Chronocidal

Sheesh, why wasn't that book around when I made my old flight sim model? Funny though, I don't think those main gear even resemble the anime. They look decently designed, but I don't think the gear originally had that F-18 style bend. I had a newer set worked out for an updated flight sim version in Gmax once, but that was for MS Combat Sim 3, which uses Gmax only, and I never made a 3DS Max version.

Wait, less than $100 for a fast packed 1/48? Nice, I'd probably jump on that if I wanted more 1/48s, but the 1/60s are just easier to manage, and I really like the sturdy booster attachment. Though as far as quality goes, the 1/48 M&M 1Js were near the end of the 1/48 production line, and the molds had degraded some I've heard. The Hikaru 1J I have has some issues with the nose/intake alignment. Nothing serious, but some parts don't match up as well as they should.

True, I didn't mean to draw that parallel. In the Macross storyline that problem disappears anyway because of advances in cloning, but at the time the Earth got nearly wiped clean, I don't think they knew that would happen. I'm just thinking of the issues in a purely biological sense. Just due to physical limitations of the human body, if you're going to repopulate the species, you're going to want as many available females as possible. While men can potentially just keep producing kids, women aren't baby factories, and there's a limit to how many children they can have safely. Of course, I'm ignoring any emotional or psychological factors here entirely... this is more like what I kind of assumed would happen with the Vulcan race after the recent reboot Star Trek movie (that whole seven year wait thing isn't going to hold up well, I think). No matter how practical you can make it sound, you're not going to be able to mandate human reproductive trends without a nasty backlash. I remember watching some clip from the mid 80's about women flying F-14s, and how people were adjusting to that. I should probably revise or retract what I said before actually.. it's not so much that it's a female-unfriendly environment, it's just something I haven't seen in person, and the pilots I do know are all guys. I just have to remember that correlation isn't causality here I guess. The pilots I do know are a pretty rampant goofy kind of sausage fest, but whether they're like that all the time, or just because they know they're in an all guy environment is up for grabs. I think it'd be interesting to see what effect a few female pilots would have on the squadron. Personally, I wish I knew any female pilots myself. Just something about flightsuits...

Looks to me like that metal swing bar should pop right out of the backplate, but I guess the stress to get it out might be too much. It might just depend on rotating the bar to a specific angle, actually. It looks really possible from your photos, but I haven't tried taking mine apart that far, so I don't know how tightly that upper bar is lodged in that slot.

Well, didn't Jack Archer have a female wing-... uhh, I mean.... *looks around nervously, then points* Look! A diversion! *runs* I may have missed her being mentioned earlier, but Michael's sister was a pilot as well.. unfortunately, in her case, I think one of the biggest commonly portrayed obstacles to female pilots wound up being her downfall. Obviously you can't assume that relationships with other pilots will happen, and have a negative effect on their performance.. but it's a very real possibility that I imagine a lot of people would rather avoid altogether. The Zentraedi took care of it preemptively by having the men and women fight in separate groups to begin with. [edited for realizing what I typed didn't make sense even from my own experience] Yeah, what I had said here really was pretty much just assuming female pilots would cause drama. It obviously could happen, but no more than it already does between guys. In a Macross sense though, with the human race in the state it was, sending females into combat seems like it'd be a rather dumb thing to do.. If I was them, I'd be wanting to preserve all those essential internal organs necessary for making more humans.

Ok, I don't have time to completely take my 0S apart at the moment, but which part of the bar is mounted backwards? For it to work, both the upper bar and the hip crossbar piece should look like this. If both pieces are backwards, it might be a really simple fix. It looks like the main mount to the backplate isn't pinned the same way, and it might come out just by taking apart the wing area (3 main screws, the ones in the wings and one under the swing bar when you swing it toward the nose.. I don't think the two holding the shoulder mounts need to be removed). If the two pieces for the bar are flipped at the lower pin mount though, I think your best bet is just going to be applying VERY LIGHT direct pressure on the pin, maybe with a hammer or mallet. Fortunately, you're dealing with metal parts, so there's a little less to worry about than with plastic, but it can still break. I'd suggest something like a nail setting tool, if you have access to one. Basically, it's a rod with one fine tip and one fat one, used to gently tap nails below the surface. You'll need a REALLY fine one to do this though.. A regular nail might be better to use actually (smaller diameter than the pin) with the tip filed blunt to get solid contact with the pin. Once you've got that, it's just a matter of lining up the nail or nail setter on the pin, and gently tapping the nail until it pushes the pin out. The trick to this though.. it looks like the pin isn't knurled in the middle since it spins with the larger bar, but it might be knurled on one end, and that means you'll have to tap the non-knurled end to get it out. Your guess is as good as mine here, since I can't tell if there's any knurling at all.. but if tapping one end goes nowhere, try the other side and see if it moves. Hope that helps some, and remember be very gentle tapping with that hammer. For stuff like this I usually use a rubber mallet, just to be on the slightly safer side.

But is what's happening now, happening now?

My pair just came in the mail the other day, so I've been picking through the boxes. I'm going to build as far as I can without glue I think, just to get an idea of how much will need to actually be glued together. The paint scratching worries me some, but I think if I stick to high-vis 70's F-14 schemes, the majority of the moving parts will remain white. First things first though, I'm going to detail me some cockpits. Btw funny thing... I noticed they gave us DYRL markings for everything.. but what's with the TV pilot? Although, I suppose that's the perfect opportunity to save myself some money and make my own TV Roy.

Playing around with manual settings can be fun

I'll break this down really simply. I love the VF-25. What Bandai made is not a VF-25. Because if they had made one, I would love it. Just saying. I mean, I like it okay.. but I can say easily that it's the worst representation of any Macross aircraft I own. Honestly, no, it's not a bad toy. It's just poorly designed, not at all well thought out, badly painted, and a very half-assed representation of what it's supposed to be. If I hadn't seen the show, and didn't own the nearly perfect models (that Bandai also makes, funnily enough), I'd think they were great. What I equate it to roughly is if Hasegawa decided to release a VF-11 kit (finally)... but they decided it was too much work to make a good kit, and decided to make a scaled up version of an old badly proportioned 1/144 kit and pass it off with their other valk kits. The end result fills a need.. but is no where near the same quality as anything else in their model kit lineup. It's not terrible per-se.. the problem is that compared with any other valk produced in the past 10 years or so, it is just WAY behind the curve. The stupidest part is, Bandai can obviously do much better, since the VF-27 was such a quantum leap ahead of the VF-25. The Monster looks to be another leap beyond that. Knowing how experienced Bandai is with mecha, I get the impression that they really did just half-ass the VF-25, and figured they could get away with it. Given the difference in quality between the VF-25 and VF-27, I'd guess the design team behind the VF-25 was canned, and people who actually give a flying rat's ass replaced them. Nearly every change in the VF-27 is like Bandai saying "Yeah, we shoulda done it this way from the start..." It just reeks of the idea that Bandai didn't do a lick of research about their most direct competition (Yamato) before deciding on a final design for the VF-25. Long story short... in a world populated by Valks full of realistic detail and features, Bandai went and released something that would have been cool 10 years ago, but now just doesn't hold up. I know I'm being pretty harsh, but I'm really darn picky when it comes to engineering, and the design choices in the VF-25 make me cringe.

So a few weeks ago I was about to finally buy myself a better camera (upgrading from a 6 mp HP thing with a disgusting macro). Was planning on getting a Canon SX20IS, mainly for the all-in-one-ness of a superzoom, and with the intention of using it to learn the basics. I nearly hit the "buy" button about half a dozen times on Amazon, but I held off for.. who knows why, but it paid off, because they just came out with the SX30IS. Amazon said it wasn't released yet, so I waited... Walked into my local wallyworld sunday, and had to pull my jaw off my shoes, because they already had it. I live in the middle of nowhere practically (north of Edwards AFB about an hour), and this particular walmart seems to be getting a nice supply of camera-related goods. I got to play around with the Canon and Nikon DSLRs they had on display a bit (which was a nice intro to how they work), and finally walked out of the store with the SX30 ($430) and about $50 worth of assorted camera-related goods. Obviously this thing is no DSLR, but it's got a nice set of features that should keep my occupied learning to use them. I tried a few shots in the automatic modes, and portrait isn't bad, but I've been having fun playing with the full manual mode. The zoom on the thing is crazy (35x, sheesh), the 35mm equiv is roughly 24-840mm. I've mostly been focusing on macro shots though. Shutter speed goes between 15" and 1/3200, aperture from F2.7 to F8.0 (I think, I've been re-reading this thread all week to get a grasp on terminology). The manual focus mode is interesting, still need to get the hang of it. I may yet get a Nikon or Canon DSLR in the future, but I'd rather learn on something a little less fragile/expensive first, and not have to worry about wearing the camera out taking practice shots. For now though I have to go recharge the battery, I completely drained it fiddling around with the settings.

