Gundamhead

Just so you guys might see this, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5947826964&rd=1 I'm not a Macross 0 fan yet, but I've seen people go gaga over this very kit. Now is your chance to own it and help people out who need it.

Well, no place really. Except Ebay. Out of production toys are pretty cool, here in the States you could find the Musai, Albion, and Zanzibar from 0083. The 2 models you have are EX kits. That means they are small limited run models doomed to extinction and pricey to begin with. Other collectors or Ebay are your cheapest and best bet. I'll let you in on a secret, there's a EX Musai kit on HLJ right now. Again, it's small and pricey though.

I breath in a lot of the white powder. I will watch out from now on...Thanks I hope I don't die any time soon. Wet sand! It's just better all around.

Ok quick basics for you. You've done great so far. 1. Try wet sanding resin. Keeps the dust to a minimum, it sands much better, and healthier. Go slow, resin sands easy and you can sand away detail pretty quick. 2. Crazy Glue (CA) or Epoxy bond resin kits. Careful with the Crazy Glue, it bonds instantly sometimes on resin. It's also harder than the resin, so if you have to sand away dry Crazy Glue, go slow or you might accidentally take away the area around the glue you're trying to remove. 3. Your model should get a warm soapy bath in a detergent soap. (Simple Green or even Dawn) It removes the mold release which can interfere with paint. 4 Your pins are very good. It adds strength to the parts. However, you might have gone a little overboard. Once you glue that guy, he'll never come apart the same way. Pinning is usually for areas that bear heavy stress, on heavier models. Hope this helps you, and show pics when you finish.

You might want to brace yourself for some sticker shock on having a custom model built. Something that size is almost certainly going to be more than a couple hundred. It also depends on the company you go to and how complex your item is. The hollow parts are usually designed that way from the masters. If you have a 3-d file why not print it out, and build it yourself?

Did you guys ever own the old Takara toys in 1/72 for Dougram? They are some of the finest toy/model hybrids that have ever been. I wouldn't count on Yamato re-doing them.

I really do feel your pain. Too many kits, not enough time or money. I won't even attempt guess at a price yet. That's Jesse's call. He can't make that call yet, cause he doesn't have the masters yet, cause they're still in progress. This project is becoming more of a model itself than a simple stand though.

I call them fingertips for the fingers. they are pretty tiny and more of a detail piece than a structural part. See my long rambling post for details. I'm pretty sure white metal is no magnetic.

I wasn't thrilled about the recessed work either. I'll see how the three rounded panels version might look. I think the Valkyrie will become part of the arm permanently, for the reason I desribed. Besides, the VF has it's gear up on the arm, other than flying your VF around the room, there's not much reason to make them detachable.

Wall mount... Hmmm possibly, but it's not something I've tried out yet. That's a whole new set of stresses added to the arm, so I don't wanna just say 'No problem" without actually looking into it. I woundn't count on it saving space...It's gonna be around 18" tall. Then if my base idea works out it'll be about 14" long.

I'm just gonna try to quickly answer questions now that I rambled on long enough. Yes the arm will need support to stop any warping. The rod will be cast inside the arm. I don't think Jesse really wants to play with other types of resins. The rod will be strong enough.

Wow thanks guys. This is a fun project for me. So far I have found 4 different versions of the launch arm. 2 different line art, two different styles in the animation. Yup one of those Macross mystery thingies. I'm trying to capture the spirit of the arms from the animation. To me it had the most bells and whistles and the better looking version. But I'm not counting out the lineart, it's got some cool design ideas too. For short, it's my interpretation based on the sources. The pictures shown are the direction I'm going, but I still have work to do. Details, details, details. Now for the tough and very legitamite reality of things. It's a engineering nightmare. Even in 0-G this thing would wobble and put stress all over the Valkyrie that it didn't need to. A simple catapult would be better and more practical all around. BUT, a catapult just ain't as nifty looking. The arm is long (14" then add the VF wing and it's around 17.5" tall), so that means the potential to warp. The only simple fix I see is using a rod or tube to give the arm a 'skeleton' when it is cast. That alone is more than enough to hold the Valkyrie's weight, and is pretty easy to do. The VF is held on the arm at 5 points in the picture, and animation. The four fingers and the umbiblical to the tail pack. Mounting the model VF-1 to the arm could be done a bunch of ways. I toyed with a P-cap idea, a screw, and a metal pin. (The magnet might work if they were strong enough.) I toyed with using the actual fingers that grasp the FAST packs as being the mounting points. Some of my ideas were a bit gimmicky, but alll were feasible. The original arm uses a resin plug that is inserted inside the tail pack and screwed to the arm. Except the problem isn't mounting the Valkyrie to the arm. The Valkyrie is the problem. (Sacrilege! Heretic! The Hasagawa VF is the most perfectest model ever! Gundamhead indeed!) C'mon, honest now, it's what you're thinking, but please hear me out. If you look at the Hasagawa Super kit, or have ever built it, you know how the tail pack and FAST pack boosters mount to the fighter. 2 tiny nubs and one small skinny, oval, shallow peg. There's simply no strength there.If you have a Super built, you would never pick it up by the booster packs and hold it sideways because you know it's too much weigth on that joint. It'll break and you'll be left holding the tail section and FAST pack boosters while the rest of the VF is in a million pieces at your feet. (Don't really try it, but look at what I'm describing. See the potential for disaster?) So the easiest and strongest I've found so far is small a metal pin. (the squeemish may want to stop reading) I glued the tail pack on the VF. Then I drilled right through the entire tail pack and VF. I had a Valkyrie ka-bob. (Shoulda seen that sucker spin for a second on the drill.. ) Right through the Valkyrie's back and out it's belly. A small hole for the pin to mount to the umbiblical on the arm, and it has no way of falling apart. It sounds difficult and frightening (My poor Valkyrie! ) but it really isn't a big deal, and if you can build the Hasagawa, you can do this to. (I promise the Valkyrie won't feel a thing) It is also hidden completely by the VF arns and the umbiblical. So with the two real concerns pretty much figured out (I'm always willing to hear better suggestions) the next is how to mount the arm. On the original kit, there's no stand! There's no way to mount this sucker unless you make a stand. I got a ideas for that. It's actually what I'm working on at present. It's tough to describe, but it adds quite a bit in my opinion. Most important to me, is it allows the addition of the STOP/GO signal arm that sits in front of the VF. I've got some time off from work coming soon. I'll be able to play in the basement and actually work on it more. I promise when I get something a little more substantial, I'll snap a few pics for you and you can see where I am heading with it.

