Graham

If we'd had a daughter, I wanted to name her Mylene or Minmay, but the wife shot the idea down. I nearly got her to agree on Roy for a boy, but alas it wasn't to be. At our wedding party/disco thingie, I had the DJ slip on a Macross Plus CD and me and a couple of friends zoomed round the dance floor with arms outstretched, pretending to be Valks. I forget which track played, possibly Dog Fight. Graham

It says right in the very first post on page 1 of this thread. 6,500 Yen, released in November. Graham

Yep, "Little Rock" refers to the name of the missile launch system in the legs of the VF-19Kai/F/S. IIRC, in the anime, the VF-19P is not shown with a gunpod. However, the Bandai 1/250 scale VF-19P fighter toy has it with a VF-19Kai style Speaker Pod launcher. Graham

You are right, I forgot about that. Graham

I'm glad the VF-19Kai is the first release. This means by the time they release the Blazer, hopefully any bugs from the initial release will have been worked out. Graham

I always got the impresion that at least for the beam cannons mounted on the Strike Valk, VF-11 Full Armor and VF-25 Armoured Pack, the beam guns were powered from capacitors, rather than drawing power directly from the VF's engines. Of course whether those capacitors could be recharged 'on the go', from the VF's power plants is another question entierly. For the smaller beam guns mounted on the VFs head, chest, arms & wingroots (depending on which VF), I would imagine that these do draw power directly from the engines (although I could well be wrong). Possibly size is the limiting factor to power output on target, as well (as previously mentioned), cycle times, cool down times or other limitations. Graham That's exactly what I was implying. Something that was very much a product of the current thinking of the time, but which later showed itself in actual use to be somewhat lacking. Another example that springs to mind would be the initial decision not to have an internal gun on the F-4 Phantom. Graham

I think, whether it's lack of power, overheating, weight or some other issue, we are never going to know what is the issue with beam weapons, unless we are told in some officially sanctioned source. However, I'm firmly conviced that there must be some overiding limitation with beam weapons that at least on VFs prevennts them becoming the defacto main weapon. Graham

When I said experimental, I didn't mean that the VF was still at the experimental development and rushed into service, but rather that it was something of an experiment to try a VF beam weapons substituting for the gunpod. Hah, if you are comparing the VF-4 to Vista, then the VF-4, should be the biggest flop ever, hated by everybody. Graham

I've really got no idea what this alternate universe 'Siren' you keep referring to is? Is it related to the Macross II Metal Siren? Any links, pics? Graham

Still in the box. Graham

I may be wrong, but I don't think Bandai usually do Wonder Fest. Graham

Oh I don't know. I'm expecting a pleasant surprize when we finally get to see the fighter mode. Graham

I really can't express just how excited I am about this now. Graham

Many small and medium-size toy companies contract out design work. This is fairly common knowledge. They cannot afford to emploe a full time designer. It's been no sectet with Yamato since they first started . Billy Wong for the 1/72 Mac Plus toys and 1/60 V1 VF-1 and Nishikawa-san (Flex) for the 1/48 VF-1 etc. Graham

In real world terms, I've always considered the VF-4 a bit like the F-104 or English Electric Lighting. Good acceleration and top speed, but otherwise lacking in most other areas, especially weak in air combat maneuverability and extremely limited weapon carriage. Graham

Opening cockpit hatch in batroid mode, opening leg missile bays, opening speaker shoulders............this toy is gonna have it all. As long as they can make it with nice tight joints, I will be extremely happy. Very curious now about the split LERX. Graham

Fantastic pics Save. Great job. The sculpt looks amazing in your pics, so much better and less chucnky than the earlier somewhat blured pic posted from another site. I'm really looking forward to this to now. The detail looks amazing. can't wait for the inevitable Blazer version. I'm gonna be drooling over and studying these pics for a long while. Grahm

From what I've been told, the idea is to have the price at a reasonable level. And yes, unless plans change, it should be sold assembled and painted. Graham

I've always thought that the reason beam guns were not adpoted in the Macross universe as main-armament on Variable Fighters post-VF-4 and the reason that shell firing gunpods were kept as main armament is that beam guns must be inferior in some way compared to shell firing gunpods. Possibly, this could be insufficient (kinetic/heat) energy on target compared with shells, or possible overheating after a relatively small number of shots have been fired, or perhaps too slow a rate of fire to enage fast moving aerial targets, or perhaps insufficient capacitor technolgy resulting in a relatively small ammo capacity between recharges. The above reasons, I think are why we only see beam guns, whether mounted on head, chest or arm, as second or third line weapons, designed for anti-missile fire, or anti-mecha fire only if the main shell firing gunpod and/or missiles have already been exhausted. I've always considered the VF-4 something of a failed experiment. Good acceleration and thrust for getting in and out of trouble quickly, but relatively weak armament (only 2 beam guns and twelve semi-conformal missiles) and not particulaly maneuverable in an atmosphere (the phrase "turns like a dump-truck" comes to mind, at least in the various games). Now given late 2050s advance in beam gun technology applied to the VF-27's gunpod, which allows both rapid (fully-automatic) fire at normal gunpod power levels, or the firing of a more powerful single (semi-automatic) shot, we may see a switch to pure beam armament on future VFs. Graham

Ditto, same from me. I hope Save managed to take some pics and posts them soon. Graham

Sigh, very disappointed if so much of set 4 is really just repeats from set 3. There's still so many VFs yet to do.....cough VF-11, SV-51, VF-5000, VF-17 etc. Still, looking forward to the VF-171s. Graham

As mentioned, a very early pre-tooling prototype, so a lot could still change at this stage. Also, as is common, it may have been sculpted in a larger scale than 1/60, so may appear chunkier than the final product will be. Graham

Nice, but even chunkier than I expected. Be very interesting to see what the fighter mode is like. Graham

My current bedroom TV-top display is very Macross 7-centric. Graham

I'll pic up that magazine today, but I imagine it's just a photo of a Konig test shot. Most test shots just use whatever color plastic the factory has laying around, so often tend to be in weird colors. Graham