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Also on the table

Thanks for the info, Mike. SDCC is still over a month away, and with all the reviewer reveals, I would have thought they'd do the official SS86 Megs reveal sooner rather than later, if for no other reason, to take advantage of the momentum. Moreover, I'd guess they'd have something bigger to show off at the Con. Anyway, I wish they would project these things to allay conjecture and help fans to plan for PO days. I got Venom, Micronus Prime, and Alpha Trion through Hasbro Pulse (gotta make that Premium fee pay for itself). I was at the doctor's office trying to do it by phone and I was having a heck of a time trying to use Paypal, my usual payment method. I ended up just using my card and finally got the order to go through. I fully expected Venom or AT to be sold out quickly, but having just checked the site, all three of the figs I POed this morning are still available. Had I known that that would be the case, I would've waited until I got home, but you never know with these things. Anyway, when they finally put SS86 Megatron up for PO, I fully expect it to sell out very quickly, so I'm hoping it falls on a day when I have nothing scheduled. Digits crossed.

I get the feeling that this show may end up only the 12 episodes. Things seem a bit rushed in the last couple episodes.

Definitely an oddball, wonder if they’ll do the recolor as well looks like the preorder is up tomorrow at the p Bandai USA store

I think I’d put the acolyte at the bottom then obi then boba and Ahsoka as a tie then it gets tough for me because Andor had a flawed start but got better then the second season felt a bit jumbled, Skeleton crew was kinda diminished by its ending and Mando got trashy in its last season, but those three I think overall were the best of the starwars shows.

What it sounds like? They weren't happy with the tab being inserted into a crevice that was painted black, because it could remove the black paint... So they just added two more gaping holes, with nothing to hide them. Makes me really glad I didn't care about this release.

My read of your earlier images is that the Gefion's actually about the right size. The game itself, of course, plays fast and loose with scale on all large objects for the same of gameplay and visual appeal as noted previously, but even corrected for scale you showed that the Gefion's scale in-game is not THAT far off. A VF-25 can still get through the gate. It doesn't need to be big enough to hold 40 fighters either, it's meant to be an extremely small ship that can only hold a couple fighters, so IMO it's pretty darn close as it is. Making it big and capacious enough to rival a Guantanamo for capacity with even more firepower both defeats its purpose in the story and the purpose of the Guantanamo. Consider that Macross Frontier is not the only series to show the Guantanamo-class launching fighters. It's much easier to assume that the texture used on the low-detail model for distance shots is simply inaccurate, or that the larger hangar gates have been closed with an armored door similar to what we briefly see in Macross Delta. Eh... it does and it doesn't. Macross Chronicle doesn't give an exact number, but multiple sources including Chronicle say it's roughly the same size as the Northampton-class stealth frigate, and/or that it's a derivative of the Northampton-class stealth frigate. The Macross Elysion-type is probably the one ship in Macross where I am not happy with the official size. It feels like it was made to be MUCH smaller than it allegedly is. Especially since its fighter complement, in total, is only like 20 planes despite having two carriers attached to it. It feels like it was made to be the same size as the Macross Quarter officially is, not double that. Looking back at it, I don't think they ever really present the Acshio district as being far away from everything. It's abandoned because it's rundown as all get-out, but anytime Mylene has to get there she gets there within just a few minutes and it's basically walking distance from the parks that Basara's constantly performing in. Half the time, people don't even bother to drive and just walk there which makes sense given that at one point IIRC we see Mylene has to drive her car down a staircase to get there. It's basically just the Jeniuses who seem to take cars into that area. I don't think that racetrack is actually meant to be inside a Megaroad-class ship. Look at the sky in the OP, the Megaroad-class didn't have a seamless holographic skybox like the New Macross-class does and there's no sign of the structural members that you should be able to see from the ground. I think that's just meant to be a jump cut to elsewhere (and elsewhen?). That's incorrect on several levels. Officially, Macross runs on broad strokes continuity and there is no "canon". No one version of any given story is "true". The creators play Multiple Choice Past whenever they do a new series leading to some interesting mixing and matching, most blatantly in Macross Delta which devoted the better part of an episode to a history lesson that freely mixed bits from the TV and movie versions of previous titles. The official setting treats both versions as equally valid, and generally regards the DYRL? designs as postwar improvements to the TV series designs. The DYRL? VF-1 being a later production block of VF-1, the DYRL? Macross being a post-war repair/remodel of the ship and the design of the later mass production type using parts diverted from shipyards, etc. If you look in Ernest Johnson's office in Macross Delta, he's a got a TV Macross model for decoration, so it clearly does exist.