I'd have to agree, though I did buy my pair when they were on sale. It's one of the most problem free valks Yamato has come out with, if not the most.

It does look absolutely awesome, but I have to agree about the nose looking a bit.. weird. It's like it's too long and not drooped quite enough. Still beautiful though, and the droop might be a transformation issue. I do like the way they incorporated both the standard and EX version cockpits too, though I think the nose was reshaped more to use the bubble canopy on the EX.. that canopy looked quite a bit narrower than the standard one seen at the beginning of the series. Now they just need to make the extra weapons pack for it.

Looking good Micky, you're gonna inspire me to experiment with my own soon.. didn't realize the kits were so cheap on HLJ, so I just ordered two myself. Been meaning to grab a couple more tamiya paints too, so it was a good time to do it. So, now my v.2 VF-1 collection is up to 12... oy. I'll probably take a good long time to build them though.. probably half deciding how I want to paint them. I'll probably do one as either a pure 1970s VF-1 CAG scheme or a VF-142 one (I don't know why, but I love that paintscheme). The other I don't know about, but given my current location, I might do a modern VX-9 scheme, or possibly the old VX-4 "Vandy 1." We're talking pure US Navy markings too (no kites or SPACY) so I can sneak it in among the other real aircraft I keep on my desk. Actually, I'm still not sure.. I mean, I still have a couple 1/48 Hasegawa kits to play with, so I'll probably keep the complicated schemes there since they don't transform. Ideally, I'd like to actually make one scheme that's pure white to minimize the painting, so I might make one in the old Super Tomcat prototype scheme with the red stripes, or possibly the old F-18 prototype markings that the YF-19 supernova schemes were based on. So many possibilities.. I just wish I could get different heads with the kit, because now I've got a disproportionate number of S's for my little squadron. Oh well, they're easy enough to swap at least.

I think the collecting has subsided for a while.. it's been a few months since I got a new Valk. Totals now: 25 overall... yeesh. And I still need a decent place to display them. They're sitting all over my room. 1/48 1x VF-1J 1/60: 23 total 10x v.2 VF-1 1x YF-19 1x YF-21 1x VF-11B 1x VF-11C 2x VF-22S 2x SV-51 2x VF-0 2x VF-25 1x VF-27 1/100 Hi-Metal Fire Valk Once that 1/60 VF-19 comes out, I'm gonna be in trouble, I may buy half a dozen of those (depending on repaints)... and I might need to start thinking about getting a Bandai Monster.

Someone request some of that good old TIE Fighter happy funtime missile spam hot rod? Courtesy of the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade project:

Seconded, thirded, etc. I have two DX VF-25s, and I don't really regret getting them, but there really is no excuse for how crappy they are compared with anything else made this century. No research, lousy engineering, failtacular design choices, and paint that comes off if you breathe sideways.

I really miss the old Wing Commander games. I'm still itching to see someone attempt a complete remake of 1-3 (and possibly 4 and 5) in a new engine, using all computer cinematics (more like Mass Effect). I made a few WC ships for X-Wing Alliance back in high school, and still love those designs. Despite the obvious polygon-ality of the designs from 3, and the gaudy colors from 1-2, I always loved some of those designs (and really hated a couple others ). I love the Panther and Vampire from Prophecy too. Just for fun, here's some rendered cinematic versions that smooth out the hard polygon edges. I also always loved the Excalibur, boxy brute that it was. I've got a soft spot for a few SW designs too, mostly the X-Wing, no matter how impractical it is. To me, nothing from the prequels even comes close to approaching the designs in the original trilogy. After modding X-Wing Alliance for several years, some of my favorites are ones I wound up making up myself. I always released everything open-source, and it always cracks me up when I find one of my designs ported to another game. This one, sadly, never got made, but was designed to fit into the WC: Prophecy era. The one I had the most success with started as this: And after getting ported from X-Wing Alliance to Freelancer, ended up like this: I forget when I made it, but I'd never seen Babylon 5 at the time, and people only pointed out how much it resembles the Thunderbolt years later.

