Valkyrie

They vary greatly in terms of both price and rarity. The cheapest seem to be the YF-19, YF-21, and Pheyos. The 19 and 21 because they're probably the most mass produced, and the Pheyos because it's the least in demand. The VA-3 seems to be pretty low in demand too. At the other end of the spectrum, is the VF-19F/S Blazer Valkyrie with FAST Packs, which sold for $1200 and $1300 the last two times it showed up on yahoo japan auction. The VF-4G and Fire Valkyrie are also high in demand, but not nearly as much as the Blazer. Keep in mind, this is all relative. SHE kits are still garage kits, and are all made in very limited in numbers compared to injection plastic kits. And also, it's very rare that I see any SHE kit sell for much less than its original retail price ($200, on average)

I built AMT's 1/24 KITT about a year ago. It's an awful kit.

There are two that I know of. A 1/100 Gigamesh (what's-his-name's powedered suit) by B-Club, and a 1/72 Marduk battle pod, which came with the Musasiya 1/72 VF-2SS 'Vs. Set'

Just curious, does anyone have any experience airbrushing with Mr. Surfacer 500 or 1000 (the stuff in bottles)? How well does it work? I've been using Alclad primer on the VF-0S kit, but I'm almost out, and it's kinda expensive. So I've been eyeing the Mr Surfacer bottles thinking they'll be next in line when the Alclad runs out. I've got some Mr. Color thinner, so I'm thinking that'd be best for thinning it down. So anyway, any experience my fellow models could share will be much apreciated

I could easily do without the dub, but still, this sounds pretty cool Especially a directors' commentary, even if it's only for the first 3 episodes. And Graham, Votoms was never on US TV. If I'm not mistaken, it was out on DVD (both in boxes and individual discs) for a time, but it's been out of print for a while now.

I just posted my analysis of the situation (though a bit simplified) at robocrap.com. I figured I might as well post it here too, cause it'll likely be deleted there in a matter of hours

Wow, those are really good! That's a nice Macross Plus laserdisc box too

Ahh, that solves that mystery. Thanks Graham. The kit does come with part of the hands (though I didn't realise that's what they were until Graham mentioned that). But it's only the back surface of the hands, so they didn't seem to solve anything. Until it occured to me to try test-fitting it all with the backpack in place... It never even occured to me that the big-ass packpack would hide the ends of the arms. And the hand pieces act as covers to bridge the gap between the arms and backpack. The sides are left open, but that's ok, because the legs will cover them. So that seam in the would-be hand ports in the arms is no problem at all

Christ, you insult the man, spread lies about him, and now you want him to help you?

Heh, hardly. The valks I build came out decent, I think, but they're not exactly anything special. Maybe I'll post pics of them later tho. I've been building the VF-0 for a day or so now, and it seems like it isn't QUITE as good a kit as I initially thought it was. I still love it to death, but it's not without its flaws. And fixing them is consuming more time than I would have liked. A few that come to mind... First, there are no shutters for the arms, where the hands come out. The VF-1 has very nice ones, but the VF-0 has none. And there's a pretty nasty seam in there too. I gave up on trying to putty over them, and cut a piece of .010" styrene and glued it in place over them. You were definitely right about the wing plugs, Cheng. They're a bit undersized, resulting in gaps around them. I tried puttying them up, but they didn't turn out all too well You know how inside the Hase VF-1's fuselage, there's those 'trenches' on the bottom part? The rear ones get covered, but the front ones don't. Well, those trenches are back, and this time neither of them get covered. And they're visible (albeit slightly) when the kit's built. So I've got big globs of MoriMori putty curing in them right now. There's rivets all along the outsides of the feet, but the ones along the sides are very faint, due to the way Hasegawa molded them. So I've gotta figure out how to scribe new rivet holes now... But in Hasegawa's defense, the only way to get the rivets right would to make each foot half three parts. There's a number of fairly minor surface flaws resulting from parts being made too thick in places. I'm not sure of the details of it all, but it seems if an area of a part is made too thick, there can be some shrinkage or something. And the result is some small, but noticable craters in the surface of some parts. And there's two of them on the top of the fuselage. But the biggest pain in my ass right now is the intakes. They're laid out much the same as Hase's VF-1. You've got the intake housing halves (this time joined with the legs in the VF-0), the funnel-lookin' thing, the turbine blades, and the shutters, which sit up top. First, there's a problem on the outside of the housing. On the bottom of the legs, there's a panel line that's completely wrong. The two halves each have a horizontal line going nowhere, when they should be diagonal lines which meet. I'll have to putty over those lines and scribe new ones. (see highlighted lines in 1st pic) But the inside of the intake is a bigger problem. The parts all fit fine, but housing and the funnel don't 'flow' together like they should. I've had to do a lot of shaving, sanding, and puttying to get rid of all the gaps and 'steps' in there. And the shutters aren't wide enough, so I'm extending them out with epoxy putty (see 2nd pic for before and after) All that may sound like a lot, but don't let it discourage you from building one of your own. It's a great kit, and I still love it. It's just taking a bit of TLC to get it where I want it to be

