Chronocidal

The one thing that didn't come out quite right was the width of the ridges on the sides, but that's my own fault for not double checking the width of that back edge and eyeballing the curvature. Still, between this and the new YF-19 wing brackets, the digital caliper I was given for Christmas last year has been absolutely proving its usefulness.

Don't know if I'd buy a pink one, but I'd love to buy more versions of that mold, especially if Bandai got brave and decided to try the Supernova schemes, or any of the other Master File schemes Yamato and Arcadia don't seem to want to attempt.

Just personally, I think it doesn't flow well with the VF-1's natural lines, and tries too hard to force the VF-31's geometry onto another plane. Some of it's fine, but the random diagonal cuts across some parts look weird, and I get that they were trying to match the pattern on the wings by only continuing the double stripe half-way, but the random cut-off in the middle of the wing where they tried to mimic the tail structure just looks bad, and they should have just continued the double stripe all the way to the tip. And while I admit I'm not a huge fan of the reaper emblem in general, it would have looked a lot better on the tails than printed across the backplate. Not like I'm going to cancel my preorders or anything, I just think it could be better. It's still nowhere near the eye-gouging level of the 30th VF-1J at least.

So I haven't had time to take pictures of this, but since I've been transforming my 1/72 262 kits a whole lot more than my DX (the transformation is orders of magnitude simpler, and much more fun on the model), I've been finding some little weak points in the kit that my just be stress related, but might also be molding flaws due to plastic flow lines. First and foremost, all of the little panels that snap over the main wing mounts (the long thin pieces that snap in beside the arm behind the cockpit) like to break a lot. They're under a decent amount of stress, and they're very thin pieces, so for the sake of holding things together, I glued them down over the wing hinges, and then gave the upper surface of the panel a solid coating of glue as well, to melt them into a single piece with the tabs that snap into them. There's only very minor detail to be lost on those panels, so once the glue is rock hard, I'll sand it smooth. Second, I noticed a crack forming in one of the long thin panels that the wings are connected to. It's the longer piece that connects directly to the wing hinges held down by the tiny panels I mentioned above. It's only a hairline stress fracture that hadn't gone much past the edge of the plastic, but it seems to follow a flow line in the plastic. I may have stressed this piece myself by trying to pull the legs out without the wings folded up enough, but the stress mark mostly showed on the underside of this piece, along the shortest distance across the part. Fortunately (or unfortunately, for structural reasons), the underside of this panel is hollowed out. I cut a piece of sheet styrene about 1mm thick to fit in the recess, coated the entire area in a thin layer of styrene cement, and then covered the entire area with an extra layer of plastic. I only extended the plastic about a quarter of an inch on either side of the stress mark, but it might be possible to add quite a bit more. So far, the part is holding, and doesn't interfere with any moving parts, so I may cut similar reinforcement plates and glue them onto all of my 262 kits. Third, and this might be really minor, the forward landing gear doors are paper thin, and love to crack in half at the hinge point. If you don't intend on using the gear, I'd say just glue them shut, because they can open on their own, and get caught between panels while transforming. It might seem funny to worry about reinforcing the model kits, but I actually really prefer the model's transformation to the 1/60 DX version. It feels a lot better thought out, and seems to have about half as many moving parts. I've probably transformed my Keith kit a couple dozen times by this point, and it's doing just fine, aside from the parts mentioned above. I might disassemble and glue one together to see how solid it can get though, because certain parts do like to pop off.

I'm not loving the paint scheme too much, but I'm thinking this might be a fun one to strip down and customize. I'm also curious if this one will have the canopy molded in that color, or if it will be a coating. The color might not look bad swapped onto some brownie 1As.

Yeah, AmiAmi isn't even sold out of these yet, I'm thinking we might have a new army-builder valk.

Scratch that, AmiAmi finally let me login, got two more there. Whee.

AmiAmi appears to be entirely broken, I can put them in my cart, but it won't let me login to purchase. Dunno what's up, but I got one at HLJ anyway.

Apologies for the bump here, but after digging out a few of my other valks, it looks like this neck cover will work for any of the Yamato VF-19 molds, as well as the Arcadia YF-19. The molding is pretty much identical, and the shapeways part fits fine on my VF-19P. Unfortunately, I don't think Shapeways offers colors that will match most of the VF-19 molds, but black doesn't look too bad on the P, and it would probably only look really out of place on the Fire Valkyrie.

That's the entire point though. For someone who hates everything about modern Battlefield games in general, and loved the original Battlefront games, this is precisely why I was so disappointed in the "new" Battlefront. They should have just come up with a new name, and not tried to piggyback on the nostalgia for the original Battlefront, when the games are seriously nothing alike. But no... that would have taken original thinking...

