Vic Mancini

I don't know about anyone else, but Graham's most recent comments about Yamato never doing any 2-seater 1/48 valks, and to "read between the lines", seems to suggest that maybe they will do them in another scale since he specified "1/48". Maybe Yamato is planning to re-do the VF-1 line in 1/60 scale, VF-1Ds and Elintseekers included.

Same here. And you can throw the VF-11 and SV-51 into that category for me too. It's very difficult for me to pick a favorite from those four designs. I love them all. And the VF-0 is right behind.

I'm generally a bigger fan of the 19 than the 21, but the 19 has angles that are less than flattering too. It can look chunky in the rear from certain perspectives. Now the VF-11....that's a pretty fighter mode IMO.

Looks like a couple of Hasegawas to me.

That is GREAT news. A Dobber scheme is what I want more than the cannon ones. Dante 74's digital/dessert camo looks great too. I'd love to see that on a 19 or a Zero. (Notice the GOLD canopy Yamato).

Hmmm... it actually does look gold in that pic.

This black scheme looks especially fantastic in B-mode. I think it's because it helps to hide some of the unsightly grooves/chunks that Yamato had to take out of the thighs to make the F-mode fit together flat. The legs look almost thicker, or more proportionately correct at least, in that dark colour. I was personally rooting for Yamato to do some kind of low vis non cannon scheme instead of a stealth or supernova, but this custom is really swaying my opinion right now.

That is gorgeous. Make me one.

The Hase model on page 67 is too red to be anime accurate IMO. It's a beautiful model and actually looks better to me than the anime colours, and I'd be happy if the Yamato came out looking like that, but Nora's 51 is a little more pink than that model. The yellow striping is bang on though...way better than the bronze on the preproduction Yamato we've seen. And what's with the clear canopy again? Is it really that difficult to make a transparent yellow/gold canopy?

You're going on a tangent that has very little to do with what I'm saying. I'm not talking about the competition with the 19, I never denied the need for lift to come from the rear slats, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the 21 could defeat the 19 in a competition even without the use of it's main source of lift in G mode. My very acknowledging of the slats is what originally started this sub thread. Obviously the main lift is provided from the slats, that is clear from the diagram which I saw for the first time tonight. That's a hella-cool feature of the 21 that I never knew about. All I'm saying is that the 21 almost certainly must have foot thrusters as well. It probably couldn't physically hover without them, and that's not a lift/power issue, it's a balance issue. It would be similar, (although not exactly the same), to the F-35 trying to VTOL without the use of the forward fan. And I also disagree with the notion of needing full thrust to maintain a hover in G or B mode. I've always been under the impression that every valk, (even the zeros and 51s), had far more than enough thrust to make a powerful vertical accent in any mode. But that's just the impression that I have from watching the various Macross series and OVAs. I fully admit I don't know very much technical info about any Valks. I just find it incomprehensible that so much power could be lost from F to B/G mode just from the diversion of energy to the limbs and armor. We're talking about some valks that can travel at speeds of over mach 20 and can go from take off to orbit in seconds.

Yes... it's probably true that the feet of the 19 are more powerful than the feet of the 21, but that doesn't mean that the 21's feet still aren't very powerful, (and possibly even a lot more powerful than they need to be.) Obviously those slats are part of what supplies the lift in G mode there is no denying that, but I can't believe there would be no foot thrusters to aid in the forward balance, and stopping/maneuvering. Without some kind of foot thrusters, the 21 would just lift and tilt forward until it fell on it's nose cone in G mode. I don't see how it could hover in a stationary position with only the use of the slats. Again, I strongly disagree with that, especially in the case of the YVFs which had absolutely insane thrust to weight ratios that could launch them into orbit in less than a minute....and that's with their limiters enabled. I can't believe so much power would be lost simply from going from F to B/G mode that it would require full throttle just to hover. Also, if a valk required full thrust just to hover in G mode, then it would not even be able to climb in altitude, and we've seen Valks accelerate upwards rapidly in all 3 modes.

Errr, that was a typo. I meant G-mode, not B-mode. ...hence when I said, "That makes a lot of sense given the off-balance of having the legs/feet thrusters so far forward." I'm confused, but not so confused as to think that the slats would be used for B-mode! PS. Are you sure the feet don't have thrusters at all? Obviously the main engines don't funnel through them, (I was always aware of that), but I can't believe it would be a very effective or maneuverable Gerwalk with no feet thrusters. How would it even maneuver at low velocity? ...Or hover for that matter? The slats that I never noticed are clearly behind the center of gravity.

