Warmaker

"He's all over me!" "Stay on target..." "I can't shake him!" "Stay on target..." "Aaaagghh!!!" Poor Porkins. His gravity pull was so much that the Death Star smashed into him.

Looking good so far.

Star Wars collecting gets really expensive, really fast

There are pans alright, at least 4 underneath the fuselage. No buckets under the Blackbird Just drip pans, whell covers, chocks, and a fire extinguisher.

There's 3 ways I can see you making a Hangar Diorama with Valks. 1) Using 1/72 Hasegawa VF kits. If you want to have FAST Packs opened up / exposed, you will have to scratch build the internals for it. Otherwise, Hasegawa has a blinding array of VF-1 kits. You could also find 1/72 scale aircraft support equipment (tugs, lifts, etc), figures (i.e. maint.crews), etc. With a bit of scratch building for the FAST Packs, this is the most cost effective route, but alot of work building and painting all the VF-1's. It also will not eat up as much space as the other 2 options. 2) Using 1/60 Yamato VF toys. IIRC (and since I'm away from all my stuff), the FAST Packs can't be opened up like the 1/48 Yammies. But there is a good array of 1/60 VF-1 toys to really show a hangar with different VF's. But you'll need some modifying and scrathbuilding skills if you want to show opened up FAST Packs. Also, there are no figure / support equipment kits of this scale, since no model company makes anything in 1/60. 1/72 figures (pilots and maintainers) will be too small, I think, but I haven't tried. This will take a bit of time to put together, but not as much as the pure modelling aspect of Route 1. Route 2 is expensive simply because of the cost of a 1/60 toy. But not as much as... 3) Using 1/48 Yamato VF toys. You get all the bells & whistles of the 1/48 Valk toy lineup. The FAST Packs are nice and with a modeller's touch, can really, really stand out since the toy provides the base for addons / detailing. However, if you're interested in including "exotic" VF-1's like the Elintseeker, you're a**ed out, since Yamato hasn't bothered at all with them, only the regular variants, the armor, and FAST Packs. I also believe there are some ground crew & support equipment model kits in 1/48. There are of course 2 more problems with this route. 1) Cost! 1/48 Yammies aren't cheap, esp for multiple VF dioramas! 2) Alot of space will be taken up. -- Replacing the FAST Packed, serviced VF-1 with a rare (and quite expensive) 1/48 Club-M Strike -1S is another route, but... you need this very rare kit to begin with But it has all the detailing you'd need, I think.

Has anyone ordered and received these kits recently? I was going to get the YF-19 version, especially since the regular kit is backordered. But the 25th anniv.kits are discontinued already according to HLJ.

If Yamato wasn't doing VFs? I wouldn't be collecting any of the toys. But I still would hook up with the Hasegawa model kits and even have lots of money left over. Hasegawa needs to start going bigger scale with their Macross kits. 1/48 would be a good, mainstream, but big scale. But I want 1/32

SV-51 Nora Standard Ed. SV-51 Nora Special Ed (Correct color scheme / pattern) SV-51 Nora Collector's Ed (With "new" Nora pilot figure)

The other thing with Naval Commands and ships, IIRC, is the tradition of calling the Captain of a ship "Captain" regardless of rank (mostly). On smaller vessels, you can have a Commander as the "CO / Captain" of the ship but still be referred to as Captain. Many Navies are like this, simply because Navies across the world have many common traditions, and Navies are recognized in military circles as very, very tradition oriented (just look at the "crackerjack" uniforms that resemble those from hundreds of years ago). Another thing is that you can have an Admiral aboard a ship, but he won't be it's Captain. For example are US Navy Carriers. You have a bonafied "full bird" Captain as the "Captain" of the ship. It is his command. But an Admiral can be aboard the ship, making the ship his Flagship to administer his duties for a higher level of command. Example: Carrier Battle Group 1 Aircraft Carrier - Has a Captain as the ship Captain Several Cruisers - Each having Captains as the Captain Several Destroyers - Each having Commanders as the Captain of their respective ships The Admiral sits aboard the Aircraft Carrier, making it his flagship and leading the Battle Group from there. The Skipper of the Carrier is still the skipper, and runs the ship as he sees fit, provided orders are followed from the Admiral regarding the whole unit's operations. Heck, we can use even Star Wars as an example! In Empire Strikes Back, Captain Piett is the skipper of the Executor. Admiral Ozzel was the overall commander in charge of Vader's powerful fleet. Ozzel of course croaks and Piett is made Admiral on the spot and is now commander of the entire fleet. When he assumes this position, you will then see him issue orders to the other ships as he did in the film (sorry for the nerd indulgence). Of course, I'm not in a Navy, but that's how it works as best I understand. Maybe a Sailor will come in and fix it. As far as Macross goes, it may perfectly be fine for Global to be the Captain of the SDF, even though the overall command it has is quite large. It has a large contingent of VFs, Destroids, etc. We see no one acting above Global as an "Admiral" aboard the ship, either.

