Pontus

Oh, and I didn't need to, but I disassembled the back panel by removing the little screw in the middle, but it took careful prying in the front of the wing slots to pop the plastic pins loose on either side. It's not glued like the fore arms are tho. Time to build an off white Frankenstein with all the extra pieces! Now to make an extra large steak accessory!

Bandai just announced an upcoming pre-order for an HMR TV Kakizaki VF-1A! Jk! I thought about inserting a rickroll link above, but thought better of it. Anyway, since I'm guessing there's not many who take their HMRs completely apart, thought I'd share some pics for reference. I considered painting my CF, maybe buying another Hikaru for the white parts. But they cost a lot, and I already have one. I generally only collect one of each valk, and I recently got an Arcadia Hikaru GBP, so I don't really need an HMR. So I took to carefully tearing apart the cheaper CF first. It was surprisingly easy, but the arms proved difficult. I could have just pulled the elbow pin, but it wouldn't match the upper arm color. I opened the arms by splitting the arm at the seam on the elbow end with an exacto knife, then pop the middle apart by prying between the joint and arm box on one side. It will break the plastic pin as you can see, but it's easily glued back together. I needed to swap hip joints for the brown intake with white legs, so the gerwalk pin had to come out. The hips pop off by turning hard on the peg while supporting the hip bar from breaking. I used a short piece of thick paperclip to hammer out the gerwalk pin. You have to do so in such a way that it can take a light hammering without moving while leaving space underneath for the pin to come out. The lower leg comes apart easily with 2 screws, one of which is under a friction fit cover. Here you can see the chunk of "hi metal" they put in the legs, lol. I figured it was easier to match white than brown, so I decided to use the CF legs and paint the off color. For now it doesn't even look that bad with the white wheel covers. But then I realized I'd still have to match brown for the shoulders. Speaking if paint, I tried taking off the red stripes the soft way first with alcohol, then acetone, but they just smeared it around staining the rest. Scraping it off carefully with my trusty xacto worked great without staining. You need to clean off the chest, the wings, and the leg wheel covers... oh and the fuselage being careful not to cut into the kite. Turned out pretty good if I say so myself. Still needs some paint, and I haven't gotten the other wings out yet to remove the red stripes.

Thanks again @Shawn for helping me complete my SV-262 with a reasonably priced Lill Draken set. Why do they have green wing tip markers on BOTH sides? I guess they might need to change color when attached, but then one should be red, lol. Anyway, I only really wanted the armors and especially the sword. I was really disappointed to find it didn't come with the valk. Was the sword a movie only item, or was it an integral part of the valk? I never finished the show or started the movie. How does this set figure into the anime?

Just got this SV-262 from Shawn with some crusty glue on one of the legs. I managed to carefully pick it off after softening with goo gone, but it did take some paint with it. The goo is gone tho.

I just left mine white, but I did consider carefully carving out the canopy with a rough pilot and dash inside, taping around the fuselage, then pouring in a tiny bit of epoxy.

Detolf pro-tip: Replace the steel rod ladder racks with threaded rods.

Thanks to @Skull One for these Zentradi ship models. I didn't even know they existed! And I'm new to figure collecting, so this may be common knowledge, but these Popup Parades are really nice for just $40. Especially considering that most figures I want/see are INSANELY expensive. Consequently, I've taken to collecting figures I find for a good price that look cool over ones I'm familiar with. In fact, I actively avoid buying familiar figures because that's a slippery slope that leads to having to buy expensive ones to complete the set. Even so, not a fan of Nekopara, but... I had to have all the cute cat girls. At this price, it's not killing my wallet. I usually avoid my wife's favorite collecting enabler, Hallmark, but the one time I did go in, they had an ornament of my favorite Doctor, Tom Baker.

I must have that Freyja figure! I couldn't find any preorders, so I'm assuming this is just announced and not yet taking orders?

Thanks to @Xigfrid, I just got the final piece of my plus collection.

What the fokk? That's a mother fokking fokkload of fokking Fokkers!

That looks like a cool figure, what is it?

I think it missed us unfortunately, but it may be a sign of more to come soon.

Wow, you managed to get one of the rare 1:1 scale toys!? Congrats. Mazda makes amazing toys. OOOOH, and a stick shift too! And a hard top. noice. Uh, you might have a leak tho, behind the front wheel? It's probably from the right arm transformation hydraulics.

Not exactly toys, but I'll have fun building them and organizing displays for my Macross, figures, and Aliens in them. I got 3 detolfs and a cabinet to put them on. Should be over 7' with storage below and no displays sitting unseen on the floor. Gotta get some LED strip lights tho.

I was thinking of using "Plastruct" colored acrylic rods of varying sizes available on Amazon for laser beams. Has anyone else used these? I've seen someone make them out of EL light wire for a BotW display, but it wasn't straight. The rods are solid supposedly, should be better if not glowing. But glowing takes batteries so you never use it anyway.

Rather than post a one off tip that gets lost, I figured I'd start a thread where we can share our scratch built effects that I've seen others do. Please share what you've made here. I just posted this display over on the strike a pose thread, but wanted to detail what I did to make really cool looking con trails. These would work really well for missile effects. I didn't think standard white pipe cleaners from the craft store would come out very well, but then I remembered I already had some ACTUAL pipe cleaners from my pipe smoking days. They are much more woolen and less stark white than craft pipe cleaners. For the fan racer, I wanted to have individual streams for the tiny rockets, so I split the wire ends of 3 of them, straightened them, glued them in as precisely as I could, and painted the ends with a light coat of flat white (again so it wasn't stark white). Here's the brand of pipe cleaners I used. They're cotton not the acrylic used on most craft store pipe cleaners which makes for a more accurate look imho. Oh, and make sure you don't get the bristled kind which have red spikes... unless you're into that, lol.

Fixed, thanks. Shoulda known better than to try to play it fast and dirty by just copying and pasting from Google pics. But it's kinduva pain on a chromebook when you have to download every pic first.

So I got the final piece of this display in the mail today, the microphone... and it promptly fell apart in my hands. So I had to take some scrap bits from my RPG Tactics minis and carve out a mic holder. I haven't applied any decals to the angel birds yet, but I'm not sure it's really necessary. I'm really happy with how the con trails came out with actual pipe cleaners (I used to smoke one) which aren't stark white like craft pipe cleaners and have a more woolen feel which makes for a more smoke like texture than sharp fibers sticking out. I took about 15 kajillion pics playing with lighting and angles, etc.. I'm not very good at it, but here's the best of the bunch. I like what I got here with just my phone camera and living room lamps. The forced perspective was fun to play with. HEEE KAH ROO!

Just got my Roy finally and recently picked up the RPG Tactics game purely for the minis so that I can display them with the SDF-1 in the ep1 scene. Also got a fan racer from @Xigfrid Shapeways store. Now I just need a stand mic. I figured since I'm missing a few key pieces from my collection, they could be filled nicely with available minis from this set and kids logic.

Yeah, that's the same shapeways store I got the bike from, and the unpainted kit is $280! Way too much for a kit imho.

Does anyone have a side by side pic of the minitech next to palladium figures? I need to see if they're marginally compatible before I drop $60 on minitechs. Doesn't have to be the same figures. There's just a few oddballs I can only get from the minitech line. Edit, nvrmnd, I found a pic. They're a good bit smaller as I thought.

Oooh, cool! What is it? The only ones in scale that I've seen were... well over $200 iirc, but it's been a while since I tried, and I may not be searching properly. Thought I remembered one on shapeways, but it was really expensive iirc. Considering that it doesn't need to transform or have any features that I need, I'd love to find a model kit or just a lump of 3d print for less than $60, but I'd certainly buy a full on toy for... hmm, $150ish max.

While I was getting the tiny fan racer at shapeways, I also picked up Isamu's bike for my Macross Plus display. Really wish I could find a reasonably priced X9 ghost.

So, I'm no modeler, at least not on the level some of you are. But there were quite a few omissions from my toy collection that looked like they could be nicely filled by the minis included in the Robotech tactics RPG set, and maybe some of the Minitech ones (altho, they seem a bit smaller scale). So I bought some model paint and the main game set. The first thing I'm going for is the 5 Angel Birds and fan racer in time for the Kitzconcepts Roy release to recreate the scene with my Matchbox SDF-1 where he's yelling at Hikaru as they go into a climb. Anyway, here's my progress so far: