Valkyrie

Easy Lift-Off (ELO) is a domesticly available model paint and decal stripper, made by Poly S Scale http://www.ehobbies.com/1001-9421.html And MoriMori is a japanese polyester putty. It's a lot like Bondo, except it doesn't suck. Bondo is a very course putty, and MoriMori is much finer. MoroMori @ Hobby Search You mix in a small amount (about 2% or so) of the hardener, and it cures in about 4 hours. Less if you apply a little heat. It cures yellow in color. The same company that makes MoriMori also makes SubeSube, which is even higher quality. It cures pure white in color (I should have used that instead ). But the hardener is a clear gel, so it's hard to tell how much you have to mix in. With MoriMori, you just add hardener until you get a good yellow color going. But with SubeSube, you kinda need some MoriMori experience so you have a feel for how much hardener to use.

Well, I meant to do it from the beginning, but I didn't do much about it. Most of the stuff I did at the beginning didn't seem very noteworthy, so I didn't bother taking pics. But then I neglected to take pics of some parts of the build that are certianly worth mentioning. But hopefully, that'll end now. I started taking progress pics yesterday, and from here on, I'll do my best to get all the highlights on film (or rather, SmartMedia card). Thanks go out to WM Cheng for helping me get off my ass and start this (he asked me to. How could I say no to him after all he's done? ) Anyway, there'll be some rather large gaps leading up to my current progress, but I'll try and get you all up to speed as I go along. And I must apologise in advance for the poor pics. My camera isn't all that great First and foremost, I should mention that I started taking these pictures are a rather significant turning point. Until then, I had been priming with Mr Surfacer 1000 and Alclad primer (both of which are gray). They gave me the nice, thin, smooth finish I was after. And I was happy. Until it came time to spray on the primary body color. Hasegawa calls for Gunze Sangyo's Mr Color #311 for the VF-0S's primary color (though I'm actually using Gunze's acrylic version of the same color). It's a very pale gray. It's almost white. It'll look white in most of these pics. This posed a problem I had only partly foreseen. I realised that it would take a lot of coats of paint to cover the gray primer with a lighter color. Just like how it's hard to paint white over gray primer. What I had NOT foreseen was exactly how much of the paint it would take to cover the primer completely. I emptied half a bottle of the stuff into the fuselage halves and the arms before I thought I was done. But I couldn't tell if the color I had gotten was the true color of the paint. So I tried a little experiment. I took a can of Mr Surfacer White spray primer (I have about 1/4 can of the stuff left) and sprayed a little on a scrap piece of sheet styrene. Then I sprayed the #311 gray onto it. I got the true color of the paint on the styrene in just a couple light coats. And sure enough, it was much lighter then what I had on the VF-0 parts. It was taking waaaay too much paint to cover the gray. Something had to be done. I consulted with WM Cheng, and being the wealth of knowledge that he is, he gave me the idea that I needed to overcome the problem. He mentioned that sometimes when he's building a mostly white model, he won't use primer. And that gave me an idea that I should have thought of from the beginning. Most flat paints can make decent primers on thier own. As long as you start out with a few REAL thin coats, they'll adhere to the plastic well enough to be both the basecoat AND the topcoat. I'm sure real primer would probably stick better than just a flat acrylic, but it works in a pinch. And I was definitely in a pinch. And so, after a few successful experiments, I started stripping the primer off the parts I intended to work on first. I used Mr. Thinner and ELO to strip them. Mr. Thinner is a laquer thinner made for Mr. Color paints, and it's good stuff, in that it won't eat plastic (unless maybe if you leave it on for way too long). ELO works good too, but you don't want to soak parts in it either. It can make plastics brittle if they soak in it for too long. Also don't use ELO on assembled parts that might have seems it can seep inside. ELO, for all intents and purposes, never evaporates. And so if some ELO is lying dormant insode a part, and some manages to seep out after you've re-painted, it'll ruin your paint job. Ok, here's one of the wings after being stripped. You can see the rectangular 'plug' in the middle of it. The fit of the plug was fairly poor. It didn't sit flush with the surface of the wing, and there was a gap all around it. I used some epoxy putty, thinned down with