everything to where it wants to stay put), it's really not that bad once you get everything in place and put it down. Just don't go zooming it around the room...

What I was referring to by being a different beast is that many of the things you need to be careful with during assembly are different. Japanese (and nowadays Korean and Chinese as well) scale models use hard styrene that's comparatively brittle; have very sharply molded pieces with very tight tolerances that will, if you're really careful, let you get away with no putty or even sanding; and tend to have realistically thin landing gear and sharp edges where neccessary. It's very seldom you actually need to modify the plastic for better fit or a sharper look, nor do you need to pin stuff because the pieces can only be glued in one way and have locator tabs to help hold them in place. A GW model (my experience is so far only a couple of Monstrous Creatures, specifically the plastic Wraithlord and Carnifex, plus the same-generation metal Hive Tyrant) will need pinning of the joints even out of the box unless you want the arms and legs to fall off; pretty much *needs* green stuff or epoxy glue to make some of the parts stick together even on plastic kits because the gaps are so extreme; and if model airplane panel lines sometimes need a bit of help to become more visible, you'll need to give a GW vehicle some help making the panel lines more subtle, if anything, because they're big enough to fly an X-wing and a flight of TIE fighters through. You won't need to worry much about pieces breaking because you were squeezing too hard, though, nor is the plastic as crazy sensitive to cement spills etc. And GW kits don't come with decal sheets with 200+ decals, like some modern jet kits do... It's completely true that a good painter can make a GW model look awesome, but they'll always look better from a few more feet further than a good "pure" scale model. (I should acknowledge that while I'm pretty good at assembling models, I'm nowhere near as good at painting them, and most of my recent airplane kits are sitting around witing for me to get around to finishing the paint job and decals. For some reason, I tend to run out of steam once the model is assembled...)

GW should be referring to Games Workshop, i.e. Warhammer etc. Their plastic models, the ones I've tried at least, are a completely different animal from what we're used to as regular model builders, since they're designed for gaming rather than display. The pieces are thick, fit comparatively poorly, and have exaggerated detail due to being hand-sculpted as originals, but the plastic they use is awesome and carries detail nearly as well as Hasegawa's while being less brittle. Coincidentally, warhammer 40k models are very roughly 1/72 scale (+/-5 or so, depending on the modell), and they appear to have been making an effort to *stick* to that scale in recent years, since going mainly plastic rather than metal...

Choosing between 1/100 and 1/72 is a matter of figuring out what you're most interested in. If you want to compare Macross to other anime subjects, 1/100 is pretty much the way to go since it's one of the standard scales for Gundam models. It is very oddball for anything else, though, as pretty much only Japanese toy manufacturers (as opposed to model companies) use that scale. It also isn't universal - Kotobukiya, who makes the Super Robot Wars and Armored Core model lines, avoid 1/100 scale and offer their kits in 1/144 and 1/72. If you want to compare them to other aircraft or even other space fighters, 1/72 is the better bet. The selection of real-world aircraft available in 1/72 is larger than any other scale, and in recent years, several popular scifi designs have been kitted in 1/72, such as the fighters from Star Wars, Yamato 2199, and - if you're willing to try resin - the BSG Viper or the Yukikaze fighters. For myself, I'm a 1/72 guy - I like being able to compare the VFs to modern jets like the Raptor or Super Hornet, and having the option of building dioramas with modern vehicles in the same scale...

Gotta complain some - I had the Skystriker toy, and the gun pod on that was essentially a perfect match for the Tomcat's drop tanks, except for the four muzzle ports. The pod itself retained the point and the blunt tail: http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/83/skystriker/skystriker_bottom.shtml The pod might be somewhat overscale, but then the entire Skystriker was a mishmash. What you have there looks much more like it belongs on a VF-1, ergo the Jetfire toy... SP

Dammit, this would have been just what I needed for a collection of all the VF-25 models and addon packs without doubling up on any of them... And I can't get it. (IMO, the minimum collection needed for that would be: * VF-25S Armored * VF-25F Super * VF-25G Plain (repainted into an A) * VF-25G Tornado * RVF-25 with Ghosts Without the VF-25G Tornado, a separate Super pack is needed, and they're OOP...) SP

The first link has some sprue shots - the construction seems really simple. Which isn't all that surprising, as the kit is Fighter-mode only. As to the red/white scheme being noisy, that's how flight test prototypes are usually painted in real life. For example, have a look at Joe Hegedus' model of the 4th F/A-18E. In any case, I'll be waiting until this thing is available as a transformable 1/72 kit... SP

Fantastic Gnerl. Love the bloodspatter on it... What scale is this thing, and is there any chance of getting a comparison shot with a same scale VF-1 and/or Regult? Just so we can see how big this thing really is (it ought to be huge, considering the size of the Zentraedi pilot...) Cheers, SP

