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Wave 1/72 VF-4 lightning


seti88

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that's just the base coats and a wash in the that shot. Hes fully painted now and the Checklist folder even has writing on the pages

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10 hours ago, kajnrig said:

In case anyone's interested, hobbylink.tv just did a video going over the VF-4 briefly, but more to my interest is the blog post they also put up, with clear high-res pictures of the kit snap-built. Great reference material if you're still on the fence about buying one.

https://hobbylink.tv/gunpla-tv-episode-278-vf-4-lightning-iii/

They put the nose cone on upside down in those photos. I'm currently building this kit and I'm glad to report that the fit is great!

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I recently had an assembly line going, trimming parts and testing the fit of the four kits I picked up from HLJ.  Everything goes together very smoothly when carefully trimmed, with the one exception being the small tabs/slots that sit above the intake ducts on the engine nacelle halves. 

Can't get to a picture at the moment, and mine are now trimmed to avoid the issue, but these tabs and slots tend to be slightly misshapen, and will cause a gap in the upper lip of the intakes, underneath the beam cannons.  This gap was pointed out in a previous photo of someone's completed build.

I'd recommend just cutting those tabs off, and filing the surrounding area flat to be sure the engine halves go together cleanly.  There's really nothing to be lost by doing that, and even if you're just snapping the pieces together, those tabs don't serve any particular purpose.

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WARNING: This post is likely to be offensive to fans of the kit. If you don't like independant opinions then don't bother reading.

I had a look over this kit and I have to say I am not impressed. Where are the fine details? The panel lines look like trenches and there are no rivets and panels. 

Then they have the gall to charge  5800 yen for it?  Highway robbery. 

Yes I am glad for steyrene VF-4 but I would rather Hasegawa had done. Big thumbs down do Wave's money grubbing and lazy engineering.

 

- Brett

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2 hours ago, Return To Kit Form said:

WARNING: This post is likely to be offensive to fans of the kit. If you don't like independant opinions then don't bother reading.

I had a look over this kit and I have to say I am not impressed. Where are the fine details? The panel lines look like trenches and there are no rivets and panels. 

Then they have the gall to charge  5800 yen for it?  Highway robbery. 

Yes I am glad for steyrene VF-4 but I would rather Hasegawa had done. Big thumbs down do Wave's money grubbing and lazy engineering.

 

- Brett

Bah. I'm a fan of the kit and I can see where you're coming from. No worries. ;) I too would have rather seen a Hasegawa kit. Wave tends to charge more all around for their Macross kits; probably it's an MSRP decided upon based on limited financial resources, relatively low projected sales, etc.

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I can kind of understand the higher price, being a niche design for a very niche market.  Far as the quality compared with other aircraft model releases though?  I'm not going to say I expect any more aircraft savvy than your typical Bandai attempt, because they don't typically make aircraft kits.

For what it's worth, they did a much better job at landing gear than Bandai ever has.

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IIRC, Wave started as a garage kit maker, and always had a more basic, anime style approach for their Macross kits (see their 1/100 Valks & Battroids), which works well if you don't hold them up against the hyperreal Hasegawa products, that come from an entirely different background. Unfortunately, Wave also carried over their pricing policy from the GK market, but then again, their kits cover a niche segment.

And as bad as Bandai delivered on the VF-1, their Delta and Frontier kits come pretty close to the Hase offerings in terms of surface detail.

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Thanks for being resonable guys :D

I don't get the higher price really. Hasegawa are selling their VF-31 with Lil Drakens for 4800 yen. That's a lot of steyrene compared to the VF-4 kit. With better details too.

Thing is if we don't let them know then they aren't going to try any harder next time. There are a few main stream kit makers like that too.  I'm talking about you Kitty Hawk haha.

 

- Brett

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I totally get you RTKF and agree!  The VF-4 is probably one of my favourite designs and I was so excited when I first heard of this 1/72 possibility.  But having seen it, it just seems "off" on so many little things that the overall impression isn't very favourable in my personal opinion.  I'm still going to hold my breath and wait for a Hasegawa rendition (in my fantasy).  Kudos for those of you here that are making this work!

