MacrossJunkie

He applied the weathering himself.

Finished doing the panel lines and stickers on my 11B. Took some shots of it and my other M+ valks as well.

I took my old 1/72 out of storage and put it next to the 1/60. Of all the 1/72 M+ valks, the VF-11B was the best of them, but even then, it's just horrifically ugly compared to the new ones. It's just no comparison. Heavy black panel lines, toyish looking features and proportions, etc... Yamato has come a long way.

The main problem with the old stickers were that they were composed of multiple layers which tended to peel at the corners eventually. Also they were thicker and stiffer which made it difficult to fit them into panel lines as well and thick enough to cast shadows. I think if Yamato had some way to lock the swivel points after you get them in a desired position, that would have made the stands pretty great. If after you've had the chance to mess with the stands and have a different experience than what I reported in the stand thread, please do tell. I'm curious if someone might have more luck trying to get something like a 1/60 VF-1 with fast packs or any other valk prior to the VF-11 displayed on the stand in a position other than completely horizontal. I find the VF-11 toy to be surprisingly light weight. There is a very noticable difference in weight even between the VF-11B w/ packs vs a bare bones YF-19. It might even be comparable in weight to the 1/72 VF-11B. But even with the light weight, neither of my stands could support the VF-11 in any sort of dynamic position Disappointing since there are so many pictures with the VF-11B displayed on these new stands.

Thanks. That seems to help. Though it takes me around 3-5 minutes of fiddling before I can get it just right after each time I transform it. I still think that such a hassle should not have been necessary in the first place. I wish it had more tampo printing as well. It seems like a backward step from the 1/60 VF-1s. At least the stickers are the thin kind that come with the new VF-1s and destroids rather than the sucky ones that came with the YF-21 and earlier products. Overall, I really like this toy though. It is definitely the easiest of the Mac+ valks to transform, though that's more due to the straightforward transformation of the valk's design itself. As a side note regarding the stickers, is there any material that shows where some of this stuff is supposed to go? I usually go by the Hasegawa model decal instructions but they never made a VF-11B. I have a general idea where to put most of them going by conventions used by the other valks, but just wondering if there might have been something that Yamato went off of to design the other stuff on the sticker sheet.

With a few minor tweaks to the stand, they could have made it pretty good for the 1/60 line, but some poor design choices make it unsuitable. I did improve it a little by wrapping the elbow joint connection with scotch tape and sliding it back in. It helps for the relatively light weight VF-11, but the YF-19 and VF-0 are a no go as they are too heavy still.

I have that issue too. Mine rocks back and forth with nothing but the tip of that little pointed plastic part on the slider to keep it elevated. It looks like there's little slotted pegs that are supposed to go into the slots on the side of the cockpit, but they really do nothing to hold the cockpit in place. Mine won't fall out when turned upside down, but it won't stay in place either. I'm a little disappointed how everything else about the toy has been designed very well, but the cockpit itself (I'm not talking about the heatshield, so please no one ask about the lower heatshield again!) just seems poorly designed in its ability to stay firmly in place in fighter mode.

I just got these stands today and it took me less than 5 minutes to realize these stands suck. I'm glad I only got two as I would be extremely pissed if I had wasted even more money on more. The problem with these stands is that they are too loose. Yamato put some ratcheting in a couple joints (even those are barely enough to hold up the weight of a 19), but the rest rely on almost non-existent friction to stay up. The crucial elbow joint that is used in conjunction with VFs like the 19 and 11B is one of those joints. I popped on my 19 and 11B onto the two stands and they inevitably start to fall over and could damage the wings or something else when the joint swings to the side. In the 11's case, the connector peg is smaller than the slot in the elbow joint so it's really loose. If it flops over, it will also have the added feature of catapulting your expensive VF-11B to the ground since the peg fit is pretty bad. Luckily I was watching it and propped it back up before it could do so. I don't think I could trust these stands to display any of my valks. They're just too loose and unreliable. I'd recommend just sticking with the flexi stands if anyone is wondering/on the fence about whether to get the Yamato stands or flexi display stands. edit: added picture The joints I have issue with in particular are the swivel I show along the green line and the swivel where the elbow joint connects into the stand shown along the blue line. They are both so loose that unless you display your valk at a nearly horizontal position, the weight could cause either or both of those swivel points to turn downwards and dump your valk on the shelf or the ground.

