DrEmilLang

Yeah. A01 is glued. I can get everything unscrewed enough to start separating A08 and A09, but A01 is the "keystone", and there's no disassembling A02 and A04 to get 8 and 9 loose. Maybe I'll get lucky and find someone who only needs the back half of their unassembled kit

I'd like to get the thing apart and print a more exact SDFM cockpit for it, but I'm afraid of breaking parts just prying stuff out. Any pointers would be helpful. (My worst-case is just sawing/drilling the tops off of everything and just modeling the visible portions, but I'd prefer to have it all accessible.)

Painted the figure. I couldn't find a good reference for the "cannon fodder" pilot, so I went with "hero colors in brown". (I need to paint the sleeve/pants stripes)

So I've been playing with Inventor Fusion, which I'm liking much better than SketchUp and 123D Design (and especially Blender), and I'm going to see if the stuff I want to make is "too small". Firstly I need to do something about the broken missile rack (unfortunately the peg came off inside a missile) And I'd like to have a clip-on Oleo Strut for the front landing gear. they should arrive in February, and if they're any good, I'll let you know!

Testors ModelMaster Acrylic "Dark Tan" is a very very close match. It's maybe a few degrees warmer than the moulded plastic color. The white (semi-gloss white acrylic primer) is too "pure white"--and gloss--so I'm going to probably do a wash or tint a flat coat a bit and spray. I may also go with black. I jacked up the joinery: I put it down for a second and the glue started to set and I had to try squeezing the head together with pliers. I'm going to probably do some filling. Also I don't like the way the lens came out; hopefully I can pull it out. I actually have some clear acrylic paint, but I want the back to be white or silvered. Also, I've broken one of the armament racks, so I'm going to see if I can 3d print replacements:

So here's the difference between the TV and DYRL heads.

Does shapeways have anything that's approximately as strong as the original ABS?

I'm interested. PM sent

So I've decided that I want to TV-ify my DYRL cannon-fodder valk as much as possible, which involves (in order of easiest-to-hardest) modifying the missile pods to be TV-style with IR domes and red tails (drill out front and rear, and repaint) apply a select number of decals (the ibuyxyz versions; I mainly need the gunpod warning decals, and I want to cut-up a pilot name; something "lucky" to explain why this particular pilot is Going to Make it Through to the End of the Show ) repainting the intake/exhaust to be "Brown" (I'm going to take artistic license and do a burnt-metal treatment on them--even if the intakes shouldn't "burn"; maybe I'll skip those) as well as the battloid "obliques" vents) add TV-style HUDs (ideally also add TV-style display) Convert gunpod to "vented" barrel (I recall the TV barrel being vented, not gatling; I need to go back and source this--I'm probably just going to model and print the whole gunpod statically for "Fighter" mode source a TV-style pilot figure (either borrow and cast a Roy from someone [hint hint], or sculpy my own TV figure) (optionally) add a hinged rear strut to the front landing gear (I'm thinking a 3d-modeled clip-on affair in case folding it flat won't stow) (optionally) add a non-canon red stripe to the legs. It bugs me that there's no frag warning stripe: there's a warning LABEL which usually explains the stripe. Evidently one of the games has a VF-1R colorway with the 3-gun head and the stripe [a sort of 'brown Max/Milia scheme] but I'm otherwising going TV-style. Back to my question: I've started on #1, but since putting in the IR sensor is going to show through the missile body (since the ABS is slightly translucent) I'm going to have to paint the missiles. I'm hoping there's a single color I can use, but if not I'm up for hints of other colors / ratios for mixing.