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On 6/19/2018 at 10:57 AM, wm cheng said:

I totally get you RTKF and agree!  The VF-4 is probably one of my favourite designs and I was so excited when I first heard of this 1/72 possibility.  But having seen it, it just seems "off" on so many little things that the overall impression isn't very favourable in my personal opinion.  I'm still going to hold my breath and wait for a Hasegawa rendition (in my fantasy).  Kudos for those of you here that are making this work!

I agree with everything you said WM, and there are definitely guys on here that have made/ are making it work. 

I ordered 2, opened one up and was a little disappointed.  So I painted it aircraft grey, put the decals on and gave it to my son to play with.  It made him so happy and he was super excited about it, so just with that I'll say it wasn't a complete waste of $$$.

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Admittedly, the kit is a bit sparse on the details so I can understand where RTKF is coming from. But considering that this is a model of a fantasy jet seen oh so briefly in a direct-to-video anime, and something normally reserved for Wonderfest garage kit exclusives, I'm just glad that Wave released it as a styrene kit in a proper scale.

Price-wise, yeah it is a tad expensive. Even the Wings of Honneamise Schira-Dow kits from PM Office A (a company I've never heard of) were 4500yen.

That said, I'd like to believe that this kit sold like bonkers so that perhaps Hasegawa or even Bandai can be persuaded to release their own. But i'm not holding my breath. I purchased 2 of the Wave kits and hope to work on it sometime this year.

 

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I don't know what kind of sales numbers they might be getting, but I believe HLJ at least ran out their first stock of them, since I picked up a pair at "low stock" status.

I'm of two minds about the quality of the kit really.  It's good quality molding, fits together very cleanly, and looks enough like a VF-4 for me to be happy to have on my shelf.  It's not really up to current standard of detail in aircraft kits, but it still manages to be leaps and bounds better quality molding than many modern kit companies can pull off.

Hopefully someday soon Hasegawa and Bandai will catch on to the design, and decide it deserves even further upgrades.  Until then though, I'm interested to see what sorts of custom updates people will apply to this kit. :) 

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On ‎4‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 5:47 PM, NZEOD said:

If you want to model the vf4 in trappi g mode... as in arrest r hook down and touching down nose high... you'll need to remove and reset the lower pod underside fins to be more horizontal as otherwise they will strike the deck long before the undercarriage would. 

The master file implies they can fold out like this

I at first thought this mold was already molded in "retracted ventral fins" mode (or close to it).  The sheer fact that it can sit on its landing gear at all, and not the fins, indicates this.   Did they just "fiddle with all the angles" so that it's not really right for any configuration?  The VF-4's fins don't move the ENTIRE fin, just "most" of it--the base of the fin stays at the same angle all the time, it "bends in the middle" to flatten out. 

Can you swap the fins, left/right?   Depending on exactly how things are molded, that may change the mounting angle so they're more downwards, for an in-flight display.  

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On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 5:52 PM, David Hingtgen said:

I at first thought this mold was already molded in "retracted ventral fins" mode (or close to it).  The sheer fact that it can sit on its landing gear at all, and not the fins, indicates this.   Did they just "fiddle with all the angles" so that it's not really right for any configuration?  The VF-4's fins don't move the ENTIRE fin, just "most" of it--the base of the fin stays at the same angle all the time, it "bends in the middle" to flatten out. 

Can you swap the fins, left/right?   Depending on exactly how things are molded, that may change the mounting angle so they're more downwards, for an in-flight display.  

There's nothing to really be swapped out, because the fins themselves are attached to a bottom panel of the engine nacelles.  It would be a pretty simple mod to cut them off and remount them at the correct angle, but no, the fins aren't molded as if they bend in the middle, and they're not low enough to be correct.  If anything, they look like they're molded permanently in the sort of saggy position you'd get from a hydraulic pressure loss after shutdown.

Kit quality aside, the design definitely has some accuracy issues.  The wings are so close to level that it looks like someone vertically scaled down everything aft of the canards.  Part of that is probably due to the nacelles being canted inward toward the top, which really makes no sense.  That tilt might be relatively easy to mod if you just chop off the giant blocky tabs and mount the nacelles manually, but it's a lot of extra work.

One thing I did do once I snapped one together is go back and hold the kit up frame-by-frame to the screen during the ending of FB2012.  The kit matches the animation very well, but it seems like they missed out on the line-art showing the alignment of the control surfaces.

Edit: Found this old topic while browsing for line-art of the VF-4, and if my memory is right, the kit looks very closely based on these planform drawings, with the exception of the angles of certain parts.  I can see a little bit of tilt in the nacelles, but nothing like the kit has.

I can't find any detailed reference to how the ventral fins fold, aside from the general angles.  Is there another detail sketch of them somewhere?

Edited by Chronocidal
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The annoying thing is that the VF-4's wing/canard/fin/ventral angles are all doubles/mirrors of each other (and thus, easy to replicate)----it's like the YF-23 does with its leading and trailing edges, only applied on a different axis.    The left wing is parallel to the right canard, and vice-versa.  The tailfin angle is the same as the ventral fin angle:

vf4b_04.jpg

 

There's really only 2 angles for the entire plane---wing/canard (10-15 degrees off horizontal?) and tailfin/ventral fin (15-20 degrees off vertical?)

 

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The 1/60th version is also a lot thicker, mostly because its central section has to have room for the thighs, and it gives a slightly different overall anhedral to the wing planform.  The kit looks like it was squashed down and flattened in comparison. 

What I'd like to see is some definitive angle for the engine nacelles.  They do seem to be tilted a little in the line-art, but it's tough to tell how much.

That set of plan views always looked more practical and realistic, compared with the other common 3-view line art, but this one gives the whole aircraft a different set of angles.

VF4plan.jpg.ab574f354820cdd4fbabdde27c29d606.jpg

The higher canard angle seems to be a popular change to the design though.  It's definitely shown that way in the Master File, and depending on which frame you freeze of FB2012, they can look higher than the fairly flat angle of that graph paper schematic.  I almost feel like that flatter angle is too flat, even if it lines up with the opposite wing angle. 

It might be partly from the sense that the inner wing needs to be thicker to house the thighs, which would naturally fit a steeper angle for the outer wings... but that's only an issue for the 1/60th design, and actually throws an entirely different wrench in the works, because then it looks like the outer wings need to be thicker to blend in. :p 

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Huh, yep, that page makes me think Wave just went directly from the Master File for the kit.  Not the worst they could have done, but they didn't get the ventral fin angles right either. :huh: 

I don't think I quite mind the higher canard angle so much as I mind the main wings looking too flat.  That was the first thing I noticed about the kit from the earliest CAD teaser images.

Edited by Chronocidal
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  • 2 weeks later...
4 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

Gwyn tweeted this last June 29. Weapon Set for VF-4. And upcoming kit project. ;) 

Hm... the weapons appear to be the same as included in the Hasegawa VF-1 weapons set. Reaction missile might be slightly different, but otherwise I think the older kit would probably work just as well (and maybe look better? Dunno.).

As for the next project, I'm all in for a VF-171. Hell to the frakking yes.

But what about Battroid mode VF-4 first? And Gerwalk? Come now, you can't just leave the trifecta un-trifected.

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Just now, kajnrig said:

Hm... the weapons appear to be the same as included in the Hasegawa VF-1 weapons set. Reaction missile might be slightly different, but otherwise I think the older kit would probably work just as well (and maybe look better? Dunno.).

As for the next project, I'm all in for a VF-171. Hell to the frakking yes.

But what about Battroid mode VF-4 first? And Gerwalk? Come now, you can't just leave the trifecta un-trifected.