Thanks for the scans March. I still don't understand where the shoulders come from, though. I never realized the shingles on the underside of the engines in the open leg bay sequence could open/close. So the 21 actually produces thrust from that area in G-mode, huh? That makes a lot of sense given the off-balance of having the legs/feet thrusters so far forward. That's really cool. That being said, there is absolutely no way the legs can be stored in the space in that sketch for F-mode.. That's pure anime magic right there.

That looks so much better than any official paint scheme. Wow. I would love to see B and G mode in those colours.

Don't speak for everyone. I was displeased with the gullet of the 19 the first time I saw the CAD too, but the reason I accept it now is not because "it's over and done with", it's because at the time I was used to the Hasegawa fighter mode but the gullet of the Yamato actually is more anime accurate. Now a days I can barely even look at the Hasegawa YF-19. It looks strange to me. It just took time to get used to a different rendition than I was accustomed to.

I don't know about you guys, but around my parts we call "metallic brown" bronze. Sorry to all the Nora fans. That scheme doesn't look like it was pulled off very well. The problem is that the yellow accents are supposed to highlight the deep magenta, while in Yamato's case the bronze accents are actually darker than the magenta instead of being lighter than the magenta like they are supposed to be, which reverses the highlight effect. Not good. Maybe it's the lighting, although I doubt it. And now I've got the mental image of a YF-21 with dark gold/bronze accents stuck in my head. Stick with yellow, Yamato.

Hmmm...I thought it would be more obvious. Maybe I'm not as annoying as I thought I was. It's just that damn chest lock, or lack there of. You can see that the chest isn't pushed all the way down. And to all the, "I have no use for a chest lock because I don't hold my battroid upside down" types, it's clearly standing straight up in the pics. The chest probably came unlocked when aaajin positioned the arm to lean on the fold booster, and voila. It doesn't take much. The lack of a chest lock is just such an oversight to me in what is otherwise a brilliant interpretation of the YF-19.

Awesome battroid pics. I have a gripe that I'll keep to myself because I don't want to start sounding like a broken record, or like Bob, but many of you can probably guess what I'm thinking.

I probably shouldn't answer for Graham, but I think the earlier mention about the bad reaction between the abs and pvc was at the time only a possibility, not a conclusion. The following quote from Graham seems to suggest that Yamato needed time to confirm what they suspected the problem to be: ...But I could be wrong.

Forgive me if this has been asked or answered already, but are the arms on the Shin variant VF-0 the new and improved replacement arms, or are they the same arms on the VF-0A? Edit: Nevermind. Eugimon beat me to the question by one minute.

I've never seen those pictures before. Those are Hasegawa customs? Amazing.

AHH! I understand now. I was imagining something completely different, hence my confusion. Thank you for the sketches. See, I always thought that the swept back appearance of the wings in the still frame of the 21 taking off was just an exaggeration that the animators put in for artistic liscenese. I didn't clue in that the wings were actually morphed backwards at that moment even thought you see them morph just seconds before. Stupid me. A very neat idea, Hayabusa, but I doubt we'll see anything like that actually implemented in the design.

A sketch would be helpful because I still don't understand. I was under the impression that the morphing feature had nothing to do with high speed mode. The wings simply angle down about 45 degrees at the regular old non-morphing hinge that connects the wing to the wing root. The "cheap high-speed effect" was what I thought was anime accurate. Am I wrong here?

I don't understand the point of your idea Hayabusa. Isn't there supposed to be a seam/joint where the wings fold downward for high speed mode? It is the same joint that is used to fold the wings behind the back in Battroid mode. I didn't think there was any difference between the joint on the YF-21's wing and the joint on the SV-51's wing. Am I wrong? I just don't understand the point of a complicated system of flaps when a simple hinge is anime accurate.

It's not even the colours that bother me, it's the shape changes from YF-19 to VF-19 that turn me off. The huge ankle cuffs and over sized cartoony feet make the back end of F mode too fat, and the increased triangular wedge shape of the newly designed front end only emphasize it. I hate where the vertical stabalizers are moved to. I hate the new head/face. I hate the new shoulders. I hate the new fuselage/canopy. Battroid looks like some exagerated cyber-samurai mecha from Gundam. Everything about it is worse than the YF-19 in my eyes. The YF-19 looks like a state of the art mecha/aircraft that could potentionally exist in real life with the help of some Overtech. There's a degree of plausibility about it. The VF-19 looks like a cartoony kids toy to me. I do hope Yamato makes a high quality version of the VF-19 for those who are fans of the design, but I personally have absolutely no interest in it. It's one of my all-time least favorite Valks, while the YF-19 is probably my all time most favorite.