Huh? Something's wrong there. The file is 176.9 megs. And I had no problems downloading it. Try stopping the download, deleting the file, then download it again. Oh, and make sure you have enough hard drive space left for it. If you only had 50 megs free, that'd be your problem right there

Dude, what's your deal? We've already been over this. Nanashi makes up nothing. Never has, never will. You pass this off as a widely accepted fact, yet offer nothing to disprove Nanashi's claims. Ah, and now you imply that you speak for the general consensus. The old "Everyone else thinks I'm right, so you should too" bit. Look around. You're the only one here questioning the validity of his information. Sure, the masses may prefer if he cited his exact sources, but no one is assuming it came from his imagination because he has not. That's exactly why I don't like any Macross RPG sites. It's always impossible to tell where the fact ends and where the fiction begins. Everything is presented as if it's all 100% factual. Even if only 5% of any given entry is made up, who's going to be able to tell which parts are fiction? (besides Nanashi )

Let's see, so far I've done (in chronological order) VF-1A Hikaru VF-1J Max VF-1A Hikaru Super Valkyrie VF-1S Focker I'm way out of practice... I haven't built a valk in well over a year. But I'm gonna give this one my best shot

I saw that one this morning. That guy is good AND fast! Here's a quick comparison shot of the 1 and the 0. Keep in mind, the VF-0 is actaully a bit longer than that, cause the feet aren't on And here's a pic of the decals. Forgot to include them in the first set of pics. Another big one BTW, I've decided I'm going to build mine so I can attach the fast packs with magnets. I did some preliminary tests, and it looks like it's gonna work great

Right here Looking at those pics, I wish I'd taken bigger ones before I started ripping parts off the sprues :/ Here's manual pics (sorry I couldn't scan them). Links this time. They're 150k each Manual 1 Manual 2 Manual 3 Manual 4

Well, I finally got my Hasegawa VF-0S. Actually I would have gotten it yesterday, but no one was home to sign for it. And so I've been in hell the past 24 hours waiting for it But anyway, it's mine at last. First impression: . . . Wow. First of all, it's bigger than I expected. I knew it'd be bigger than the VF-1, but still, it took be by surprise. Also, I was surprised at some of the parts they combined. The leg halves are all one part, including the intakes. The upper fuselage is joined with the bakpack, and the arm halves are all one part too, from forearm to shoulder. The surface detal is excelent, as usual. Hasegawa's more recent offerings like the YF-19 and 21 have been relatively sparse in panel detail, becuase they're supposed to be much more streamlined than the older Valkyries. And since the VF-0 is even less sleek than the VF-1, those who loved the Hase VF-1's surface detail will eat this one up. It's just as plentiful, and just as well executed. There doesn't seem to be many unexpected options. There aren't provisions to build it with the landing gears up, but I sure it can be done easily enough with the normal amount of kitbashing. The canopy is split in two, and parts are included to build it opened. And then, of course, there's the fast packs and pilot. And the air brake option has returned, complete with actuating cylinder. Some of Hasegawa's improvements over thier first VF-1 kits have reappeared in this kit. First, the wings now have the 'plug' pieces that go in the bottom of the wings, as opposed to the first VF-1 wings which were two complete halves. This change made its debut in the VT-1 Super Ostrich kit. Also, the main nozzles (feet) can now be installed after the legs are constructed. A very welcome change, because that was one of the hardest parts about building the old VF-1's - getting rid of that nasty leg seam after the feet are installed. But the canopy seam has appeared once again. The canopies have the same dome shape that the VF-1's had, so Hasegawa had to do thier same ingenious molding tricks to get them right. But the result is that we have to sand and buff out a seam once again. Oh well. Also, Hasegawa has seemingly revealed its intention to produce a two-seater VF-0. Becuase it comes with two pilots and two pilot seats Yea, I know, big surprise. But spare pilots are always good to have! That's about all I can think of. I suppose this grew to be a bit longer than the 'brief review' I had planned on doing. But oh well. I'll post pics later tonight. If you have any questions, ask away.

