Bandai 1/72 Scale Transformable Macross Δ Kits

[Chronocidal]

Wait.. did they not even bother to color the silver parts on the CF version?  That's rather disappointing.

Oh, well, makes it easier to make customs I suppose.

[kajnrig]

It would have been too much hassle. Even the Hs only has the most minimal gold parts, with the majority of colors being represented by the decals. They would have had to engineer two entirely separate molds for ostensibly the same(ish) craft.

[seti88]

Hmm is this the first valk with ear lobes?  heheh....looking good!

[valhary]

http://mt.sohu.com/dm/d20170328/130785095_502864.shtml

[Graham]

Really like to head on the standard version, much better than the Anubuis head on Keith's.

mm........I just noticed the railgun muzzles are exposed in fighter mode unlilke the DX toy.

 

[kajnrig]

28 minutes ago, Graham said:

mm........I just noticed the railgun muzzles are exposed in fighter mode unlilke the DX toy.

 

You mean the arm cannons/behind-cockpit guns? Those are railguns?

On 3/25/2017 at 3:23 AM, kajnrig said:

The Hasegawa kit allows you to build that section with the guns deployed or stowed; the gold that covers the barrels in fighter mode can apparently open, eject, or otherwise make way to expose them. It's a mechanism that just didn't make the transition to the toys, models, and animation. The Bandai kit omits these covers entirely and just has the barrels exposed all the time, even in fighter mode.

Bandai kit: http://dalong.net/review/etc/md03/p/md03_91.jpg

 

[seti88]

Interesting point..the railgun muzzles supposedly have a retractable cowl (?) as per hasegawa's draken kit - 

Tomytec has em as a gunport..

And bandai has best of both worlds with the 1/72 kits having it opened and the DX/mechacolle with the gun nozzles covered up.

Edited April 3, 2017 by seti88

[Graham]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

You mean the arm cannons/behind-cockpit guns? Those are railguns?

 

Yes, they are 27mm railguns.

[Graham]

So best bet is the Sv-262's 27mm railguns have a retractable or sliding door covering the muzzles which is closed when not firing to maintain aerodynamics (and possibly stealth). Like the opening door for the F-22's 20mm vulcun cannon,which only opens when  the pilot depresses the trigger, in order to preserve the radar cross section (RCS) and maximize stealth.

[seti88]

No wonder the draken has a shielded canopy. Probably scare the pilot half to death and not to mention obstruct vision should those railguns start volleying from right behind the cockpit in an open glass canopy.

[Duymon]

15 hours ago, Graham said:

Really like to head on the standard version, much better than the Anubuis head on Keith's.

mm........I just noticed the railgun muzzles are exposed in fighter mode unlilke the DX toy.

 

wow....the difference is crazy.

cf's give a real vf-27 vibe with their heads while keith's is like wtf?!

[Chronocidal]

Hmm, I wonder what it would look like if I mashed up the parts from a Keith kit to give the green one some gold highlights..

Wouldn't be accurate, but it might look pretty nice.

I do find the advertisement for the kit funny though, for specifically calling out the "lock gimmick" for the legs.. which is literally a big removable bracket that you have to use to keep the thing together in fighter mode.   I love how the kit goes together, but the parts swapping and lack of any hands at all in fighter mode are a bit disappointing.

[mickyg]

 

It also looks as though the decals are not silver but some form of gray as well.  Please tell me they're just not photographing well.

On 02/04/2017 at 2:35 PM, Chronocidal said:

Wait.. did they not even bother to color the silver parts on the CF version?  That's rather disappointing.

Oh, well, makes it easier to make customs I suppose.

 

[seti88]

i thk they screwed up on the colors for the stickers...

[kajnrig]

The gold is dull on the Hs kit as well. Compare them to the Hasegawa decals and you can see the clear difference in quality.

[mickyg]

I'll have mine when SAL shipping gets it here. Interested to see how it will work or if I'll need to paint it to get the look I want. 