Yeah, that's that one that someone found on a random wall in a public restroom I think

The 1/60 VF-25 doesn't need any help looking ugly. But yes, I can't wait to see what happens with this design.

Lol... all this talk of the AT-AT is making me want to look for videos of little dogs and cats (better yet, puppies and kittens) attacking it out of fear. Only recent transformer I have is a MP Skywarp, and mine's been good so far, but I do tend to leave him in fighter mode most of the time. I did wind up getting 3 Bandai MF Valks (Michael, Movie Alto, and Brera), and while I wouldn't necessarily say I regret getting them (especially the VF-27, since it's pretty darn awesome), the quality of the engineering behind the VF-25 toys makes me cringe. I mean, I look at the models, and imagine what could have been, and just get sad. I was tempted to grab an armored Ozma, but after hearing the stress problems those have, I decided to just grab the model instead at some point. Anywho, back on topic somewhat... To be very fair, despite how nasty some of the flaws have been in Yamato's valks, we need to remember this wouldn't be as big an issue if we lived in Japan. Let's face it, we're out of their market area, they can't cater to our needs, and I think a large majority of us wouldn't even worry about broken parts if we could just call Yamato's hotline, and have spare parts on our doorstep within the week. As annoying as it is to have to replace broken parts, at least for me, the major hassle is in the distance/shipping/waiting, rather than the actual problems. Not to say Yamato can't improve their engineering so things don't happen as often, but if we could walk into our local store and exchange a broken valk for a new one off the shelves on the same day we bought it, I'd bet a lot of us wouldn't be nearly as concerned.

Well, if they actually do offer to replace the broken piece, take that option (duh ). It wasn't that painful to take apart. The only question is how much of the figure you might get attached to that piece. Odds are, you might get new arms and wings. You will have to reassemble the plane by reattaching the nose section, but aside from the small parts, it's not a difficult thing to do. When I took mine apart, the only hinge pins I had to fiddle with were the ones that hold the nose to the chest, and those are a free-spinning type with no friction, so don't worry about any stress from that. They just slip through big loops on the nose piece, and get sandwiched in a slot between the halves of the chest. The arms have the potential to be a little tricky, but only because the shoulder pads get in the way. If you tweak them enough, you can unscrew the arms at the shoulders without a huge amount of trouble. You just wind up having to reassemble the thing, which can be annoying because of the small parts. If you have to replace just the lower arms, things are much easier. I'll be glad to help out where I can, but I'm going on a business trip for 2 weeks to vegas, so I won't have my SV-51 with me to provide any pics of assembly or anything.

Well, on the plus side, if you do wind up getting a brand new one without having to send the broken one back, you've got a hefty stash of spare parts to use if something else breaks in the future. Actually.. does that broken one stay together in fighter at all? While I doubt that hinge would be really fixable, you could always glue the whole thing in fighter mode, and customize it at will, with no fear of scratching the paint during transformation. Sort of sad to make it fighter only, but I suppose it's better to have a nice fighter for display than a pile of spare parts.

Shoot, looks like I'll have to grab one of these at some point, it looks awesome with that mouth on it. The thing that always bugged me though about the Koenig.. why on earth does the nose have to fold for gerwalk mode? I mean, other than making it look like the original destroid? It looks goofy just hanging there like a.... nosecone. I'd probably keep it in shuttle mode, since I really do like that design, but I want to see what gerwalk mode looks like the with the nose still attached.

Frankly, considering how fragile the SV-51 looks (and actually IS), I'm kind of amazed it has such a relatively good reputation for quality (compared to things like the VF-1's shoulders). I mean, the main body is fine, but the arms, tails, and wings are all connected by such a complicated system of joints that look really prone to failure.. I'm amazed we haven't seen failures backed up in a mile high pile. Course.. on the other hand, I suppose you could attribute that partially to being an enemy valk.. I mean, if they don't sell well, no one's going to care if it breaks. The glued parts are a real issue though. I mean, I don't mind things being glued to be stronger.. but it makes repairing things yourself nearly impossible.