I doubt they're interchangeable (i.e. taking Club-M 1/72 VF-1 ordnance to the Hasegawa 1/72 VF-1) without doing some extra work as a modeller as far as the hardpoint / pylon attachments go. It shouldn't be that difficult, but I've never built any of the CM 1/72 VF's before. What they both have going for you is that they're the same scale, so it should work. But looks? Not sure, especially if any "artistic liberties" have been taken between the wing and ordnance proportions.

I have 3 things to say about the 2nd one. Oh... My... GOD!!! The last part of it though was simply *amazing*

Yeah, especially the female uniforms ^_^ I'm still pretty fond of TOS uniforms, but I really liked the movie uniforms a whole lot (except for the TMP ones).

Live action Ghost In The Shell, especially if still faithful to the manga? Yummy! How about live action Appleseed? The story won't make much sense, but it'll be cool still! If done right, of course. I wonder who'd make a good Deunan. Or make a good Motoko.

It may be stagnating a bit, but it just needs more Protoculture. Fuel for the road. I loved and had fond memories of RT as a kid. But over the course of time, some as a kid and even several years ago when I stumbled onto this site, did I find out about how HG was preventing official, domestic releases of Macross merchandise in the US. I still recall in the 80's when RT was showing on TV. My friend who frequented Japantown in San Francisco in those days talked about a "Macross Movie" he was watching on a tape. I wondered why it never was released here, especially something so big and fancy in animation. In the 80's, especially before "Al Gore's Discovery of the Internets," you had to be lucky or extremely determined to find the fancy Japanese Macross merchandise. There were some really half-assed attempts by HG to get toys produced. If you dig up info on the Robotech Matchbox toys in the USA, you'll understand the horror. I still recall my Dad went through alot of trouble to get a 1/55 VF-1S Hikaru Strike for my birthday, and it was the ONLY Macross item I could ever get as a kid, and only because he worked in Sumitomo Bank in SF, right at Japantown (I of course wondered why it had a red/black stripe pattern, something not seen in RT). Otherwise, you were NEVER going to see the real Macross stuff. Over time, especially after getting "the gouge" here in Macross World, there were other shows and tons of other stuff that we would never officially see, thanks to the whole BW-HG fiasco that's still a hindrance. That's why HG is that "big rock inside my boots."

I got my shipping notice. Too bad I'm deployed and can't be there to see it arrive Oh well, at least someone will be there to "toss it to the corner" for me until I come home.

I recall reading something along these lines in 2005. But it all still falls in with the overall feel for WWII combat associated with Star Wars. Strategic Bombers, Torpedo Bombers, etc. needed to fly straight and level when making their attacks. I recall Torpedo Bombers were highly vulnerable during these runs. Fighters would mercilessly pounce them, AA guns would put alot of fire on them, since a successful Torpedo attack was devastating. Best case I can recall were the US Navy's Devastators in Midway that suffered horrendous casualties but opened up the Japanese fleet to the subsequent (and lucky arrival) of the Dauntless Dive Bombers. It fits right in with the Death Star Trench Run with the attacking X & Y-Wings forced to fly straight and level as the targetting system did it's thing, and the wingmen covered the attacker. (I also think it's the only time we see starfighters/bombers in Star Wars do any sort of "strike" in space with heavy ordnance against a massive station or warship)

Considering what's been already officially released by Big West, Shoji Kawamori, etc.: The SDF:M, DYRL?, Macross 0, Macross +, and *sigh* Macross 7, as well as the numeorus official toys, models, books, etc... do we need to?

Awesome thread! I feel better every time I check this thread!

Somewhere in the Middle East. Not to bad where I'm at, as you can see me being able to post still.

Yeah. I really didn't hear anything about the MR X-Wing until late summer of this year. So, if changes needed to be made before the license ends with 2007, it would be no surprise the project got the axe.

We could do the TOS Star Trek route... put a big pizza over a mound and say,"that's this week's monster."

The large scale, limited run X-Wings were supposed to be studio scale from Master Replicas. There was a message put out by MR's newsletters that the project was cancelled. It didn't surprise me that the studio scale X-Wing was canx since news earlier this year that Master Replicas and another company were not able to renew their license from Lucasfilm (or whoever controls the licensing issues) when 2008 rolls around. My guess was that the license holders wanted more money than before, but that's just my cynical self. I was actually looking forward to the MR X-Wing. The only MR studio scale item I have is the AT-AT which is nice. But with the canx'ing of the MR X-Wing, I hope the SW model range gets enlarged in variety (and scale too?)... maybe Fine Moulds? I prefer the models by FM than Revell's, and by far over the old Ertl ones (which I avoid).

HLJ has it officially listed now for Preorder at $38.66US. FM's 1/48 X-Wing

Don't feel bad about your English. It's better than a bunch of people I know who were born, raised, and educated in America

Forgot to be more clear... I mean, the character to the left of Ishtar. I know who Ishtar is, I have the Macross II DVD *duck & cover* Misa's Moods From the lower left picture, the one with a single green line over her right breast makes it like the TV series appearance. The 3 red stripes version is DYRL?. Another big giveaway is the red circle on her collar.