I started on my 31F kit tonight and built the head. I like how the sprue marks are mostly hidden but think the clear blue eyes are a bit wasted, given how Darke they appear when it's all closed up. 

So I painted chrome silver on the back of them. It sort of helps. In hindsight, white would probably have been a better choice. 

I do like how at least this part fits together though. I can tell the kits have improved a lot over the years since Frontier kits were released. 

Blue is from a blue Gundam marker, brassy metal around the "jaw" is a mix of gold and steel Mr Metal Color, and the eye is under coated with chrome silver from Mr Metal Color as well.

[Chronocidal]

The kits have gotten simpler than the old VF-25s for sure, but I'm not sure that helped in the 31's case.  The kit isn't bad, but there are a lot of parts that really need to be glued, and the mechanism for the weapons pod never seems to line up correctly somehow.

I like the 262 kit better overall, but I wish they'd worked harder on at least trying to include some basic fists into fighter mode, and thought of some better way to lock the legs together than the removable bracket you have to use.  The way the main wing pivots are attached is also really fragile, as I found out when I snapped one of the tiny cover plates in half.  Why they didn't make that a single piece, I'll never understand.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Chronocidal

[mickyg]

I didn't use any glue on the VF-25G kit I built but plan to on this build.  I've already used some extra thin cement on the white halves of the head, right at the front.  There was no way the seam would have been closed otherwise.  I expect there will be a few more parts like that along the way.

Looking forward to continuing on this one, which is something I definitely didn't feel when I was nearing the end of the 25G.  Thanks for all the tips and observations from everyone too.  Means I know a lot better what is that I'm getting myself into.

[kajnrig]

Tangentially related question: Do you guys fret over seam lines much? I tend to get overly paranoid about them, gluing and trying to remove seam lines even where there might not be a need. The top and bottom halves of a Hasegawa VF nose cone, for instance. The seam is pretty obvious, but the fit is impeccable, and sometimes a really good fit is enough to get rid of a seam line, but I always glue/cement/putty it anyway before painting it. I don't know how good it looks painted but unglued. There are other areas where this is the case, usually wings and tail fins and the like, and I always wonder about this when I tackle them.

With Bandai kits at least, you can be fairly sure that it'll be an "all or nothing" type deal, where the seam lines are noticeable and require putty/cement OR hidden by crafty parts separation.

[sketchley]

47 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Tangentially related question: Do you guys fret over seam lines much? I tend to get overly paranoid about them, gluing and trying to remove seam lines even where there might not be a need. The top and bottom halves of a Hasegawa VF nose cone, for instance. The seam is pretty obvious, but the fit is impeccable, and sometimes a really good fit is enough to get rid of a seam line, but I always glue/cement/putty it anyway before painting it. I don't know how good it looks painted but unglued. There are other areas where this is the case, usually wings and tail fins and the like, and I always wonder about this when I tackle them.

With Bandai kits at least, you can be fairly sure that it'll be an "all or nothing" type deal, where the seam lines are noticeable and require putty/cement OR hidden by crafty parts separation.

I don't fret about them too much - if they're not in a place that they shouldn't logically be in!  LOL

For example, a vertical line on a VF nose cone is out of place, but a horizontal one is plausible.

Nevertheless, one trick I picked up from Japanese hobby magazines, is to put glue on both sides of a seam, and press the parts firmly together, so that some of the melted plastic starts to come out from the seam line.  It's a poor man's filler, but in 9 out of 10 cases, it fills up the seams adequately, with the minimum of sanding afterwords (it helps, especially with the snap together kits, to cut off any inside (or hidden) knobs, etc., that prevent you from applying the maximum force on the seam.  Note: not your maximum force.  What the part can handle.  LOL).

[Chronocidal]

Generally speaking, yes, I tend to try and seal and sand seams, but I usually don't go anywhere beyond sketchley's method above, just letting glue ooze fill the seams, and sanding it smooth.

On older kits, this might not be enough, but more recent things from Hasegawa and Bandai barely need more than this.

