Valkyrie

I've gotten 3 packages from HLJ since they stopped using UPS. All 3 were shipped SAL, and all 3 were beat to hell. But thankfully, they were packed well, and the contents were completely unharmed. Also, they all took between 10 and 14 days to arrive. But just because of the damage and the sheer unpredictability, I'll be choosing EMS from now on.

Not bad... But it'd look a lot better if it wasn't made of cardboard.

Let's see... The Club-M is a great kit, but the nose is a bit stylized (but I think it looks great ) The Musasiya (if you can find one) is a great kit too, with tons of panel line detail. But I think the proportions of the fuselage are off a little. It's a bit too big, I think. The Retpuu looks decent.... but it's a soft vinyl kit. And I DESPISE vinyl as a modeling medium The Yellow Submarine 1/100 looks so-so. The fuselage is pretty devoid of detail, and the missiles are way off. They're way too... bulbous. The 1/144 looks a bit better than thier 1/100, but it's got the same problem with the missiles. The Studio Half-Eye 1/100 kit looks good in terms or proportions, but some parts of its transformation look like a cop-out compared to some of thier other kits. And then there's the IHP 1/72 transformable... I know little about it. It seems to be one of those kits that's so rare, it almost doesn't exist. And Lightning, as for the avatar, if it's the Vinnie I'm thinking of, it's a CG model he's still working on.

Errrr... no. With the exception of some REALLY crappy recasts using EXTREMELY crappy resin, that's completely untrue. All the companies that make original resin kits use good quality resin (or at the very least, not resin that's THAT bad). Also, the big recast sites like Hobbyfan and E2046 also use very good quality resin. And, of course, so do I. The stuff I use, even in thin sections, is quite resilient. If you drop it, it won't shatter. And if you flex it, it'll 'give' quite a bit before it breaks. The only problem with thin resin parts I've seen is that they can be prone to warping. But that can be easily fixed. Say you've got a thin wing from a resin plane kit. And it's bent. All you have to do is dip it in some hot (close to boiling) water for a couple seconds, then reshape it and let it cool. In this case, just get it hot, then press it onto a flat surface until it's cool. Once it's cooled, it'll be like it was always flat. It's really versatile stuff. By far the best modeling medium, in my opinion.

I remember seeing a bit about those in an old issue of Hobby Japan... but this is the first time I've actually seen them. And I could never find them when I was looking to buy them... Do you know who makes them or where we can buy them? At Y250 each, I'd definitely buy a few of them!

Here ya go. It's on this page, all the way at the bottom http://a.scarywater.net/ao/

I watched that fansub last night. I thought the episode itself was god awful, but the sub was awesome cause it didn't take itself too seriously. There's lots of jokes scattered all over in the subtitles... especially in the comercials

FA-2 Fand 2 (the blue planes from ep 2 that were dropping like flies) http://pam.main.jp/jpg/event/pr_show2003/p...ow_2003_055.jpg FFR-31 Sylphede (the cannon fodder from episode 1, not to be confused with the FFR-31MR/D Supersylph) http://pam.main.jp/jpg/event/pr_show2003/p...ow_2003_056.jpg

Yes... Yellow Submarine is making 1/144 pre-painted kits of the FRX-00 Mave, FRX-99 Rafe, FA-2 Fand 2, and FFR-31 Sylphede... each available in in-flight and gear-down variations.... I can't wait...

Awesome!! A quick translation of some of its features: -Pilot figure -FAST Packs -Conformal fuel tanks (2 of em, on top of the fuselage) -Air brake -S type head -Vectoring nozzles (feet) -Sweeping wings -Clear parts (FLIR sensors and wing lights) -Compatible with Hase's Macross Stand I can't wait to get my hands on one of these.... I haven't been this excited about a Macross kit since Hase's first, the VF-1A fighter! And I bought four of those

Just got done watching it. All of a sudden, things make a lot more sense! This episode definitely has more of a plot to it than the first two. But it still doesn't go where you think it will With this episode, it's a lot clearer what 'direction' the series is going in. It's been pretty slow in that respect, and I can see why that's turned some people off. But I'm betting most everyone will be lovin' it when the series is complete I really can't wait til episode 4 now... We'll get to see why they kept giving Lynn Jackson bit parts in every episode

They're on my FTP. But it's offline at the moment. I need my upstream bandwidth for bittorrent

I'm in shock.... Finally, 47 days after the release of the R2 dvd, Yukikaze episode 3 has finally been fansubbed.... By Aone, no less!!! http://alanb.no-ip.org:6969/torrent.html?i...402fe8ef1d197e0 It's kinda an odd URL for a torrent, but it works. Just click on it, hit 'open', and it'll start up the torrent.

