SebastianP

My camera is broken, and the pics it takes would probably be too blurry to see the damage anyway, or I would have posted some. Much of the damage is moot, anyway, since I've mostly built around it - the booster problems were pretty much solved by building it land-based, for example. The big broken pieces were as stated earlier the lower fuselage half - one of the wing pivots had punched through the plastic from the inside, and I think some of the injection stubs from the other sprues had been forcefully pressed into the plastic because it's full of small "bend lines" where the plastic has weakened. Since I managed to fix the important part - the pivot - and the destroyed detail is mostly invisible after assembly, I used it anyway after some consideration. The second big part is the portmost piece of the main dorsal thruster assembly - part of the shell has been literally torn off (the edge is bent to hell, and the missing piece is just that, missing.) This one is the most immediately replacable part, though, since it's included, but unused, in the Super/Strike Valkyrie kits, and I've decided that I *will* get one of those, eventually. The exhaust nozzle for one booster has been slightly flattened, though - it's half-way D-shaped. Since it's not cracked or anything, I may be able to fix it with hot water and gentle pressure. Hopefully. There was just enough left of the intake pieces to complete one closed and one open intake, thankfully from opposite sides, so that's what I did. I'll have to come up with a story reason why the FOD cover on one side is closed, but not the other, but that's a pretty minor detail... Since there was no way to build the correct booster, and I decided against waiting for replacement parts (a month at least - I'm not that patient!) I used some ingenuity and spare pieces from the A and K sprues to build a new tail with extended fins. Basically, I carved off a bunch of plastic from the bits that would make up the folded tail, and butt-joined them with CA to the rear of the center fuselage. I also built the legs to go straight back (none of the spacers nor guide bars). They're not quite perfect, since I got the tail a tad crooked and made the legs to match before I spotted it. What's actually left to do now is the arms, head, landing gear and the cockpit (which I left for last because I could). And the painting... I will eventually build the VE-1 specific booster parts - both leg, arm and dorsal units - though I think I'll wait until I've gotten a Super or Strike Valkyrie, so I'll have replacement pieces. Maybe I'll display them separately? SP

The good news is, I managed to get the A5 part back into its original shape, more or less, using brute force, strong cement, and CA glue for reinforcement. I lost some detail, and I'll have to sand down a bulge or two, but I actually managed to assemble both the front and center fuselage completely without it looking too bad. Yay me. The bad news is, I found a couple of more mangled parts - including one of the "space" intakes. The intake lip part has been completely sheared off from the FOD cover, and is nearly broken in two besides - which means no amount of careful gluing in the world will fix it. Couple this with a missing piece of the dorsal booster shell, and numerous mashed up vernier thrusters, and I've decided that this one will end up in Atmospheric configuration - because that's about all the options I have... SP

Someone appears to have sat or stepped on the box to the VE-1 Elintseeker kit I just picked up from the post office, and because I didn't see any damage (they'd cleaned the box up pretty good), I think I may have lost my right to complain about it... I'm lucky in that only a few pieces have taken the brunt of the damage - the trouble is, at least one of these is absolutely required to build the blasted thing in any configuration... The pieces that are definitely broken beyond all hope of repair include A5 (lower main fuselage half), V4 (port outboard dorsal booster half), and one W15 (booster exhaust bell) - these are way beyond my ability to fix. The rest is basically OK, though - or marked as not for use, which is a relief... Does anyone have spares for these parts that they could find it in their hearts to send me? SP

Since I started more or less fresh with my model building this summer, and I tend to drop kits in production whenever I get a new one, I've got thirty-something in-progress kits going at the moment - about half modern helicopters, and the rest modern jet fighters. Let's see... A VF-0A with Ghost, which is currently lacking legs and stabs because I need to decal the former before adding them. Don't look too closely at the bottom, the seams were pretty horrible and it didn't seem to matter how much I sanded, since the paint brought them out in sharp relief anyway. AARGH. A JASDF F-2A maritime strike fighter, which is looking terribly blue at the moment. It needs some green camo paint, but I haven't found a good color match yet. An RAF Tornado GR.1, which may end up as a GR.4. No paint on this one yet - actually, since I'm not done with the 'pit, I haven't even assembled the nose section yet. The kit is positively awesome, though - nicest kit I've seen so far this year. Falls together, and looks like it was 1/32 scale. An F-14B Tomcat, which is in decalling, and will probably stay that way for a while since there were quite a lot of those... It's being done up as the VF-102 CO jet, on one of their last cruises. An F/A-18E, also in VF-102 livery, and also in decalling. The biggest uncertainty here is which cruise it's supposed to be from, and what ordnance to use - there's so much to choose from... Another F-14, this one built as a "D" prototype, but painted as an F-15E. This is what happens when I get up in the morning and find that my bright white aircraft that I painted the night before is now cream colored, almost beige. It looks much more amusing like this.... I've actually got Gulf War squdron CO markings on it, and stencils from three different sources, including my one aftermarket sheet (a Superscale sheet that must've slipped through quality control since the colors have run all over the place) ...and assorted other stuff. (I could sit here all night listing kits in some stage of construction - everything from a tiny OH-58D Kiowa Warrior in need of new decals, to a CH-53E Super Stallion which is the wrong shade of gray, and a brace of French air force fighters, and a Gripen, and half a dozen European helicopters of various makes and sizes...) SP

Not until well after the new year - I've been told that the earliest opportunity for mailing the kit my way won't be until the 28th or so. It's a tossup what'll get here first - my prize, or my previous order from HLJ (a VF-0 with Ghost which shipped three weeks ago). I'm considering ordering a VF-0D and a Strike Valk express after Christmas - I can afford it easy, though it means I'll be eating a lot of canned food this month. Which would probably be good for me, anyway, I need a break from fries-with-meat. SP

After taking a good look at the cutting board underneath the model, I discovered I was wrong about the size - it's nearly 19 inches across, rather than 9. Which means that the 1/1 dimensions are on the order of 960 meters long, and 1880 meters wide... It's still too expensive for my budget, though.

Wasn't there an official explanation for the purpose of the VF-0D that had nothing to do with conversion training? I think it had to do with reconnaissance/strike instead (like the F-15E) Traditionally, the first version of anything is called "A", the next "B" etc. For aircraft with twin-seat models being developed concurrently with the baseline singleseaters, this usually means that single- and twin seaters alternate through the alphabet. Then there are the exceptions made for "special" versions, most often exports. For instance, an "I" version of a US fighter is usually made for Israel, a "J" is a Japanese version, "K" and "M" (IIRC) are associated with the UK, etc. With that in mind, I'm inclined to believe the VF-0A came first, with the "S" being a direct development and the "B" being a conversion trainer. The "D" is a strike variant, and the "C" is a cancelled version of some sort, possibly a single-seater "D"... Or just something no one ever got around to drawing, but that's there in the background. Does any of this make sense? SP

Not Macross, but still pretty topical - the flying carrier from Yukikaze: http://www.hlj.com/product/OMTGK-01 First thought: Oh my God the pricetag! (19,000 yen!) Second thought: Oh my god it's tiny! (only nine inches across) Third thought: Oh my God, at that scale the real thing is nearly a kilometer wide! The fourth thought is pretty much a given: "I want one!" Now, does anyone have a list of banks I can rob to pay for it? :-) SP

I was just informed that I won an online contest on another site, and that my prize was a Hasegawa VE-1 Elintseeker kit - which was a great surprise, in all senses of the word. I usually never win anything... While I'm waiting for the kit to arrive, I've decided to do some planning for how I want the finished model to look. Rule number one is: No allover white. In fact, no large white surfaces at all, if it can be avoided - because once I open that tin, the model is usually doomed. (It's gotten a little better in the last year, but brushing on white paint thin enough to level out is a pain in the rear that I'll happily avoid for all time). So, what do I do instead? The only option I can think of off hand that I can make look any good, would be a US Navy-style two-tone scheme with color insignia and modexes (spares from a Tomcat kit). I could do all-over black, as well - though with no white Modexes, and no masking skills for the big eye thing on the rotodome it, it wouldn't look near as good; and all-over Gunship Gray - which makes any and all red details stick out like beacons. Does anyone have any good ideas for how to paint this thing? SP