alcohol to shim it up, bring it as flush as possible, and also to fill in the gaps. I pushed the plug up to one corner, so two of the seam lines are as small as possible, leaving the larger gap on the other two lines. I filled those gaps with epoxy putty. I wet down the surface with alcohol and rubbed the seams down with my finger to make it as flush as possible. But then a lot of the panel lines and rivet holes were filled with putty (which I expected). So I used the tools pictures to dig it all out. They're Hasegawa's Tritool 'Scribing Tool' and 'Line Engraver'. Two excelent tools. Go buy em. http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?HSGTT-1 http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?HSGTT-11 Those worked well for the panel lines, but not as well as I had hoped on the rivets. So I machined a quick tool on my bench lathe out of aluminum to do the job. It worked pretty well, i think. I hope. But it was small and unweildy, and the point wasn't as good as I had hoped. So a couple hour later, I machined Rivet Maker Mk. 2 Better point, longer handle, feels almost like a pencil. I like it Some experimenting is in order, but I may just have to use them on the feet... Here's two of the four parts I've finished so far that have semi-final painting done to them. But if you look close, you can see that the rivet holes, which were initially very light on the sides, are VERY light in some spots. The little bit of sanding I did on them was too much So I may see if I can emboss some better rivets in them, so I can bring them out with a wash. But that will mean destroying my nice paint job Alclad works its magic once again. The manual calls for steel on the outside, and burnt iron on the inside. I had steel Alclad, and I figured Alclad's Jet Exhaust would be a perfect choice for the inside. I rather like the results. Here's a part that's not coming out as well as I had hoped... It's the lower part of the fuselage. Like the VF-1, this part originall had those big 'trenches' on the sides. The VF-1 came with a cover for part of them. The VF-0 does not. So I filled them up with MoriMori putty. But that presents a painting problem now that the gray primer is gone. It has to be made white before I can spray on the topcoat. So I need white primer... I still had that 1/4 can of white mr surfacer spray primer, but I wanted to airbrush with it. So I just sprayed it into a bottle. I had to add a little thinner, but after that, I was good to go. But it's not working quite as well as I had hoped. It's taking a lot of it to cover up the yellow putty. Plus, I forgot that I also used some brushed on mr surfacer as filler. And now that it's stripped, those gaps are back. So I may have to strip it down again. Same with these parts. The landing gear bays and doors. Both had ejector pin impressions in them that I filled with MoriMori then sanded smooth. But I also used mr surfacer at the end to fill in some gaps that remained. And now that I have to strip them, that'll be gone. I've gotta paint all of them pure white, by the way. Here's my progress on the nose. I painted the cockpit walls gray (the final color) along with the cockpit tub and seat (forgot to get a pic of them). I'm planning on finishing the cockpit and inside of the fuselage soon, so I can paint the nose and fusealage after they're assembled. It should make it easier to elimate seams. This is planning ahead a lot (the legs will probably be the last things I build), but it's a feature I wanted to include from the beginning. I've fitted some small rare earth magnets in the legs and FAST packs so they'll be removable when the kit's complete. The magnets are small, and there's a gap between them, so the attraction is rather weak. It's just enough to hold them in place, which is what I wanted. And here's the fast pack attached to the leg. Well, that's about all I got for now. I'll be back with more tomorrow. I'll leave you now with one last pic I took, of my workshop. It's messy, but it's been a lot worse. There's a lot of my resin casting stuff in there too. And yes, (almost) everything in there serves a purpose. Even the toaster oven Big-ass workshop pic

Here's a trick I like to use on resin kits. Get some Comet bathroom cleaner, put some in an old or disposable cup, and mix in a little water, making a thin paste. Put some of it on an old toothbrush, and scrub away at the resin parts. Not only will it remove the release agents, but it will also smooth out the surface of the parts. It works like liquid sandpaper This works really well on kits that have a really smooth, glossy finish that paint doesn't want to stick to, and also on kits that have an uneven or 'orange peel' texture to them. And it gets into all those nooks and crannies that sandpaper never could!

It would definitely be nice if the 51 kit has provisions to build it in multiple color schemes. But I doubt it does, since the kit seems to be designated a Nora version. That disapointed me a bit about the VF-0S version too. It only has the decals to build Roy's version. If they had included an A head and a few more decals, they could have easily included the option of building it as a VF-0A single seater.

Wow, Hasegawa planned things better than I thought! To release the VF-0S and SV-51 within a month of each other! This is the first time Hasegawa worked on two completely different Macross projects concurently. Granted, it'll probably be delayed a month or so... but still, I didn't expect to see a kit of the 51 until much later this year. I figured a VF-0A would come LONG before it. The one I want most, of course, is a VF-0D. But the VF-0S is keeping me quite content for the time being I'll be buying an SV-51 too, no doubt, but I really can't see myself building it any time soon.

The DVDs (regular and limited editions of vol. 1) are out tomorrow. I'm pretty eager to get my hands on it, even though I have all 3 available episodes fansubbed. It's gotten a lot of criticism, mainly because its story seems to be progressing rather slowly. But I've loved it from the get-go, and I'm quite sure it's building up to something geat. I'm sure the series will have a lot more fans once the OVA series is finished

They vary greatly in terms of both price and rarity. The cheapest seem to be the YF-19, YF-21, and Pheyos. The 19 and 21 because they're probably the most mass produced, and the Pheyos because it's the least in demand. The VA-3 seems to be pretty low in demand too. At the other end of the spectrum, is the VF-19F/S Blazer Valkyrie with FAST Packs, which sold for $1200 and $1300 the last two times it showed up on yahoo japan auction. The VF-4G and Fire Valkyrie are also high in demand, but not nearly as much as the Blazer. Keep in mind, this is all relative. SHE kits are still garage kits, and are all made in very limited in numbers compared to injection plastic kits. And also, it's very rare that I see any SHE kit sell for much less than its original retail price ($200, on average)

I built AMT's 1/24 KITT about a year ago. It's an awful kit.

There are two that I know of. A 1/100 Gigamesh (what's-his-name's powedered suit) by B-Club, and a 1/72 Marduk battle pod, which came with the Musasiya 1/72 VF-2SS 'Vs. Set'

Just curious, does anyone have any experience airbrushing with Mr. Surfacer 500 or 1000 (the stuff in bottles)? How well does it work? I've been using Alclad primer on the VF-0S kit, but I'm almost out, and it's kinda expensive. So I've been eyeing the Mr Surfacer bottles thinking they'll be next in line when the Alclad runs out. I've got some Mr. Color thinner, so I'm thinking that'd be best for thinning it down. So anyway, any experience my fellow models could share will be much apreciated

I could easily do without the dub, but still, this sounds pretty cool Especially a directors' commentary, even if it's only for the first 3 episodes. And Graham, Votoms was never on US TV. If I'm not mistaken, it was out on DVD (both in boxes and individual discs) for a time, but it's been out of print for a while now.

I just posted my analysis of the situation (though a bit simplified) at robocrap.com. I figured I might as well post it here too, cause it'll likely be deleted there in a matter of hours

Wow, those are really good! That's a nice Macross Plus laserdisc box too

Ahh, that solves that mystery. Thanks Graham. The kit does come with part of the hands (though I didn't realise that's what they were until Graham mentioned that). But it's only the back surface of the hands, so they didn't seem to solve anything. Until it occured to me to try test-fitting it all with the backpack in place... It never even occured to me that the big-ass packpack would hide the ends of the arms. And the hand pieces act as covers to bridge the gap between the arms and backpack. The sides are left open, but that's ok, because the legs will cover them. So that seam in the would-be hand ports in the arms is no problem at all

Christ, you insult the man, spread lies about him, and now you want him to help you?

Heh, hardly. The valks I build came out decent, I think, but they're not exactly anything special. Maybe I'll post pics of them later tho. I've been building the VF-0 for a day or so now, and it seems like it isn't QUITE as good a kit as I initially thought it was. I still love it to death, but it's not without its flaws. And fixing them is consuming more time than I would have liked. A few that come to mind... First, there are no shutters for the arms, where the hands come out. The VF-1 has very nice ones, but the VF-0 has none. And there's a pretty nasty seam in there too. I gave up on trying to putty over them, and cut a piece of .010" styrene and glued it in place over them. You were definitely right about the wing plugs, Cheng. They're a bit undersized, resulting in gaps around them. I tried puttying them up, but they didn't turn out all too well You know how inside the Hase VF-1's fuselage, there's those 'trenches' on the bottom part? The rear ones get covered, but the front ones don't. Well, those trenches are back, and this time neither of them get covered. And they're visible (albeit slightly) when the kit's built. So I've got big globs of MoriMori putty curing in them right now. There's rivets all along the outsides of the feet, but the ones along the sides are very faint, due to the way Hasegawa molded them. So I've gotta figure out how to scribe new rivet holes now... But in Hasegawa's defense, the only way to get the rivets right would to make each foot half three parts. There's a number of fairly minor surface flaws resulting from parts being made too thick in places. I'm not sure of the details of it all, but it seems if an area of a part is made too thick, there can be some shrinkage or something. And the result is some small, but noticable craters in the surface of some parts. And there's two of them on the top of the fuselage. But the biggest pain in my ass right now is the intakes. They're laid out much the same as Hase's VF-1. You've got the intake housing halves (this time joined with the legs in the VF-0), the funnel-lookin' thing, the turbine blades, and the shutters, which sit up top. First, there's a problem on the outside of the housing. On the bottom of the legs, there's a panel line that's completely wrong. The two halves each have a horizontal line going nowhere, when they should be diagonal lines which meet. I'll have to putty over those lines and scribe new ones. (see highlighted lines in 1st pic) But the inside of the intake is a bigger problem. The parts all fit fine, but housing and the funnel don't 'flow' together like they should. I've had to do a lot of shaving, sanding, and puttying to get rid of all the gaps and 'steps' in there. And the shutters aren't wide enough, so I'm extending them out with epoxy putty (see 2nd pic for before and after) All that may sound like a lot, but don't let it discourage you from building one of your own. It's a great kit, and I still love it. It's just taking a bit of TLC to get it where I want it to be

Huh? Something's wrong there. The file is 176.9 megs. And I had no problems downloading it. Try stopping the download, deleting the file, then download it again. Oh, and make sure you have enough hard drive space left for it. If you only had 50 megs free, that'd be your problem right there

Dude, what's your deal? We've already been over this. Nanashi makes up nothing. Never has, never will. You pass this off as a widely accepted fact, yet offer nothing to disprove Nanashi's claims. Ah, and now you imply that you speak for the general consensus. The old "Everyone else thinks I'm right, so you should too" bit. Look around. You're the only one here questioning the validity of his information. Sure, the masses may prefer if he cited his exact sources, but no one is assuming it came from his imagination because he has not. That's exactly why I don't like any Macross RPG sites. It's always impossible to tell where the fact ends and where the fiction begins. Everything is presented as if it's all 100% factual. Even if only 5% of any given entry is made up, who's going to be able to tell which parts are fiction? (besides Nanashi )

Let's see, so far I've done (in chronological order) VF-1A Hikaru VF-1J Max VF-1A Hikaru Super Valkyrie VF-1S Focker I'm way out of practice... I haven't built a valk in well over a year. But I'm gonna give this one my best shot

