David Hingtgen

Graham, buy him LEGO Clone Trooper stuff--best of both worlds. (well, 4.5 is a bit young for LEGO---but you could play with it too!)

Quick note: The white stripe on the leading edge of the tailfins---the decal fits much better and is more opaque than the sticker. Use the decal if at all possible. ::edit:: Surprisingly, the red stripes on the leading edge of the ventral fins are far too small to try to 'wrap around' the leading edge. I've decided to go for an "intentional" black extreme leading edge, with the red just behind it. There's a good 1mm between the leading edge of the fin and the panel line all around the decal. Now I'm wondering how the rudder striping will work. (gotta paint the fin spike first though). Wing stripes---the example kit in the instructions is wrong, the stripes aren't straight at all if you take a good look. I think I found the "right" way, but I won't really know until the kit's finished with all the stripes attached. Will post pic once they're done and dry. Wm---a snapped-together Bandai kit will not "unsnap" easily. You will certainly need to trim any pins on parts you need to separate. Cut the ends of the pins at a 45-degree angle before inserting. Slots/tabs come apart much easier, but pin-tube connections can be VERY strong---trim the pins, at an angle, or you'll break more of them than come apart cleanly. And I know from experience that the inner nozzles can have quite a grip on the outer nozzles--do not PULL the inner nozzles from the outer. Push them out from above, using a paintbrush end or something. Clear purple--one of my two methods seemed to be working, but I ran out of paint before I was even half done, so I had to strip 2 of the parts and re-Future them. Will mix up a much larger batch of paint tomorrow and try again. Here's the nose sensor, which I did have enough paint to do a decent coat, will add another tomorrow as it's still almost colorless from some angles:

http://macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?act=...st&id=59592 My reply didn't post. Anyways---despite how much I like this pic, I keep thinking how much better it'd be better if it was Grace in Mylene's outfit. (seriously, I'd pay cash for a good drawing of that--or maybe paint a 1/72 Alto)

Ah, you've got a hard drive enclosure fan. (my case can do that, but I only have one HDD and it's suspended, so it has lots of space/air around it) And a "bottom-mounted power supply". (many of the cases I was looking at had it, but I went with a traditional setup)

And especially with 4 hard drives---hard drives usually have no heatsink or fan, they only cool themselves by the air flowing around that's being driven by other part's fans---and if there's a ton of cables surrounding them, you're blocking their only means of cooling.

Heat/airflow/noise. Get the cables out of the way and everything gets better airflow, and thus runs cooler and quieter. Especially true for CPU/GPU----if there's a lot of cables in the way, blocking airflow to their heatsinks, they WILL run hotter and run up their fans more often, shortening their life.

Eh, I work slow enough at the moment that I can still photograph some things. Also, wm cheng photographs EVERYTHING anyways, so my pics won't be needed much. I do plan to airbrush the canopy this afternoon, 2 things to try---and however the canopy turns out, it turns out.

From the side they looked to be stacked top/bottom, but a belly view clearly shows they're side by side---but it looks like the standard gunpod is "almost" in its normal place, with the sniper pod tucked between that and the leg.

Ok, I swear these decals behave oppositely of all the ones I've ever used before. (which is strange as they "seem" so normal on the sheet) And I'm a perfectionist, so tiny flaws bug me. Is there any chance someone in the US/Canada who used the stickers on theirs, would be willing to send me a few of the decals as replacements/spares? I could use the "stripe on top of the head" (15) and the "black markings on the feet" (50/51). (they're on/done well enough, but if I had more I'd replace them and do it again better, as now I know how they behave and what techniques work the best) I might have found something that'll work for clear purple---I actually found transparent purple paint! But it's paint intended for airbrush shirt-painting, so I don't know how well it'll do on plastic.

This needs to be mentioned again, so long as polidread's not "burned out" from finishing these 3 new ones.

I think I know what the left one is...

I wasn't doing a full list of Ozma vs Alto differences. (backplate's different too, again to accomodate the head)

Well, someone at Bandai knows---the model kits have different chest plates for Alto and Ozma.

Saw 25th Prime today. 'Tis pink. Also, the trailer stripes are matte metallic, not shiny foil metallic.

I think it has more to do with the fact that Ozma's has a different chestplate than Alto's, but the DX ignores this fact and uses Alto's chestplate with Ozma's head---thus, the head looks too low. (because the chestplate's too high--Ozma's chestplate is physically shorter than Alto's) Specifically--Ozma's chestplate has a big "curve" at the top, to accomodate the head in fighter mode---this is also a nice "cut-away" to reveal the neck, since Ozma's has a long chin. By using the Alto chesplate, the upper edge of the plate is higher and straight, covering up the neck, and almost touching the chin. I'll try to draw and post a sketch later.

Yup, gotta darn-near transform the entire lower half. And I'm pretty that's in the instructions, as that's how I know to do so...

We've got pics of Galaxy now:

One of MW's Japan residents needs to find a vending machine that still has them, buy them out, and ship them here.

You know, if they had just MOLDED IT IN CLEAR PURPLE I'd be done with the fuselage now... I know Bandai can mold clear green, clear neon-yellow-green, clear blue, clear pink, clear orange, and clear red. I bet they can do clear purple... (also annoyed that I had to paint the visor green, when it seems Ozma's will be molded green)

Sigh---still having problems with clear purple. While I did finally get a decent purple paint mix, actually applying it is insanely difficult. All the molded-in tabs and mounts cause the paint to pool, and the canopy is so "U" shaped as opposed to "half-circle" that the paint pools along the top of the canopy--even if left to dry inverted! Capillary action in the extreme. I had a decently tinted canopy at one point, but the streaks/pooling was way too obvious at too many angles. I also literally sat there for half an hour, swirling the canopy around constantly, so that it couldn't pool. Still didn't work. Spent an hour stripping paint and hoping the canopy's not ruined. Will see if airbrushing it tomorrow works any better. (A big part of the problem is trying to make a "obviously tinted, but not too dark" color---if I just flood the thing with paint, it'd be more even, but also be more like purple sunglasses, than "a purple tint") I may just go with transparent blue, as no purple mix I've made "behaves" well. I'm also going to "dip" the canopy in Future, to clear it up and maybe make the purple behave better, as it'll then be going over a paint-like substance rather than raw plastic.

Remember everybody, this is the just the first sample that looks VERY much like an "idealized" version of the G1 toon design. Wait until they ask Kawamori to "tweak" the design...

Which YF-23 prototype? Either way, neither one had a "unique" scheme---PAV-1 was overall gunship grey, PAV-2 wore compass ghost.

I still say my Nora is the best valk I've ever owned.

Nah, I need Milia. Milia purple suit, Milia red suit, M7 Milia red suit...

If anyone wants a very short summary of the "important to the game" bits of the 2nd ME book, look here: