Noyhauser

I'm really happy for you 1/100 guys out there. Makes me want to switch to 1/100 when I see all the love you get!

Too bad it's not 1/72!

There is one in 1/72. I've actually got one... its heavy. I don't know who made it, but its really really nice.

AWESOME!!!!!! That is fantastic... I really love it. Really clean and the like. Now build some more 1/72 stuff and put the out of scale stuff out of the way :-p

If I may make a suggestion... don't make the 1/48 VF-1 your first model. If its anything like the 1/72 kit, it will be fairly advanced. I'd suggest one practice kit... maybe a gundam, the 1/72 valkryie, or a regular 1/48 jet. That would be a good start, and help you build the skills to tackle the VF-1.

Nice build guys!

Herve: it seems you and I are building the next generation of airpower together! Please post more about the kit... I'm debating getting one myself.

Mickey: Nice to see a zero being built... it looks pretty detailed and easy to go together... no?

Electric: I can honestly say, that's about the worst Hasegawa joint I've EVER seen. Not even the 1970s prop kits are that bad.

Derex: Ooh, Catseye: there have been some awesome builds of that aircraft on here... I'm sure you're going to join that group.

Thanks Phyrox... nice tanks too! I really like 1/72 for that subject... it allows you to do more vehicles in a smaller area. On that note I actually have two more things I'm up to...

I got a set of tanks for christmas as a gift. One was the Hasegawa 1/72 Tiger, which is a bit underscale. However I've been building it all the same. I had quite a bit of fun doing the zimmerit out of milliput.

The second is my current holy grail kit (well one of several), the Italeri F-35. I'll also get the academy, kitthawk and Hasegawa ones when they come out.

So I have a couple of things. I had that F11F-1 tiger, which is nearly complete, but still needs some touchups.

But the main thing I wanted to post is my Ki-61 build for Modelglue!

So I started off by painting the interior with the base colour.. I also masked the canopy and then sprayed the base first, so that you can see it through as if it was painted on the interior:

I needed a instrument panel so I found an older eduard Zoom for the hasegawa ki-61.

And here is the cockpit interior completed. I have been buying photo etch belt buckles, which I add to either paper or tape seat belts.

I shaded the inside with a bit of tamiya oil stain weathering powder to create some depth. I thought this would be the hard part... I was wrong. Upon assembling the fuselage I discovered a whole host of fit issues. The nose was particularly bad, with major gaps and oversized gun panel insert.

This is after puttying the nose.

The underside looked pretty bad as well.

So this was it pre-prime:

Primed with Mr Surfacer finishing black .... great stuff, but.],,,,,,,,

Unfortunately it was too matte in some places,leading to a grainy metal finish.

So I polished it with Tamiya polishing paste.

And this is the result:

Much better I think.

Hope you enjoyed it! more later

The strange thing is that at some points it becomes kind of serious and you're left wondering if they really mean the satire bit. I mean the whole bit with

Mari getting the crap beaten out her by King Torture felt like it belonged in another show too

Speaking of serious, anyone else seen Nobunaga the Fool yet? I'm so glad that Kawamori reserves some of his more zany ideas for series like this or Aquarion. I'm not so sure how I'd feel with a Macross with historical figures running around.

Well yeah... but then the next episode has...

So I think its trying to be both, but not doing it nearly as well as Gintama.

Samurai Flamenco has officially "jumped the shark" as they say in the US. Unless there's big plot twist soon, I think I might drop it.

Sorry for the late reply... but I thought this series was supposed to be a big joke about Sentai shows... I guess the show is a joke on me because it seems to have become a sentai show... albeit still a bit of a satire

So basically he's taken several parts from the 1/72 hasegawa weapon sets. He's using the F-14 BOL rails and AN/AAQ-14 Rack from the Set VII. He's got AMRAAMs and some Mark 82s on a TER.

Looks pretty sweet derex! The kit didn't look to promising from the start but you did an excellent job.

**** Bertt that is awesome. The attention to detail is out of this world.

This just seems like some guy's list of animes he's watched + things he thinks are influential. Gunbuster is a huge omission, but where is Armored Trooper Votoms? Instead we have "omega weapon" from Final Fantasy?

Right.

I'd rather do it here to be honest. I feel oversubscribed to forums already and don't want to join another where I don't know anyone for a single build. We could do it on BM as well, but frankly, I'd rather just post some photos here.

Well, lets do it here... since its not entirely macross related and I wouldn't want to clutter up the boards. I only want to build the Ki-61 right now because the Ki-100 is like a holy grail kit for me which I'd like to save near the time I'm almost done my japanese builds.

That's great! I'll try it next, so this Mr. Surfacer Black is glossy I presume? It can be the primer and gloss undercoat in one? I used that Alclad black glossy stuff and it didn't lay down too flat - it was slightly pebbly, but it reacted badly to my mineral spirit wash and ruined one of my Cosmo Zeros completely. I got a second kit and have re-done it (again with the Aclad Black) but it lays heavy and softens a lot of the fine scribed lines. I'd love to use something differently.

Its satin... not fully glossy but very close to it. That's my only problem with it (and its pretty minor.) Gunze also offer a glossing product to go into paints in the Mr Color line, you can thin it with Mr Leveling thinner (rather than the regular thinner) or cut the regular thinner with Mr Retarder Mild, to get more gloss to it.

That's one other point, you need to thin this with gunze's thinner... which is a good thing. Its probably 1/4 the price of Alclad's primer. All in you're probably looking at 20 dollars for the 1200 bottle of Mr Color thinner and mr surfacer, yet you would easily get five to six times the milage out of them than the 12 dollar bottle of alclad primer.

Awwww yeah. I've got the two types (KI-100) from finemolds but they are waiting until I reach a modelling zen before I attempt them. Just too pretty to chance screwing up with clumsy thumbs.

You'll do fine. If you want we could build them together on here and compare notes.

Thanks for offering on that blown canopy from the Mk. IX. I've got one as well but I already stamped that PR. XIX with the "done" rubber. I've got a few spits in my stash now, thanks to the disease I caught (spitfirosis collectioneria). The only cure is more spits, but I'm getting slowly better.

Oh you mean like this?

That was taken three years ago... I'm pretty sure I'm up to 15 or so now. With the advent of the AZ joy pack and this downloadable camo mask I was shown online, I'm going to be up quite a few more in the near future.

Thanks for the tip regarding the Mr Surfacer, I haven't delved into the world of NM and Alclad too much yet, mostly due to fear and lack of experience. I am also really shy about shooting anything but acrylic through my airbrush.

The thing is, its more than useful for that. If you have a landing gear bay, you can use it as a primer pre-spray... then when you paint over, the areas you miss with the main paint creates an instant darkening effect. On a vacuform canopy with black interior paint, you can just hit it with the black and it serves both as a primer and the interior colour. It can be a pre-shading technique for some kits: paint everything with the black primer and then keep the panel lines area darker. The problem with every other product is that the formulation goes screwy and you often get "soft spots" where the paint did not fully cure (alclad black, and modelmaster were particularly bad). I've been through 10+ bottles of Mr Surfacer over the years, and I have never had this problem once.

I don't think I can overstate how excited I am for this product... its awesome.

Thanks! Same to you! It's the Academy 1/72 Mk. XIV converted to a PR. XIX. I forgot about the windscreen though so it is still armoured! Whoops. I like that Hien, have the Dragon kit on the shelf waiting, waiting.

Thanks Jefuemon for the links, now I know what I'm looking for.

I've got a spare vacuform bulged canopy for a Mk IX. Would that help?

I've got a fine molds Ki-61and Ki-100 that I'm itching to start too. I really like the design: its like a beefier BF-109... which is awesome IMO.

It's Hasegawa's 1/200 Shuttle + Hubble set.

Awesome! post more photos of your build please!

That's an impressive squadron you got there. Did you ever build any russian birds?

I actually never have in my modern building experience, though I'm close to a couple coming up. I'll have an Mig-15 (old KP kit or new Eduard), or a Mi-24s. I also have an Su-7 that I've been collecting stuff for sitting in the stash that I want to crack at. I also really want to do a newer flanker... maybe a -35 or PAK-FA.

Oh, on that note (natural metal) I've found basically the coolest product ever:

I build a lot of Natural metal finished (NMF) aircraft and been through a lot of products: decanted lacquer, black model master, Alclad's black primer. Lately I've been using thinned Mr Surfacer with black Mr Colour as a primer for models recently, because Gunze's paints go down so smooth. This stuff is awesome. I tried it on an exhaust yesterday and it went down perfect. I can't wait to do a full natural metal aircraft.

Very nice Modelglue, I likie... especially the spitfire.

Electric: Is that a 1/144 or 1/200 scale?


Got a couple of pics of things I'm working on... I've decided to put aside the biplanes to finish some kits that have been hanging around my bench for too long.

and a finished Ki-61

I also took some photos of some kits I finished earlier this year but never had any good photos of. Apologies if I posted it before.

Thanks for looking.

Mr Color has a brand of thinners and retarders, which you need to use if you're going to paint with them. Vallejo is also a very good brush painting paint, which you might want to look at.

Actually I find tamiya a terrible brush paint. Far too hot: when you put more paint down it eats the under layer. The only one that I have never had any problems with as either a brush or airbrush paint is gunze. However with them you need to invest in both the paint and various thinners and paint retarders. I also think they have the most diverse line of paints behind Vallejo.

Are you hand brushing or air brushing. That makes a huge difference.

Mimorem:

Simplest method is to douse a paper towel with Isoropanol (rubbing alcohol) a gently wipe away the paint. It strips it really quick.

But who in their right mind games with a trackpad, or trackball? I mean, I suppose I can understand it being an improvement over aiming with a stick.. but by removing the sticks entirely, you're also assuming the trackpad will be a useable replacement for all the other things sticks are perfectly useful for. Like walking, steering, flying, etc.

There is definitely a market for trackballs... its not that apparent but people do use them for RTS gaming. That's the main thing that this game system is aiming to do.

It seems like they're attempting to generalize the entire function of a gamepad to improve on just the right analog stick function, and only for FPS games. I can see it being useful for aiming, but why do they feel the need to replace both sticks for that?

Its not FPS gaming... its RTS that its aimed at. More like a bridge that allows a greater array of games to be played. If they wanted to just do FPS, then they probably would have stayed with a traditional analog stick.

I can just imagine the rage now, as people place their thumb not exactly centered on the pad, and end up walking over a cliff, or any number of other extremely silly ways to die.

I don't think that's a problem at all actually... I believe it has a logarithmic function for pressure:nearer to the centre means less movement than further away. It also has this perceptible clicking feeling and noise that tells you how much pressure you're pushing.

I will say this about the controller; I have serious doubts it will ever be the instant gratification answer people are looking when PC gaming on a console. While everything I've seen of the controller leads me to believe it's going to be better than those silly analogy sticks we use on all our current devices, I suspect it's a compromise controller at best. I also think that we'll be required to endure a rather significant learning curve to make it work. I'm definitely mentally preparing myself for frustration and anger when using the controller at first, but I'm making a pact right now to put a real effort into learning and training with this controller before writing it off.

Its different and it will be frustrating at first. Its not like anything you've seen. I guess it operates like a flat trackball... I can see how it gives a more accurate tracking than traditional analog stick.

Have you tried the new alclad range Derex? I moved over to them about a year ago after basically going through about 7 different brands, and found they were the best.