captain america

Hi Chad. Yes, Jesse will be doing the bulk of the casting. However, I plan to also make a set of master molds here; particularly for the nozzle/endbells, of which 4 will be required per kit, and because of the high detail in the nozzle area, I'm relatively certain that the mold-life will be far lower than normal. Also, in order to avoid having people impatiently wait months for their kit, Jesse and I can do double-duty, so that kits are delivered more quickly, or in case Jesse just simply bottlenecks from workload saturation. Oh, just for fun, here are a couple of fuzzy, low-quality pics of the Valkyrie mooring point... Simple as it looks, you guys have NO CLUE what bloody hell it was to make.

Hi WM. That's an excellent idea actually. I'll try to include the bent knee parts in the booster kit (depending on if I have any leftover mold material when the main parts are molded). Teeth around the endbell openings: yes, I'll be getting to those in due course. I was initially hesitant to add these, for fear that the gap between the housing and the nozzle would be too constricted and result in binding, but upon more extensive fitting & fiddling, it seems that I have adequate room to add the extra detail and still have plenty of room to adjust the angle of the nozzle.

Hi Chad. Yes, that's right, my bad Basicaly, I'm just in need of the bent-knee part. I kneed to mock up the leg precisely so that I can adjust the hull beneath it and skirt the outer surface more precisely to its contour. As for detailing, the rivets on the bell itself are actually indented; I machined two different sized punch tools to do this more quickly. The lines (horizontal) on the endbell are also scribed. I did those on the lathe for precision. As for the raised ribs in the nozzle wells, those are quite simply strip styrene, as are the little rivets on the nozzle coupling. You just drill a small hole manually, and insert the piece of styrene.... And then do it 200 more times

last pic for this update.

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

next pic

My fingertips are thoroughly crazy-glued, I'm zonked on putty fumes and it's been a long week. Time for another update. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures; I'm using a webcam whilst I decide on the best digital camera to replace my ill-fated(and crappy) HP unit. As you can see, I've coated the main hull parts in grey, as they are very nearly complete, with just some surfacing to do before fine-detailing/scribing. In the views of the lower hull, you can clearly see the tapering of the outer hull as it joins to the leg unit. I've left this area rough for now, as I'll have to use the SUPER Valk legs to make the final fit adjustments. If you notice down the center of the lower hull, there are ten circular indentations. These will be for the mounting latches that hold the booster to the launch arm. Other views of interest are the rear of the main hull sections where the nozzle mounts. I've added some little bits inside to make these interesting, like the main circular couplings with individually drilled & pressed rivets(even though they'll be all but totally obscured by the nozzle itself.) Speaking of the nozzle, the endbell itself is now finished, and decidedly a pain in the ass to photograph... It's dotted with several rings of very tiny rivets that are just too small to capture on cam; only the larger rivets seem to show. Nevertheless, these will be quite the visual treat when seen in person. That's about all for now; I'm going to put the booster aside temporarily until my Super parts arrive. There's maybe 2-3 days of work to finish it all, so I'm almost there (( your patience is greatly appreciated.)) Cheers,

You may call me... Shun Yoshikuni ( fast guy from good fortune country) Sonds like something I'd get out of a fortune cookie

Hi WM. The plan view of the booter was a bit of a compromise as it turns out. When you look at it from 3/4 front/elevated level, like in the main pic, it looks spot-on. However, if you make the booster fuselage TOO bulbous at the mid-section(around the UN kite), you will end up with a tremendous amount of overhang over the legs. If you take your Hasegawa VF-1 kit and look at it from the underside, you see that the legs are actually narrower than the chest/back/main fuselage to begin with, so if you then exaggerate the outward flaring of the booster, you just compond that problem. By the way, Kawamori's drawings contradict each other in terms of proportions. In his 3/4 front view and 3/4 underside view, the side bulge is gradual and progressive, whereas in the rear view, the sides of the booster look almost board straight, and then taper in dramatically to tuck-in under the booster nozzles. As a result, it's impossible to get a solid 3-D form to look EXACTLY like all of Kawamori's drawings, but I am keeping it superbly close... And creatively ad-libbing in the grey areas. Re: teeth details. I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. I still yet have some little rectangular bits to add to the base of the nozzles... Might those be what you're refering to?

Hi Thor. Quite simply, once the blocks are cut square, I take my trusty ol' dremel and sanding block, and simply hack away at them 'til the shape is right. Lucky for me I have eagle eyes for proportions, so I'm able to keep everything symmetrical to within about half a mm. You can do this too, just be sure that as soon as you carve one curve in one piece, that you immediately cut the same curve in the mirror part. The more closely you work on both parts simultaneously, the better your chances of keeping them symmetrical.

Hi Batou. Actually, Rob is the one handling the marketing aspect of the model, so would be the one to best answer your question regarding price. However, I can assure you that it'll be cheaper than a japanese kit of similar detail/size. As for the launch vehicle, we both decided that precisely for cost purposes, we would market them as separate kits; basically give people a chance to save-up for them.

Hi Valkyrie. Looks great to me! I'm just coming to realise how tiny 1/72 is; I'm used to working in much larger scales

Last pic... For now

3 of 4.

Pic 2 of 4

Hi guys, I'm exhausted... Time for an update To answer Noyhauser's question, I really don't know, as I don't have a super O kit. It may very well fit with some veeeery minor modification to the center fuselage on the booster. The booster is designed to accept a VF-1 with its backpack deployed "atmospheric" mode and its V-tails flat. Anyway, onto the pics... As you can see, the once flat blocks of modelling board have now been fleshed-out into a more familiar form. My webcam's lens produces a tremendous fish-eye effect on objects that I shoot from a short distance, and as a result, makes the booster look much more slender than it really is; it's actually spot-on with the side-view Rob posted at the beginning of the thread. All the parts fit perfectly, and tolerances are being kept tight. As Valkyrie had noticed earlier on, the foreward, upper tips of the booster will need to be cut-back and enlarged... I left them longer for the time being, as I'll need to adjust that entire area to conform precisely to the Hasegawa kit's surface. In a nutshell, things are going exactly as planned.