Six pictures down in this thread, there's a pic with the cockpit removed and you can see some styrofoam. Is it those pieces there that keep the cockpit up and puts pressure on the heat shield?

I hope Yamato is able to provide some sort of instruction on how to get the heat shield to lock. I find it hard to believe that they could come up with all these clever ways to do stuff like implement the integrated heat shield on the VF-11 and then frak it up by forgetting something so basic as making it so that the heat shield can stay in place. I mean look at the YF-21. Not only did they find ways to do stuff like hide the arms and the shoulders and make the nose shorter in battroid, they also engineered it well pretty much every step of the way. Very solid in fighter with no creaking or things coming loose and everything stays in place in battroid mode very well also. Also has the best looking poseable hands Yamato has ever made on a Macross toy and probably has the best grip on the gunpods as well. Sure it took a little while for people to find that you could lock the chest down as people had complained it flopped around. It turned out that it did have a way to lock it down. So I'm hoping this is the case here with the VF-11's heat shield and just no one has found out the correct way yet. *crosses fingers*

Proportions of the head and all look the same to me. Maybe it's just the angle that's making you think it looks different?

I hope overdrive or anime-export will have pre-orders for those available at some point.

Graham, Alex or whoever else has the VF-11B already... is there any merit to my observation on the previous page regarding the little bump on the heat shield? link to post

You probably just need to change the filter in your furnace more often. Also, in my experience from having one, the ionic air purifiers do dick in getting rid of dust and allergens in the air. Sure they catch enough dust to cover the surface of the attractors, but they don't move enough air to put a dent in the amount of dust floating around. From consumer reports and such, they pretty much confirm that as well. They also fill the room with ozone. If you want better results, you're probably better off getting one of those HEPA air purifiers that require filters.

QFT! "Surprise!" has become the new MW meme.

I'd be interested to see the final result also. Judging from existing pics, like this one, the back of the battroid looks more like it should be in the line art. If you look in the middle row, left pic, that part pointed to by the arrow should be folding down to cover the back. Also the gun seems to attach to the arms now like how it does on the VF-1 as you can see the grooves in the arms for the gun grip to attach to.

The heatshield looks a little different from the prototype pics. The bottom half of the heatshield in the yamato pic has that bump at the top of it. In Graham's pic, the top half of the heat shield has a similar bump extending from the bottom. Is the bottom bump still there in the production version and if so, does that top half bump lock in underneath the bottom half's bump?

Sweet. So was there something in particular you had to do to get the lower half of the heatshield to lock in place?

Is the shield level with the shoulder plates in fighter mode now? The prototypes all had the shield too low which made it not level and also created a bit of a gap underneath the upper intake between it and the shield (I'm not talking about the gap that's also in the line art).

Seriously! I keep checking my mail to see if there's a shipping notification yet. My 19 and 21 want a new friend. I'm gonna have a hard time deciding what mode to put it in since both fighter and battroid look good and I only got one for now. With so many new things coming this year, it may be a while before I get a second one.

Isamu really needs to slim down. He's getting so fat, he can't even fit into a VF-1 anymore. Your Isamu looks kinda fuzzy. Do you have your 19 normally displayed with the cockpit open?

The scan is just too blurry to see it. You can at least see it in the frame at the top of the scan next to the illustration of the gunpod. On a different note, I hope the VF-22 will come with connectors that are compatible with the new stands since it won't be coming with one and including connectors for the type of stand that comes with the 21 and SV-51 are worthless unless they plan on selling those stands separately at some point. Speaking of stands, I found it kind of funny or odd that for the VF-22 and repaint 19 pics they chose to use glass(?) blocks instead of one of their actual stands.

At closer inspection, it looks like the lines from the heat shield is still there over the windows, it's just the same red color as the canopy now. Retcon or not, I think the color scheme as depicted in the Chronicle looks better.

I think someone needs to call off sick for the rest of the day so they can get us some pics

I wonder who colored that in the chronicle. Even the Macross Design Works book shows it has a heat shield covering each of the canopy windows or maybe they just decided to make the heat shields the same color as the canopy now?