I got that same email and thought it was funny how they highlighted the "may now contact customer support to request shipment" part. It's hard to read on my phone and I thought it was some spoiler they were trying to hide.

That's what I thought. I actually did try to use a brown wash after the flat coat and it was messy. I had to rub it off rather well to remove what happened. I don't know any other way to do something like that. As you can see her standing next to the bottle of Tamiya cement, she's real tiny, like not even 6 inches tall. I painted her eyes and gold jewelry using optivisors and I added the glints of light in her eyes with a toothpick at the end. I can't really notice any such flaws on model kits until I get up real close to take photos. Then I notice the specks of dust, imperfections on paint lines, etc. Just wash the crap out of the resin with degreasing detergent. Soak the parts for days. Scrub with a toothbrush and pumice powder if there aren't delicate parts that can break (like strands of hair and such). Lately I've begun giving the parts a temporary soak in lacquer thinner too as I am sick of paint lifting off. It happened a few times with this Nadia figure I've finished. Like everything seems to be going well and then I lift up masking and it yanks the primer and paint off, down to the bare resin. Ever seen what happens to Thunder at the end of Big Trouble in Little China? I feel like that when it happens.

So far, the only series I did not like was Acolyte with Boba as a close second. I really found myself enjoying Mando, Ahsoka, Skelton Crew and Obi-Wan, in that order. Ahsoka left off at a good cliffhanger an I have good hopes that they'll stick season two as well.

A little of George Reeves in the face there.

You could use Mandarake when it's available again! Just mark it to get notified! https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1299652743&ref=list&keyword=dx chogokin macross&lang=en

Love the paint scheme. One of my favorites.