I saw that one this morning. That guy is good AND fast! Here's a quick comparison shot of the 1 and the 0. Keep in mind, the VF-0 is actaully a bit longer than that, cause the feet aren't on And here's a pic of the decals. Forgot to include them in the first set of pics. Another big one BTW, I've decided I'm going to build mine so I can attach the fast packs with magnets. I did some preliminary tests, and it looks like it's gonna work great

Right here Looking at those pics, I wish I'd taken bigger ones before I started ripping parts off the sprues :/ Here's manual pics (sorry I couldn't scan them). Links this time. They're 150k each Manual 1 Manual 2 Manual 3 Manual 4

Well, I finally got my Hasegawa VF-0S. Actually I would have gotten it yesterday, but no one was home to sign for it. And so I've been in hell the past 24 hours waiting for it But anyway, it's mine at last. First impression: . . . Wow. First of all, it's bigger than I expected. I knew it'd be bigger than the VF-1, but still, it took be by surprise. Also, I was surprised at some of the parts they combined. The leg halves are all one part, including the intakes. The upper fuselage is joined with the bakpack, and the arm halves are all one part too, from forearm to shoulder. The surface detal is excelent, as usual. Hasegawa's more recent offerings like the YF-19 and 21 have been relatively sparse in panel detail, becuase they're supposed to be much more streamlined than the older Valkyries. And since the VF-0 is even less sleek than the VF-1, those who loved the Hase VF-1's surface detail will eat this one up. It's just as plentiful, and just as well executed. There doesn't seem to be many unexpected options. There aren't provisions to build it with the landing gears up, but I sure it can be done easily enough with the normal amount of kitbashing. The canopy is split in two, and parts are included to build it opened. And then, of course, there's the fast packs and pilot. And the air brake option has returned, complete with actuating cylinder. Some of Hasegawa's improvements over thier first VF-1 kits have reappeared in this kit. First, the wings now have the 'plug' pieces that go in the bottom of the wings, as opposed to the first VF-1 wings which were two complete halves. This change made its debut in the VT-1 Super Ostrich kit. Also, the main nozzles (feet) can now be installed after the legs are constructed. A very welcome change, because that was one of the hardest parts about building the old VF-1's - getting rid of that nasty leg seam after the feet are installed. But the canopy seam has appeared once again. The canopies have the same dome shape that the VF-1's had, so Hasegawa had to do thier same ingenious molding tricks to get them right. But the result is that we have to sand and buff out a seam once again. Oh well. Also, Hasegawa has seemingly revealed its intention to produce a two-seater VF-0. Becuase it comes with two pilots and two pilot seats Yea, I know, big surprise. But spare pilots are always good to have! That's about all I can think of. I suppose this grew to be a bit longer than the 'brief review' I had planned on doing. But oh well. I'll post pics later tonight. If you have any questions, ask away.

It's not a Chogokin. It's a Popynica (sp?). So it's not all metal. And thus it's cheap(er). But if I'm reading the ad right, it DOES have a die-cast frame. It actually looks like it's a pretty decent size for the price. 200mm long, which is about 7.9". I think that's about the same size as the McFarlane one, but it looks a hell of a lot better. And according to HLJ, the price is Y6500. Not too bad... http://www.hlj.com/cgi-perl/hljpage.cgi?BAN922945

Translation: You make stuff up. Educated guesses or no. And to say Nanashi is "notorious for making stuff up"? Nanashi hit the nail on the head. Sounds to me like one more case of you making stuff up

I actually considered scratchbuilding the VF-1's atmospheric escape booster at one point. But the problem I ran into is that there isn't much design art on it. Only 3 pics worth. So there'd be a good deal of guesswork involved to fill in the gaps (which I really don't like doing) And for those of you who want the launch vehicle it mounts to too... Have you seen how big that thing is?! It'd easily triple the cost of the kit.