I will say though that I hesitate to use too much glue on transforming kits, or anything with lots of moving parts.  Those seams may not look the best, but if they aren't horribly noticeable, they also leave more room for the kit to twist and flex as the parts move.  I would hate to have a kit all sanded and sealed smooth, and then crack the surface when I try to move something.

[mickyg]

Absolutely agree on the cracking thing with parts that need to flex. 

I didn't hesitate on the head part, as this is the "face" and a vertical seem both looks ugly and it's easy to fix. That, and it doesn't need to flex. 

[kajnrig]

Okay, thanks everyone. Yeah, I tend to get a bit too invested in seam line removal for my own good. It gets especially rough with Bandai's articulated kits, where the articulation proves to be an additional source of worry. (What to glue/paint/mask and in what order to get good paint coverage while preserving articulation...) I don't recall there being too many seam line issues on the Bandai Delta kits, but it's good to get thoughts nonetheless.

[seti88]

 

[ridgebacks]

On 4/3/2017 at 10:26 AM, seti88 said:

No wonder the draken has a shielded canopy. Probably scare the pilot half to death and not to mention obstruct vision should those railguns start volleying from right behind the cockpit in an open glass canopy.

Well, the 2x little draken for the 262 is a standard equipment for even the cannon folder pilots. They mostly only firing the little draken's gun instead of their own railgun. A whole battle ready 262 would costs even more than a 31 because those extra parts that needed for a standard flight load.

[seti88]

True but the possibility of railguns used in flight is there, as evidenced by the gun ports behind the canopy. In case the lil drakens get decimated i suppose.

[mickyg]

Just got my Ba version in and the stickers and decals actually look pretty good for a Bandai kit!  I'm surprised.  And the metallic sheen looks convincing too.

[kajnrig]

What a coincidence. I just received my Ba in the mail as well. Can't wait to get back home and open it up, subpar decal quality be damned.

[Chronocidal]

So I haven't had time to take pictures of this, but since I've been transforming my 1/72 262 kits a whole lot more than my DX (the transformation is orders of magnitude simpler, and much more fun on the model), I've been finding some little weak points in the kit that my just be stress related, but might also be molding flaws due to plastic flow lines.

First and foremost, all of the little panels that snap over the main wing mounts (the long thin pieces that snap in beside the arm behind the cockpit) like to break a lot.  They're under a decent amount of stress, and they're very thin pieces, so for the sake of holding things together, I glued them down over the wing hinges, and then gave the upper surface of the panel a solid coating of glue as well, to melt them into a single piece with the tabs that snap into them.  There's only very minor detail to be lost on those panels, so once the glue is rock hard, I'll sand it smooth.

Second, I noticed a crack forming in one of the long thin panels that the wings are connected to.  It's the longer piece that connects directly to the wing hinges held down by the tiny panels I mentioned above.  It's only a hairline stress fracture that hadn't gone much past the edge of the plastic, but it seems to follow a flow line in the plastic.

I may have stressed this piece myself by trying to pull the legs out without the wings folded up enough, but the stress mark mostly showed on the underside of this piece, along the shortest distance across the part.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, for structural reasons), the underside of this panel is hollowed out.  I cut a piece of sheet styrene about 1mm thick to fit in the recess, coated the entire area in a thin layer of styrene cement, and then covered the entire area with an extra layer of plastic.  I only extended the plastic about a quarter of an inch on either side of the stress mark, but it might be possible to add quite a bit more.  So far, the part is holding, and doesn't interfere with any moving parts, so I may cut similar reinforcement plates and glue them onto all of my 262 kits.

Third, and this might be really minor, the forward landing gear doors are paper thin, and love to crack in half at the hinge point.  If you don't intend on using the gear, I'd say just glue them shut, because they can open on their own, and get caught between panels while transforming.

It might seem funny to worry about reinforcing the model kits, but I actually really prefer the model's transformation to the 1/60 DX version.  It feels a lot better thought out, and seems to have about half as many moving parts.  I've probably transformed my Keith kit a couple dozen times by this point, and it's doing just fine, aside from the parts mentioned above.  I might disassemble and glue one together to see how solid it can get though, because certain parts do like to pop off.

[Skypoet]

Thanks Chronocidal and Mickyg for the inputs. You guys make me feel like getting a 262Ba, and I still have to paint and decal a 262H, a 31J and a 1A/S :-)

They're just so much fun to build while reasonably affordable, and I was too lazy/busy to do more than build them and play with them.

I'm glad to see that some people love the Bandai transformable Macross kits as much as I do!

(And that it's pointless to desire a DX 262!)

Edited May 2, 2017 by Skypoet
spelling mistake

[kajnrig]

I snapped together the Ba last night and came out with some minor notes:

- The circular pieces (H5 and H6) that go onto the swiveling shoulder joints and which the arms then plug into, I couldn't get them to fit in without being crooked for the longest time. After a while I managed to get them to fit, but it was a chore.

- The kit still has unsightly gaps and misaligned pieces, but that's just part and parcel to being a transformable kit. I've grudgingly accepted that as the trade-off. I just got the Hasegawa Ba as well, so it'll be fun to see them side by side.

[mickyg]

On 29/04/2017 at 5:26 AM, Chronocidal said:

So I haven't had time to take pictures of this, but since I've been transforming my 1/72 262 kits a whole lot more than my DX (the transformation is orders of magnitude simpler, and much more fun on the model), I've been finding some little weak points in the kit that my just be stress related, but might also be molding flaws due to plastic flow lines.

First and foremost, all of the little panels that snap over the main wing mounts (the long thin pieces that snap in beside the arm behind the cockpit) like to break a lot.  They're under a decent amount of stress, and they're very thin pieces, so for the sake of holding things together, I glued them down over the wing hinges, and then gave the upper surface of the panel a solid coating of glue as well, to melt them into a single piece with the tabs that snap into them.  There's only very minor detail to be lost on those panels, so once the glue is rock hard, I'll sand it smooth.

Second, I noticed a crack forming in one of the long thin panels that the wings are connected to.  It's the longer piece that connects directly to the wing hinges held down by the tiny panels I mentioned above.  It's only a hairline stress fracture that hadn't gone much past the edge of the plastic, but it seems to follow a flow line in the plastic.

I may have stressed this piece myself by trying to pull the legs out without the wings folded up enough, but the stress mark mostly showed on the underside of this piece, along the shortest distance across the part.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, for structural reasons), the underside of this panel is hollowed out.  I cut a piece of sheet styrene about 1mm thick to fit in the recess, coated the entire area in a thin layer of styrene cement, and then covered the entire area with an extra layer of plastic.  I only extended the plastic about a quarter of an inch on either side of the stress mark, but it might be possible to add quite a bit more.  So far, the part is holding, and doesn't interfere with any moving parts, so I may cut similar reinforcement plates and glue them onto all of my 262 kits.

Third, and this might be really minor, the forward landing gear doors are paper thin, and love to crack in half at the hinge point.  If you don't intend on using the gear, I'd say just glue them shut, because they can open on their own, and get caught between panels while transforming.

It might seem funny to worry about reinforcing the model kits, but I actually really prefer the model's transformation to the 1/60 DX version.  It feels a lot better thought out, and seems to have about half as many moving parts.  I've probably transformed my Keith kit a couple dozen times by this point, and it's doing just fine, aside from the parts mentioned above.  I might disassemble and glue one together to see how solid it can get though, because certain parts do like to pop off.

Great tips Chrono!

So I can safely assume that your mods don't affect transformation at all?  I haven't dived into my kit yet so am unfamiliar with how these attach and what they do at this point.

[Chronocidal]

I haven't changed anything about the transformation, just melted a few pieces together to make them more solid, and strengthened one of the wing supports.  I'll work out the details more as I build more of the kits.

[seti88]

 

[mickyg]

Nice!  Roid's?