Simple Green and Easy Lift Off from Polly-S paints work great at removing paint. I've never had either fog clear parts.

Oh that would be so great to replace our safety film with. I think our boss would die of a coronary after seeing this.

Micro Set is the mild stuff. Micro Sol is the stuff for rough spots where you want to melt the decal over the texture. Mixing them is really gonna melt them even fast. I don't think Hasagawa decals over gloss even really need any set or sol. Did you try a few 'plain'?

You could try Tamiya's Polyester Putty. It's top notch stuff and won't melt plastic.

Sorry but none of the above. I'd like a Ride-Armor from Mospeada to get around. The others are just a bit too big.

I hate to be the one to say this but you're all nuts. This is one of those urban myths. It's the man not the machine. Double action is not better than single action, siphon is not better than gravity. It's all how you use it. I use both double and single action, siphon and gravity, and I prefer the siphon single actions in general. It's a more consitant result for my style. I can get incredibley fine patterns with either brush I use, and to say one is better is just some popular modeling misconception. It's simply your personal preference. If WM Cheng gets the results he wants from a single action 200, guess what? He's probably going to get those results from a double action once he gets familiar with it. It does not mean he's working with a inferior airbrush. I'll bet he winds up still favoring the single action though. Why? Cause it's what he's worked with. It's the same bogus theory that you have to grade up from snap to glue to resin. They all share the same basics. Sticking parts together, filling, sanding, and painting. Yet that one still sticks like crazy everywhere. Guess what? If you find a kit you love, just build it. It's what you put into the model, not what the model came with or what you bought for the model. At least that's my opinion.

In my personal experience, it's better to master something you like, and not something you think others might. Takes the fun out and turns it to business only. So, in my defense, when I did this guy, 1/100 was still the scale prefered for Macross models. You can get just about every mech in 1/100 for a reasonable price. It was also the only scale to have all four of the other Destroids. (This was before 1/144 resin guys) I wouldn't count 1/100 out, there's quite a few cool kits still. Oh yeah, my primary reason for doing him was I wanted one in 1/100. I'm a model builder, what can I say? Someday, I will have 3 Monsters and a gaggle of Tomahawk, Spartan and Defenders side to side standing in the open door of the Daedalus in 1/100 about to unleash Hell. Oh yeah. 1/72 was and is the much more expensive scale. Take out Hasagawa, and the 1/72 line up is very expensive. The other reson was size. The kit I made in 1/100 is roughly 16" long, 9" tall and 12" wide. When I made and sold a few of these guys, they were solid and weighed a little over 5 pounds. You'll just have to take my word that it is massive for any model. It cost me about $800.00 to mold a few and cast them, never mind any of my time, which was substantial, or any of my supplies. The few I sold fetched about $250.00 each and just about enough to cover my expenses. Which meant my kit only cost my time and supplies which was fine because I wanted one in 1/100 to begin with. That would mean my Monster in 1/72 would become 22" long, 17" wide, and 12.5" tall. It'd also mean a bit over 7 pounds of resin. Nobody could afford that except a privalaged few. I'd never make back what went into the costs, neverminding my time or supplies again. Nevermind the shelf he'd hog. Somebody in Japan did a 1/72 Monster already. It was even bootlegged, so you might still find a few. Spend some time fixing the inacuracies on it, and it will look cool.

This is cool. Thanks everybody!

That looks great Jesse! You make my masters look pitiful. Great work! I do hope people will have fun with this little kit.

Congratulations LSTO!!!

Really! Wow, I got to buy that M&M kit in the future. It's on sale becausenobody's buying the kit hehe! See? That's why some kits have some parts and others don't. Now somebody else is gonna buy another model for more parts, then realize he needs more Valkyries for those parts, and on and on and on. All the while they're collecting your money, and your happy to hand it over. Insidious in it's simplicity isn't it? Be glad your not a Gundam fan. Bandai is the most evil in their insidious ways to get you to buy kits.

You silly. Now you'll be compelled to buy a VF-1J. Now do you understand why those parts were left out?

Ever think maybe it is the Captain? Hmmm?