It's not a Chogokin. It's a Popynica (sp?). So it's not all metal. And thus it's cheap(er). But if I'm reading the ad right, it DOES have a die-cast frame. It actually looks like it's a pretty decent size for the price. 200mm long, which is about 7.9". I think that's about the same size as the McFarlane one, but it looks a hell of a lot better. And according to HLJ, the price is Y6500. Not too bad... http://www.hlj.com/cgi-perl/hljpage.cgi?BAN922945

Translation: You make stuff up. Educated guesses or no. And to say Nanashi is "notorious for making stuff up"? Nanashi hit the nail on the head. Sounds to me like one more case of you making stuff up

I actually considered scratchbuilding the VF-1's atmospheric escape booster at one point. But the problem I ran into is that there isn't much design art on it. Only 3 pics worth. So there'd be a good deal of guesswork involved to fill in the gaps (which I really don't like doing) And for those of you who want the launch vehicle it mounts to too... Have you seen how big that thing is?! It'd easily triple the cost of the kit.

Thanks guys It's about 12" wide, 14" long, and 13" tall (not including the straws). That makes it about 1/2.5 scale If I ever do this sort of thing again, I'll go for full scale And Carl, I would have put it in the front yard, but I'm sure it would have gotten trashed by all the kids walking past it on thier way to school this morning

A few hours ago, I was out shoveling the driveway. At midnight. I had put it off a bit too long. Somewhere during that process, I got to thinking "Hey, this is really good snow. I should do something with it." Not long after that, I got to thinking "Ya know, it's been far too long since I did something wacky." (anyone remember my ice Tread Armo-Fighter? ) So anyway, I decided to try sculpting something out of snow. Both for fun, and to finally put my sculpting skills (or lack thereof) to the test. As much as I want to scratch-build stuff, I've never really tried diving in and doing something like this. After a bit of contemplating, I settled on a VF-1S head. A bit of a lofty goal, since it is a rather difficult shape to get right. But I wasn't about to be a perfectionist in this project. So, arming myself with a few crude sculpting tools (a 12" steel ruler ended up doing most of the work), a hastily assembled Hasegawa VF-1S battroid head, and a Hase fighter mode S head, still on the sprues, I went out into the back yard to see what I could accomplish. I've got a few progress pics, but I won't bore you with them (unless you actually want to see them). Here's what I ended up with, two hours later. Conclusions: - It seems I might have some degree of sculpting talent after all! - The VF-1S head is just about the hardest thing on earth to sculpt accurately. - Snow is an excelent sculpting medium. - Drinking straws make rather unconvincing head lasers. But they'll work in a pinch, provided you cover any red stripes on them with white spraypaint.

Heh, the first fansubs should be out on my birthday, May 30th That shall be a most excelent birthday present.

ooh, good thread.... hard to choose a top three though.... 1) 1/72 VF-17 2) 1/72 VF-5000 3) 1/72 Stampede Valkyrie (a Hase conversion kit, perhaps?) I'd also like to see kits of more Macross ships (besides the Macross itself). Like an ARMD or Battle 7, maybe.

Awesome movie. I had a fansub of it back in the day, and years later, I got the japanese LD (fortunately, I've never been subjected to the dub). It never fails to impress me. The Chun-Li fight is absolutely incredible. And yes, the music rocks. I've still got an SM bootleg of the soundtrack around here somewhere

I had hoped to have it done by now, but I'm behind schedule... real life stuff's been getting in the way <_< But most of that is behind me now. So I'm shooting to have it done sometime next week.