captain america

Which tends to conflict somewhat with what look like nicely bubbled canopies here: http://www.new-un-spacy.com/sdfmacross/com...chero-front.gif I have reduced the bubbliness either way, just to make vac-forming them a bit less of a chore. I actually think I will let the canopies retain a certain bubble shape though; purely for the sake of realism and the fact that it does aid the pilot/gunner's feild of vision on real aircraft. As for the rotors, I have modified MI-24 rotor blades to fit. I don't trust the anime still shot of the chopper from the top, as the animators themselves seemed to have taken a few liberties, making the attachment points stick-out from what I interpret to be two "dinner plate" type fixtures atop which the upside down cereal bowl-sensor sits... Gotta love my grasp of technical terms eh?? If you look at the art in Perfect Memory, you'll see that the main structure of the blades continues right up to (and possibly inside) the shroud-like dinner plates, which is more in line with what I have done.

Three more pics. Oh, I also narrowed the center fuselage an extra 1mm since the last update. In spite of that, the fuselage doesn't look flimsy at all; quite an impressive sight actually...

Ask... And ye shall receive! My foremost apologies for the delayed update; had some emmergency matters that needed my attention. As a result, this'll only be a partial update since I wasn't able to do as much work on the Commanchero as I would have liked. Anyhoo, here are some pics of the chopper as it looked last Friday; a little bit of refining was done to get the shapes looking more like their line-art counterpart. I retained the "bubble canopy" look seen in the frontal view, though this may be rather problematic to vac-for... Anyone interested in doing the canopies as a subcontractor?

Based on the HOBBY JAPAN scanned pics, the plastic prototype, at least in its current stage, has one big fat fatal flaw: The chest missile bay covers do not pivot up and backward nearly far enough with their hinge design; the missiles in the top 2 rows will blast right through and destroy the covers when they are fired! Stoopid Wave engineers!

In all likelyhood, it will be a bit less than $120; I always try to start from a worst-case scenario and whenever possible, charge less. Int'l money orders are fine, but as per my usual procedure, ordering info will likely be posted here or sent privately by PM. I'm hoping to be ready to pour molds in 2-3 weeks, so hve funds handy around the 1st week of November.

+1

Hi Carl. Sure, I don't mind tackling different types of vehicles, so long as the demand is there. One of the ones I want to tackle at some point is the Cat's Eye plane, which I don't think acheived its full potential in the hands of Tanmen, but there will likely be at least one big, phat Zentradi kit before that

Update continued. Pic 7: here we see more milling. This time for the aft fuselage. For what it's worth, the composite material that makes up the modeling board is very hard on my toold, which will need to be sharpened shortly. Pic 8: the round shapes seen in pic 5 have now all been glued together and placed on the lathe. Owing to the fact that the part in question is long and spindly, the dead center was used to keep the part stable as it's being cut. Pic 9 & 10: This is what I have to show after about 2+ days of work. The parts are still quite crude, but it's now starting to look like a helicopter. As per my usual methods, I should have another update about this time next week, so stay tuned

Update continued. Pic 4. Speaking of milling machine, here we can see it in action, as I'm refining the foreward fuselage part. There is also, despite me not photographing it, lots of work done with a Dremel and sanding blocks/files to a given component. Pic 5: here I'm using some scrap modelling moard that came off the lathe, and combined them with other scraps I had laying around. The first two pieces from the left will be combined to form the Commanchero's tail boom, while the part on the right wil be used to create the weapons pods. Pic 6: Finally, after several hours, the main fuselage is starting to take shape. There are a few small milling mistakes that will have to be fixed with putty before proceeding, but no big deal.

Guess what? Time for a build progress report! As per my previous projects, this one started by sitting with books to study lineart, followed by approximately a day and a half in front of the computer in order to draft diagrams based on that lineart. Once those are rendered to the point where I feel comfortable, I print them out and get onto the fun stuff. Fun stuff generally consists of getting all my materials together, which you can see in the 1st pic below: the usual suspects are there, as well as the unsung workhorse in my arsenal: my coffee cup. 2nd pic: the diagrams I made and printed are now cut and placed onto slabs of modelling board for cutting. THis is a simple, but very effective way of keeping track of the most important dimensions on a part. 3rd pic: depending on the shape in question, I will either start trimming it on the bandsaw, as seen in this photo, or sometimes directly on the milling machine.