Hasegawa does fine, the only trifecta is the VF-1 for them.

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7 hours ago, slide said:

Hasegawa does fine, the only trifecta is the VF-1 for them.

Yes, and I've pilloried and will continue to pillory them for it, but the new kits they pull out of a hat always distract me long enough for them to make a getaway. One day...

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Why would they even put the VF-22 as an option?

Could they possibly have been floating the idea of a transforming model? The design sketches they showed were of its transformations.

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12 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Gwyn tweeted this last June 29. Weapon Set for VF-4. And upcoming kit project. ;)

 

 

 

VA-3! GO GO GO!

...but a VF-171 would be nice too. They should scrap the VF-22, as Hasegawa has that covered. A VF-9 or VF-14 would be cooler instead :D

 

Quote
On 6/19/2018 at 2:12 AM, Return To Kit Form said:

WARNING: This post is likely to be offensive to fans of the kit. If you don't like independant opinions then don't bother reading.

I had a look over this kit and I have to say I am not impressed. Where are the fine details? The panel lines look like trenches and there are no rivets and panels. 

Then they have the gall to charge  5800 yen for it?  Highway robbery. 

Yes I am glad for steyrene VF-4 but I would rather Hasegawa had done. Big thumbs down do Wave's money grubbing and lazy engineering.

 

- Brett

 

Yeah ... I was a bit disappointed too, but at least I got an affordable VF-4 kit to line up with my other 1/72 macross kits. The resin VF-4s were always way too expensive, and there are bigger mistakes on the VF-4 structure on these. If Hasegawa would come up with a VF-4 I would be the first to buy it, but I'll have to stick with the Wave VF-4 for now :D

Edited by Urashiman
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38 minutes ago, Urashiman said:

VA-3! GO GO GO!

...but a VF-171 would be nice too. They should scrap the VF-22, as Hasegawa has that covered. A VF-9 or VF-14 would be cooler instead :D

 

VF-11MAXL would be my choice. ^_^

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 I would be happy for a VF-171 There’s such a huge arrange of options from fast packs to radar domes and colors schemes already presented in the anime.. not so much for the VF-4 or even VF-22. Milking opportunity here.. Hasegawa should take the bait

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3 hours ago, 007-vf1 said:

 

 I would be happy for a VF-171 There’s such a huge arrange of options from fast packs to radar domes and colors schemes already presented in the anime.. not so much for the VF-4 or even VF-22. Milking opportunity here.. Hasegawa should take the bait

any version of the 17/171 will be fine...

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18 hours ago, Urashiman said:

Yeah ... I was a bit disappointed too, but at least I got an affordable VF-4 kit to line up with my other 1/72 macross kits. The resin VF-4s were always way too expensive, and there are bigger mistakes on the VF-4 structure on these. If Hasegawa would come up with a VF-4 I would be the first to buy it, but I'll have to stick with the Wave VF-4 for now 

Agreed, I had one of the resin kits and it wasn't great.

 

 I don't think we will see companies compete for the limited Macross hobby dollar. If you look you don't see Bandai doing non tranforming 1/72 scale. It looks like it is much more of a collaboration effort these days for where each company tackles a different subject (or variation of the same subject i.e. transforming) without competition, so I am pretty sure that the wave VF-4 is going to be it.

With that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if the VF-171 is next. There should be a bit of demand for it after Frontier and delta with loads of variants. 

 

- Brett

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎6‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 2:34 PM, electric indigo said:

Here's the Master File's take on the issue:

 

That doesn't even LOOK like a VF-4, from head-on.  I've had some issues with the master files before, but this is the worst by far.   Even ignoring wing/fin angles---it looks like they used the F-15 or something for the nose/fuselage/canopy head-on.  

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In their defense, they produce some of the best Macross fighter artworks besides Tenjin's. I see them like DJs interpreting some original artist's work.

Btw, is there any explanation for the brown/burnt iron (?) panel that runs around the lower half of the nacelles at the aft end?

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