I would pull the "animation error" card on the "Maizuru" model instead of the "Maiduru" model, yeah. We never see it very often (I can only remember the scene from Frontier 1, and Itsuwari no Utahime), whereas the Maiduru model shows up all the time. But here's the thing. The one thing I actually care about really is "make the Gefion work as a carrier without changing its model". It is a very very nice model, it is just too small. But it doesn't need to be *four times* the size to work - the hangar pods are wide and tall enough to work at just *twice* the size, if I throw out the "battroid walks in the back door" screenshot as an animation error. There's enough clearance - barely - to move fighters from the pods into the hull; and the hull would have enough volume to hold around 40 fighters. And now that we have a modern carrier version of the Northampton, we toss out the Stargazer animation, and declare "Stargazer was a Gefion-type all along". The script, aside from the VFX callouts, will work. From there, let's look at what scaling each ship up by the same factor does for us: Starting with the Maiduru model, the largest hangar access ports will now be large enough to squeeze a VF through, and the small ones are big enough for a Ghost. We're tossing the Maizuru model as an animation error, it is not plot relevant that the Guantanamo-class is a specific size beyond it being able to launch fighters. The Stealth Cruiser does not have a stated size in the first place, our estimates are based on the size of the Northamptons it shares the scene with anyway. Scaling it up to twice the size just means it's 2 x unknown. The Quarter, I've complained about for years and years is too small to do what we see it doing in the show. The ARMD-L is too thin for a hangar, the elevators on the model are too small for the fighters, and at one point we see it flying in formation with *dozens* of SMS VF-25As who which had to come from somewhere, and there is no room inside that ship for them. Scaling it up to twice the size solves nearly everything. I would not bet 100% on the hangar capacity, but it's a lot less implausible at least. The Elysion, as mentioned a few times already, looks like it was modeled by a VFX artist at one size, and then some time after episode 2 aired, someone outside the VFX department declared it was the height of Burj Kalifa and then the model was resized without any further work being done, resulting in a bunch of weirdness. Like the VF-31 not being able to fit through the hangar access ports between the main flight deck and the upper flight deck. Scaling it up to twice its "canon" size would basically restore it to where it was originally, and allow VFs to use the facilities, as it were. The Uraga... doesn't need a resize, that one was well thought through at its canon size, and it's almost a shame to change it. If I can't write off the size discrepancy as an animation error, well at least it now has an easier time handling large battroids like Queadluun-Rau/Rhea, or the VB-6 König Monster. The New Macross Class... also doesn't need a resize, other than for matching the animation. But at least scaling them up will also scale the cities up, and give four times more area and eight times the volume to play around with. And if we play a little with the "new design iterations supersede old versions of the same design", then City 7 is now Island-One sized, but double the canon, which means that scenes like Basara living in a slum miles from the city are more plausible, because there are actual miles to drive! If we want to go even further and bring up ships which never share a scene with any of the above? DYRL Macross would benefit greatly from being twice the size because there'd be room for a cityscape inside the ship, and I think I measured at one point that the ARMDs at their canon size would have trouble with the launch scene from the opening sequence because the ports are too small. I'll have to revisit that sometime. I don't remember if the DYRL Macross ever punched anything in the face that would need to be rescaled, but I'm willing to call "animation error" to avoid this becoming a problem. Megaroad-01 at double the size might actually have room for that racetrack from the M3 intro. TV Macross would not work, though, because Daedalus and Prometheus are already ridiculously large for surface ships. But TV Macross is technically not canon anyway because it was superseded by the DYRL version. Macross The First Macross would not work either, for the same reason as above. Edit: Illustration of what 2x size will do for certain ships Above: the Macross Chronicle sizes for everything. Notice the ludicrous size of VB-6 relative to the Quarter, and how the VF-25 does not fit the hangar pod on Gefion. VB-6 and VF-25 scaled down to 50%, which is the same as scaling up the ships to 200% except I don't have to move them around to maintain the formation. Notice how the VB-6 fits the elevator now (it completely fits if you fold the wingtips up), and how the VF-25 will fit on the landing side of the ship too.

Is there a way to order this from the US?

I was lucky enough to land a PO with hlj as well. I'm in the same boat... don't ask me about my backl,... wait what? LOL...

The Chosen Prime only charges tax for people in Arizona. Free shipping after $200.