(Yes, I'm a necromancer, but at least I'm not as bad as the last guy to reinvoke this thread... and, the subject is plain cool!) First off, big thanks to Op4 for the work on the Asuka II model, it cleared up a bunch of things for me, plus it's inspiring my own efforts to model Macross ships in 3D... that bridge section looks awesome. I just finished reading the whole thread, and there's some pretty good debate here. One of the things I'd like to comment on is the whole Macross Compendium debate - it seems to me that there's a huge split in the sources pretty generally, with written canon contradicting drawn or animated canon, sometimes from the same source (the VF-4 missiles issue for example, where SK has apparently said and written one number, but *drawn* a completely irreconcilable number...) . This thread alone contains a bunch of examples, and I'm finding more and more while crawling the web for references to my own RPG write-ups. (And sometimes the sources are so fragmentary as to be nonexistent - for example the "stealth cruiser" from Frontier which only seems to exist as a stock footage clip of it being blown up - in great detail, but with nothing to use as a reference...) Pretty much all fandoms have similar problems due to multiple authors stirring the pot and multiple studios handling the gruntwork of animation, and I've yet to see a canon policy that appeals to everyone - some will take anything written as "word of God" and discard anything that doesn't fit even when the results become ludicrous, and some will take "it's on the screen, it's canon" to similar extremes. And neither route is any good in the long run - the first would invalidate the scene where DD blasts the turret (which doesn't exist according to the writeup); and the second opens up the infinite reloads fallacy... (face it, it's a very very rare anime where the creators actually bother to keep track of the ammo. Being out of ammo happens at the convenience of the plot... and Macross is far from immune). Back to the topic, though. First of all, regarding the ship numbered 71, 77 or 79 (opinions seem to vary), I'm less than convinced that this is supposed to be a DDG, as the angles are all wrong, the superstructure seems to be all one piece rather than two sections, and the deckline has a pronounced step (hurricane bow, I think it's called). An alternative explanation that's pretty close at hand is that this is either an FFG (current series ended at 61, a couple of dozen of a new class being built due to the UN wars is not unthinkable); or a CG (current series ending at 73, only half a dozen of a new class needed to catch up). As to why they don't show up in the 3D scenes, the likely answer is that no one bothered modelling them. (Of course, this is the "SWTC"-style interpretation, i.e. any drawing of anything - regardless of quality - which disagrees with other sources, has to be a different model - which results in a two-page spread of really badly drawn star destroyers, some just blobs in the far distance, being turned into a dozen new ship classes... your mileage may vary on whether this is a good thing or not). The above also ties in with the fact that the UN managed to put two new carrier classes, and somewhere in excess of 25 new carrier hulls of all classes, to sea in the nine years since the Macross landed. (two classes is indisputable, as both the Asuka II and Prometheus are new designs, 25 hulls is an extrapolation based on the newest US carrier at the time of the landing being the Harry S. Truman, CVN-75, and the Asuka II and Prometheus being numbered 99 and 101 respectively. Of course, they may have skipped numbers, or the number series is based on something other than the US CV series. Who knows?) Finally, if you're still here Op4, how's your ship model coming along? I've got a bunch of (tested) methods for doing stuff like the directional deck lights (the runway lights are different colors when viewed from the fore or aft, for example), without resorting to a bunch of extra light sources, etc. I'll post them if there's interest... Cheers! SP

The differences between ships of the New Macross type are pretty extreme for ships purportedly of the same class. Real-world aircraft carriers are the slowest-built naval units in the world, and even with thirty years between the Nimitz and the Truman, the differences amount to changes in the sponsons and the antenna farm on the island. Only the latest two units of the class differ significantly, and they're specifically meant to be evolutionary steps toward a new class. New Macross ships are churned out at a rate of at least one per year, which is four times as fast as the Nimitz class, which given their size pretty much requires multiple sources. A comparable building program in this case is the Ticonderoga class cruiser. which apart from the first five units don't differ externally at all, over a twenty year period. In light of that, I'm beginning to consider the New Macross "class" as a "type" instead, such as "super carrier". A "New Macross"-type ship (battle section) has a defined size, role and general arrangement, but the exact specifications are mutable. They're not interchangeable. (Looking at the differences in the stern of each ship will tell you that you won't easily dock the wrong battle section to a city...) Also, did anyone notice that the Battle Frontier has two independent main gun systems in its gunship? Macross 5, 7 and 13 didn't have the underslung beam gun that Frontier uses in episode 19 to clear away the Vajra (or at least there's no indication of it). The beam that the Galaxy fires at Frontier (that takes out Frontier's gun) is fired from the quad barrel structure, and is a different color from Frontier's continous beam... SP

Been spending the last week or so alternating between (re)watching Macross Frontier (in HD!) and drooling. Need me some plastic VF-25! Of course, since I don't have the money right this minute, the lack of an available kit suits me pretty well. I'd really like to know what kind of wait time to expect, though, so I can gather up the cash to pay off HLJ (thieves!), the post office (bandits!), the customs clerks (pirates!) and the tax men (scoundrels!) I swear, I paid nearly 75% extra over and above the listed price at HLJ when all was said and done for my last purchase there, and I didn't even get express shipping. On a slightly related note, does Hasegawa's license still only cover VFs, or is there a chance we may get one of those big red dudes too? It would look cool next to my 40K monstrous creatures (roughly the same scale). A belated happy new year to everyone, and good luck with your modelling projects! SP

In-universe answer: Because someone else designed everything for them, and they're good at copying. Logical answer: Because even the Zentraedi are smart enough to understand the perils of miscommunication due to sloppiness, and thus they'll communicate, even in writing, with Rigid Military Precision . Real world answer: Because the mecha designer thought it looked cool the way it does, and honestly, so do you? SP

On my workbench until this evening: My digital camera, which is now fixed. Thus, I have a pic for you! Here's my VF-0A with Ghost - which really only needs decals and the contents of the cockpit... SP