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Yes, it's the Academy 1/72 bird. I'm going the NATO Black now, going to mask some panels as you suggest with some very dark greys and then try some light oil washes for streaks and white chalk, but like you mentioned, I've had that disappear with clear coat. @Papa Rat - I still say you're waaaaay more experienced than you let on! But if you aren't, you have some serious God given talent for modeling! That Elint looks GREAT!

Looks awesome! Great job! I love the Mars base theme.

This could go either way...

Inspiring work as always, Brett. I particularly like the Valkyrie pilot. Did you bother detailing the Glaug cockpit?

I completed this kit last year but only got.around to taking photos this week. I present you a Glaug in proper 1/72 scale!

Valkyrie armaments & ordnance have arrived. Looking good!

I’m totally sick of hearing her. I think she got overdone in Stranger Things sorta like Jack in the Box trying to give ranch with every purchase

Nice purchase, I have been thinking about getting that one as well

I get the feeling that that’s basically a generic term for an alien creature, not so much just the big chap or their kind. and the numbering is more about the known type. But then again they could’ve run into these things during capture. I think they mentioned some casualties during that process.

I have some ideas, but idk if they work or make sense at all I think lines in the following bracket shape might give the illusion of a contained width profile.〔 〕 Especially lines tapering inward toward the front makes things look sharp in general. Shark gills might look more aggressive if they took a sharper angle like those brackets. They might look better ahead of the canards, and get to show up in battroid mode too. The red yellow on the canards might be one color combo too many. I think it makes the canards look too much like they are slapped on after the fact. I'm thinking they might look good the navy white combo you already have. Maybe the Stabilizers could follow for extra coherence, idk tbh Maybe less white on the bottom/battroid front, to look less the transformer trope of robot hanging under a plane lol The ankle guards, I get that they look good in white, but I also always thought it was strange that some valks had distinct and vibrant engine collar things on lol. Maybe being in the same color as one of the surrounding parts makes the engines or even the whole plane look more discreet and serious. I'm not sure if I'm just seeing things, but the feet/exhaust already look kind of blue. Just wondering if it would look better in a slightly more distinct dark blue/gray hue As for the main/heavy stripe, I think there's lots of room to try all sorts of things on the top of the fuselage and wings. Don't worry about looking good and slap together a bunch of w/e designs since you ar just testing A thought I just had unrelated to everything I just wrote lol, is one broad stripe down the middle, possibly with some geometry to the edges, and then something accompanying it in another color toward the wings without reaching all the way, perhaps only outside past the engines or even right over them. Sort of like a giant abstract sword with narrow crossguards.

I can almost see the finish line. It’s been a journey and actually not my favorite one. I think it’s looking ok for my first 1/72 scale aircraft, but I’m not stoked on it. I managed to scratch the nose while applying decals. Oof… Not sure how it happened but I don’t want to fix it. I say it’s weathering/damage while on duty. Hahahaha. I just need to do some small detail hand painted gloss paint here and there along with final assembly including painted clear parts. I still need to get a generic stand. At this point I might just drill out a 3mm hole on the bottom and make my own? Not sure. I do enjoy the side profile of this build. I think it will be even more dynamic with the upper and lower radar attached

Now, all we need is Kate Bush singing in the movie

Your Blackbird is looking great! I used Tamiya XF-69, NATO Black. I've built two so far: an Italeri one and a Hasegawa one. Oh yes, and a Hasegawa Eggplane one. Yours is an Academy by the looks of it, am I right? What you're doing is great. My advice from my experience is to mask off corners of the panels with some sticky notes, then shoot the corner very quickly and lightly with some medium or light gray paint. I actually used chalk, but the lighter-colored chalk seemed to disappear after the clear coat went down. If I was to do it again, I'd use some gray paint in an airbrush instead since it won't disappear on me.

Still waiting on Mixmaster, but I in the meantime I got Takara's Synergenex Rathalos Prime. Rathalos Prime is a remold of Kingdom Airazor, though as near as I can tell they only share the same arms, legs, and basic engineering. I'm not into the Monster Hunter games, but as near as I can tell from the new shoulder pads, the extra forearm armor, the new torso, the visor, and the large spike on Prime's head he's supposed to look like Optimus Prime wearing the Rathalos Armor set. From some angles, the wings even look like the skirts on the Rathalos Coil part of the set. From other angles, though, it looks like an Optimus head on a feminine body with a wyvern on his/her butt. And the wyvern makes him/her overly back heavy with the wing/skirt moved out of the way. Speaking of, you can see that there's a new panel on the side of the leg. It exists solely to open in robot mode to reveal a little more blue color, but honestly I think it looks less out of place if you leave it folded against the shin, where it looks slightly more like Rathalos Greaves. Rathalos Prime comes with the aforementioned forearm armor, a sword, a shield, and (because Prime just isn't complete without one) a Matrix. Prime's head is on a ball joint, and can look down a bit and tilt sideways slightly, but nothing really upward. Shoulders rotate and can move laterally 90 degrees if he/she's not wearing the forearm armor, otherwise it gets caught on his/her shoulder pads. Elbows bend a little over 90 degrees, and his/her waist swivels, but there's no wrist articulation. The front of his/her pelvis can hinge forward, giving him/her the clearance to move his/her hips about 60 degrees forward, 45 degrees backward, but well over 90 degrees laterally. Thighs swivel, and knees bend nearly 180 degrees. The feet are on ball joints which allows them to swivel in addition to giving them some decent up/down tilt, but unfortunately the ankle pivot is pretty limited. At the most basic, the sword's handle can fit into either fist, and the shield has a 5mm peg that flips out to be held in the other fist. I'll note, though, that you can store the forearm armor on his/her thighs (which is where they go in alt mode anyway), freeing the ports on his/her forearms to plug the shield in there, either open or closed. You may have also noticed that there's a slot near the tip of the sword. You can open the shield up and plug it into that slot to create something more like an axe. As for the Matrix, cutouts on the handles allow it to plug into his/her fists. His/her chest doesn't open, though, so to store the Matrix you have to open up the backpack, where it stores in the base of the wyvern's neck. It can stay there in alt mode. Speaking of alt mode, the transformation is mostly the same as Airazor, with the added steps of closing the flaps on his/her shins and partsforming the forearm armor onto the thighs if you haven't done either of those things yet. Technically, you also have to bend the arms at the elbows so that the fists go up behind his/her scapula's instead of tucking into the waist, because the torso doesn't extend the same way, and the head only folds back 90 degrees instead of 180. But that's fine because you don't fold the alt head out of the chest, it's just part of the backpack, which double-hinges over his/her back and robot face. The sword and shield combine to form the end of the tail. To be fair, I think this is about the best you're going to get out a remold of a Deluxe-class Airazor. The head, back, and wings look pretty great! The tail is kind of short, though, and the robot torso and thighs all bunched up make for a rather plump-looking Rathalos, with little bird feet instead of the more muscular dragon legs you'd normally expect. Articulation's fairly limited, too. There's an up/down hinge at both the base of Rathalos' skull and neck, but no swivel. The jaws open. The wings are hinged at the base, immediately beside that first hinge, and a third time a little further out for bend and flapping, then there are rivets at the "thumb" spike that tuck the wings in. Just like Airazor, you can bend somewhat at the knee with an additional digitigrade joint, plus the ball joints in the feet for posing the legs, but the hips are locked in place. The tail, (which, again, stores the sword and shield) has no articulation at all. Like I said, it's probably about the best they could do with a remold of Airazor... but it also begs the question, why remold Airazor? Basara Prime and Shield-D Prime from the same line are brand new molds, why couldn't Rathalos? If they absolutely had to remold a figure, why not Legacy Evolution Megatron, which seems like a closer starting point? Rathalos Prime is kind of a mediocre Deluxe-class toy at a Leader-class price, which makes it a hard figure to recommend even if the alt mode is pretty cool. That said, in my head-canon Rathalos Prime is a female member of the same group of Convoy-types that include Lio Convoy and Big Convoy from the Beast Wars II/Neo era of the Japanese continuity.

M.A.S.H.; "The Interview" (Season 4, Episode # 25). Watch it sometime.

Now that's an excellent question with no clear answer.

Wanted an extra DX VF-1J to display in battroid mode with no add-ons. Luckily one of those Tamashii store limited ed. popped at Mandarake a few days ago. Opened, used for 22k yen. Pretty nice deal since first release are still above 30k yen. Also got to hit 2 brownies with one stone, 14th and 15th, also from Mandarake.

Added Pre-Built VF-22S Conversion kits: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167766712437 The asking price for a pre-built kit for MWF members is $110 (before G&S, shipping fees, etc.). Added Pre-Colored/Painted AAL Antennas: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167766541993 The price for pre-colored AAL Antenna set through MWF is $10 Added NOT RED PAINTED AAL Antenna listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167766586128 The price for NOT RED PAINTED AAL Antennas through MWF is $8 Also reduced the price of the hobby kit (un-built) version of the VF-22S conversion kit (both here on MWF and on eBay), sorry still have not gotten around to Etsy.

The original CSI had a good one, though mainly because it was self-aware enough to take cheap shots at its own medium.

While the episode was def better than episodes 3 and 4, something incredibly bugs me that I haven't seen pointed out.

The Practice S02E10, "Spirit of America" is a definitive example of the form. It can (and has) been done well.

I do a fair amount of 3D printing so I'll give you what advice I have. (Un)Fortunately, I haven't had to do this repair myself, so I can't speak directly to how hard to is it do (but from what I've seen it is pretty straight forward). As far as what materials, your most common options are going to be PLA (a type of plastic) or resin. There are lots of other kinds of printers out there, including ABS (which would be ideal here), but most of those are more expensive. For this type of thing, I'd probably use PLA, as it is more durable than resin. It generally looks a bit worse (more visible print lines), depending on the resolution of the printer, but since this is a part you barely see, I don't think that is an issue. As others mentioned, what color it is will depend on what color of filament you use. Color matching the valk exactly with just filament color is going to be pretty hard. Painting with thin coat of paint would probably be easier to get a much closer color match. A key thing is to keep the two metal parts (the pin and the screw) from your existing joint, as replacing those could be a pain. Hope that helps.

It’s here. This will be on the bench next week. Very excited. Also got charged an additional terrif fee of $40 on this which was a bummer. I should have waited since the domestic release in the USA which would have been more affordable. Anyway, I’m still happy. 😊