Actually, the full context included the Gefion from Macross 30 if you go back the bit I quoted... The Gefion is home to far, far fewer VFs than the animation error Stargazer from Macross 7. Around ten when all is said and done, based on the game and novel, which I'm sure you'll agree is a vastly more plausible figure for a ship of its official size that has undergone extensive modification to serve as a light aircraft carrier. Nothing about the Gefion's official complement of VFs requires it to be vastly larger than 250m. (She is not, in story terms, actually carrying the huge array of unlockable VFs the game offers.) That's not necessarily applicable to all of the examples I went for... several are listed purely with the hangar capacity. Of course, the Northampton-class can (and per the Macross 30 novelization, does) cheat a bit by using multiple decks worth of converted cargo bays for VF storage. It may not be one contiguous hangar deck, but its available space is not limited purely by the ship's length in a single run. We all agree that Macross 7's showrunners dropped the ball with Ep44 and the Stargazer. I don't think there's anything wrong with the Gefion's design, though. There's physically enough room to fit the Gefion's much smaller required number of VFs inside the ship without issue, and there are gates large enough to get them onto the catapult deck (though some may need to do so with their wings folded). Likewise, I don't think there's any particular issue with the Northampton-class's launch mechanism from Macross 7 PLUS either... the main sticking point is the exact physical location of the ramp, but there's a fair amount of real estate down there. It's an animation error... what more can we say? They dun goofed. I disagree with that conclusion, though. Even if we didn't say that the fact that those handful of scenes in Macross 7's 44th episode being clearly off-model weren't enough to toss it as evidence, the preponderance of evidence WRT the Northampton's size skews very heavily towards the official number. After all, this is a ship that appears in many dozens of shots throughout multiple series. Now, I'm sure you will not disagree that in those many dozens of fleet shots the Northampton-class is clearly drawn a good deal smaller than the Guantanamo-class. You've also said previously that the detail shots of the Guantanamo-class closely match the ship's official size of approximately 352m, even if the smaller CG model used for distance shots is not quite accurate in terms of surface detail. If we take your conclusion as accurate and enlarge the Northampton-class to three to four times its official size as you argue, then we either have to posit that LITERALLY EVERY fleet shot in multiple Macross titles is completely and utterly incorrect or we have to scale the other ships seen with the Northampton-class up by the same factor to match. We immediately start to run into problems there. The Guantanamo-class, for instance, is seen in close formation with Northampton-class frigates many times. If we scale that up to match, then we either have to treat the oft-reused launch scenes in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier as animation errors as well... or we have to scale up the Valkyries that they're shown launching by the same amount. If the VF-11 and VF-171 are also three times to four times larger than their official sizes to make the animation correct again, that means we've changed everything's sizes but fixed nothing because we're right back where we started with VFs too bit to fit into or out of the ship in Macross 7 Ep44. And that's not counting all the knock-on implications of arbitrarily enlarging those designs 3-4x. Like, for instance, the pilots having to also be enlarged by the same amount so scenes showing pilots getting into or out of their VFs work, or Alto's complaints about Island-1 no longer making sense because a 4x enlarged Island-1 would have a "ceiling" of 8,000m not 2,000m, meaning instead of kvetching about the sky being "too low" he'd be struggling to breathe or passing out (hypoxia starts setting in at about 5-6km, and the "death zone" is around 8). My preference, of course, is for the simplest answer that requires the fewest assumptions. That being, Macross 7 Ep44's Stargazer is just an animation error and the ship really is meant to be just 250m.

To help you forget how much you spent on a Metal Structure Sazabi:

does chosen prime charge tax? is free shipping after $200?

On my lunch break... just an update. I know I usually post Sunday evening/night, but I was busy with things and wanted to work on the project some more. The bay doors printed vertically came out great! The horizontal prints suffered from some pooling on the inside along the outer edge next to the standoffs (I'll probably have to spin the parts 180 degrees to prevent this). On the vertical, the only issue I encountered was the standoffs were 0.25-0.5mm too long/wide in the z-axis (printer direction, not model), everything else about the part was spot on, odd. I ended up having to do some shaving/trimming/sanding to get the parts to fit. So I'll just have to make adjustments to the model and reprint in the same orientation and angles to test. I do prefer the matte finish on the horizontal print more and the vertical print seemed come out glossy (?) when placed side by side. I actually had pics of the horizontal print (ver) mounted with the YF-21 FP covers, but I guess no point in showing those now, so the mounted pics are of the vertical ones... lol. I printed a set of canopies with the supports on the outside/updside down. This made post processing much easier (sanding/polishing, etc.), but not easier for the heat-shield versions, so those will probably be printed with supports on the underside to save the detailing. I spent a good part of the weekend sanding, polishing and dipped the canopy window parts in Future. I'm giving them a good 24-48 hrs to dry before handling, sorry no pics yet. I modeled up the markings for the head, the "KEEP CLEAN" imho I felt the best position it could be in (I tried a few different angles/positions), and three different positions for the "SENSOR INSIDE" marking (A,B, or C). Let me know if one looks better than the other. I already printed up all three to see and yes I know you can barely see it. The original markings were painted in white on the blue faceplate whereas this is grey, I'll try to determine what color inks/paints or Sharpe marker I can go over them with just as I did with the Antenna (pictured). I was thinking Blue, Red or maybe even Yellow. I don't think the white would show up too well against the grey. Also... I modeled up a mono-eye... this is kind of where I need to stop myself before I end up doing too much. I remembered I had a bunch of SMDs laying around and went digging. 603 SMDs fit in the Mono-eye section. I needed to order some ultra thin solder. I'm just not sure atm where to place the batteries (prob cell type), 😵lol:

Thanks; gotta love masking tape! I also used it for replicating the thermal blankets elsewhere on the shuttle.