I definitely want to get the PS2 Macross game, and I have no fear of modifying my PS2 (my EET senior project a couple months got me quite good at soldering ).... but I just have no idea which mod chip to get... I keep hearing that all the good ones are gone, because Sony sued thier makers

One more for the list... sort of Back in the day, I did a fighter-mountable gunpod. It had a modified head that didn't hang down so low, to give it the clearance it needed. The gunpod had the middle section cut out (to give it its 'compressed' form), and I installed a T-shaped bracket to let it hang from the arms. It was kinda cool. But I wasn't happy with it and wanted to re-do it. So I sold the prototype on EBay (got about 50 bucks for it), and never got around to building a new one :/ And then, of course, there was my ill-fated Strike cannon project... But I hate to say it, but I pretty much don't care about the 1/55's anymore. Back when the Yamato VF-1's were just starting to surface, I really had to question everyone's efforts in creating mods for the 1/55's. Everyone was putting all this effort into improving the proportions, detailing, and mobility of the 1/55, when Yamato was putting out a product that was technically superior to all of them right out of the box. It just seemed like they were fighting a losing battle that didn't need to be fought. Anyway... I'll shut up now. I don't want to turn this into a 1/55-bashing thread.

There's a good reason for that. When Animeigo was doing thier remaster from film, they only opening they could find on film was the credit-less version that's on the DVDs. That's it. No spoiler-less opening, and no fanracer closing. The 'perfect edition' tapes, on the other hand, are subbed from the Macross laserdisc box set. And on the LD box, episodes 1 and 2 are Macross Special, not the original, seperately-aired episodes. So that's why it has the fanracer closing.

I have an original VHS copy of Macross Special with eps 1 and 2. And it has the fanracer ending, but the normal opening. I kinda want to see the original episode 1 version...

Personally, I kinda regret buying three VF-1J's when they were new, but only one VF-1S. I eventually built a Max J with one, but I have no desire to put that much work into a Hikaru or Milia J. So they'll be collecting dust for a while... unless someone wants to buy one

I'm changing my vote to the N-Gage. Even though it isn't even out yet

Errr... We're talking about game consoles here. The TI-83 is a calculator.

The Turbo Graphix sucked only because it had almost no US software support, and the vast majority of the good japanese games were never brought over. Its japanese equivelant, the PC Engine, kicked much ass. It had some awesome games, especially for its CD system. Plus it had some of the best console designs ever. The original PC Engine was SO much cooler than the TG16. It was like 1/3 the size! To this day, I don't know why they had to make the system BIGGER for its US release... My pick would have to be the Virtual Boy also. It was obviously a flop in every respect. The Sega CD sucked, partly because it didn't improve the Genesis's hardware limitations. So all of a sudden you have 650 megs of storage space, but you've still got a slow Z80 processor and a palette of a whopping 64 colors (if my memory serves me correctly). Plus the software support sucked. Everyone was too caught up with full motion video (even though it looked like ass). The 32x was a bad idea too. They were just trying to get thier system on par with the SNES, in an attempt to tide gamers over til the Saturn came out. And like the rest, the software spport killed it.

I've found that the shift key is not entirely useless as well.

Cool, glad to hear they finally delivered. I'd be interested to see some pics

It wouldn't be an easy project for even me right now. There'd be several three-part molds (something I've never done yet), plus I'd need a much larger pressure chamber in order to pressure cast all those huge parts. And I'd need to learn to cast metal parts (though that's net on my list of things to do). And yes, if Tanmen is still selling them, I wouldn't recast them anyway. I'd consider that bootlegging. Maybe if he defininitively discontinued them, and/or we got his permission... then maybe.

About the only non-Macross kits I've built were a Hasegawa 1/72 SR-71, a 1/25 KITT (from Knight Rider), which I built for my father's christmas gift last year, and the 3 Mospeada Tread kits (though all 3 Treads were all very half-assed build-ups) Most of the modeling projects I want to do are of Macross designs, wether they're kits or scratch-builds. But there's some exceptions... Yukikaze - I can't wait to build my Platz resin kits Gunbuster - I've got some very rare GB resin kits, but I want to recast them first, so I can build copies instead of the originals Initial D - I've always wanted to build a Hachi-Roku, ever since I first saw the series... And for some reason, I want to kit-bash a Hachi-Roku Trueno kit into an '87 Chevy Nova... my daily driver until recently, and the most reliable car I've ever owned. Though I know it'd be way more throuble than it'd be worth