Could that not be explained as the nozzles simply them being at different stages of oxidation/heat discoloration? A slightly different material used depending on the particular variant's needs? I wouldn't look too deeply into it, it's just anime.

Yup. Resin models are like wild flowers: beautiful but breif, and when they're gone, they're gone. This is why I encourage people to regularly keep an ear to the ground, so-to-speak.

Indeed. What truly boggles my mind is that it has 4 engines for foreward thrust, but only four blades on the main rotor, whereas the Hind has five. It's a mystery wrapped in a dirty lymrick, I tells ya!!

Absolutely. I'm also trying to figure out what can (realistically) be crammed into the ventral weapons bay... Anyone got the dimensions for 500lb iron bombs?

Thanks, that means a lot to me. It really does. That having been said, Wave has a very interesting creative opportunity here, and I for one am curious to see what they come up with. Also, we still don't know what it will cost, or whether the kit will be an orphan or if they will do all the other Destroids with common leg parts.

Stickers are a piece of cake: take a small cup with some water and add 2-3 drops of dishwashing liquid & stir. Before you go & apply the sticker, take a small sponge or a brush and wet the area of the plastic with the soapy water, place the sticker down & manoeuver it into place. Once it's where you want it, just apply pressure to get all the water out from under the sticker

While I no longer have the masters for the Tomahawk, I do believe that the current owner has designs on re-releasing it. I had put much foreplanning into making sure my sculpts were accurate to the lineart (or at least, as close as they can be with all the inconsistencies,) which is why I'm so perplexed as to why they keep trying to re-proportion the wheel, so to speak. While Wave might get "lucky," and make it look appealing to some, as soon as one starts to deviate from the original source material, one treads a slippery slope with the fans. Trust me, I know I can get away with that sort of controversy because I'm an artist, and I cater to a very, very small group of people with particular interests, but I'm not quite so sure that the same formula would be successful when applied to a corporation looking to offer a product on an industrial scale.

Which would only be sensible, since the lower body is way too wide-set and bulky; quite perplexing, especially given that there are front/side/rear diagrams that exist for it. Come to think of it, the 1/60 toy isn't accurate to the line-art either...

Yup, I know exactly what you mean. It looks like the sidewall flares out toward the bottom in the 3/4 view because of the panel line, but the font view the sides look flat. The natural conclusion: the panel is not perfectly vertical, but oblique. See my previously posted diagrams

With regards to being too skinny, I would have to say no, as my own plots were made directly off of the scaled lineart of the frontal view, and I even added an extra mm in thickness just to be safe. The canopies on the other hand are a tad bubblier (as seen in profile) than what the lineart depicts; I told myself that it would be safer to start off with something that has more volume, and depending on how they start to look when I flesh them out, I still have the option of flattening them a bit; always easier to remove than to add. At any rate, once I start posting progress pics, you'll be able to see things more clearly. As with almost everything else in the Macross lineart, the 3/4 front and 3/4 rear views of the Commanchero contradict themselves on certain shapes/proportions, so creative interpretation is a necessity.

Sadly, not even that: I picked-up an Italeri Hind kit yesterday, just to see if there might be some parts I could borrow, but it's essentially useless junk. Oh well, more scratchbuilding for me

Yes, that's totally feasible and logical. As Grayson72 mentioned also, they would still need a means by which to get the missiles into the helicopter, hence the need for the lower weapons bay. At the very least, there could be a type of automatic breach-loading system allowing missles to be transfered/fired out the port-side pod for air-to-air missiles, but alternately, that weapons bay could also be configured to carry air-to-ground ordinance, depending on the specific mission. Either way, I feel that the Commanchero gains from that weapons bay. MechTech: yup, I agree, the design doesn't really make sense, but oh well, I didn't design it, I just have to make it believeable

I interpreted that to mean that the port-side (helicopter's left) fairing contains a missile firing mechanism, as evidenced in the below image by the black, circular muzzle-looking thing. Nothing new there. What I added to the design was a centrally-mounted ventral weapons bay, similar to what you'd have on an F-111: it would be just deep enough to hold two drop-launch missiles or iron bombs. comanchero.bmp

THe "stock" color scheme on Ozma's "skull one" is absolutely terrible; I'd have harsh words for whomever came up with that part-time art student wannabe mess.

Definitely a Hind! Here are the comparative diagrams between the Commanchero and the Hind, just to show you what a whale this bird is!