Oh, I didn't realize those entire plates are attached to just the backplate, I figured they would split, and was going to suggest hiding a magnet inside the vernier port on the chest plate as a mounting point. That is a tricky one then.

Assuming Jungle resells used valks, that might be why. I got my VF-25G fresh from the factory with no crotch, and Bandai is flat out useless for replacement parts, so I just kept him in fighter mode with a super parts crotch to keep things fitting correctly. In the end, I think I wound up replacing the 25G's plate with the one from the YF-25 since it was also blue and white, and I never planned on taking the YF-25 out of fighter mode anyway.

I don't mind the look of the head at all, it's just for practical purposes that I really don't care for unicorn horns on my valks, and wish everything on the back would lay flat like Mirage's valk. Even the VF-25G never had that issue, with the single laser laying straight back along the fuselage. Honestly, between all the folding and bending parts of the VF-31, it's actually kind of awkward to find a good way to pick it up. Almost wish it didn't have the canards, so I could just wrap my hand around the forward fuselage.

Shame there's so many random parts molded in black, but this looks like it would be a pretty good candidate for stripping down and customizing. Or at the very least, a nice source of spare VF-1S heads. I'm tempted to see if I can pick up a few for more TV-style missiles, and maybe customize a bit. I know they're going for the look of his VF-31 scheme, but the pattern on the chestplate and back is kind of a mess, and nothing will line up if you change the sweep of the wings. Is this going to be a general release, or webshop exclusive? I'd probably grab 3 of them if I can.

Well.. it's not easy at least, but you can figure out how they're put in from the kit versions, so I don't want to say it's impossible. Whether the parts would survive being pried apart is the biggest issue.

I don't mind upgraded designs so much as flat out bad designs. You can upgrade old stuff, but at least try to follow some sort of logical design progression, not "You know what would make a TIE fighter even better? TRACTOR TIRES!!" Frankly, the only moderately passable designs we've seen so far are copies of the old stuff that's been tweaked somehow. The rest of the stuff is like it's suffering from Michael Bay transformer-ism, where everything looks like a someone took random geometric shapes, covered them in glue, and rolled them through a junkyard. Like.. I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but what happened to all the concept design talent that went into the prequels? Quality of the movies aside, they actually were full of fun designs that you could actually make viable merchandise out of.

That one actually looks like it shares a lot with the Yamato 1/60th version, at least in terms of the nose shape. I'm tempted to scan in the Yamato instruction manual, and go to town tweaking it into a slightly more streamlined shape...

This is such a hard question, seriously. Favorites (in no particular order because I can't decide): - V.2 1/60 VF-1. I think the fact that we're now seeing rumors of bootlegs of this mold speaks volumes about its staying power, challenging the old 1/55 chunky as the king of the VF-1 molds available. Original shoulder issues aside, it's one of the most solid and dependable molds Yamato made, and one of the easiest to take apart and maintain, from the era before Yamato rediscovered screw covers. It's also the most complete line of canon and pseudo-canon VF-1 schemes in existence, I believe covering every variant ever animated (minus the Alaska Base green one, but that was how they advertised the kits.. ). - The 1/60 VF-19 series. I'm going to stretch things a little, and lump the Arcadia YF-19 in here as well, since it shares so much. (I want to even lump the Bandai VF-19 Advanced in here, but that might not be fair since it's so different.) The VF-19 in all its forms is probably my favorite variable fighter design in existence, and the design I have more of than anything after the VF-1. My only regret is that they didn't expand this line as far as the VF-1, because I would have bought the living daylights out of a low-vis or white VF-19, or even a kit version. It's just a beautiful mold, of a beautiful plane. - The 1/60 VF-4. I love this design, and until Yamato made their version, this thing was like a holy grail in a unicorn costume. No, we didn't get the paint scheme we wanted, and no, it's not the most pose-able of valks, but this thing just amazes me that you can hide a robot inside something that looks so entirely aerodynamically slick. Of all the Macross designs, I think it's the most likely to receive comments of the "Wait.. what.. it transforms?!" nature. Non-Favorites 1. The original DX VF-25. It's a close call between this one and the VF-171, but this one takes the cake in terms of everything you can possibly do wrong when designing a transforming toy. They didn't even attempt to make it look or work like the animation model (which Bandai's model division did just fine at), they cheapened out on the landing gear to an extent that has not been seen either before or since, they molded large sections of the toys in the wrong color and painted over it, they screwed the customers over by not planning ahead for any of the super or armor packs, and the afterthought designs for said packs were terrible, and in the case of the armor, could flat out destroy the underlying toy with stresses it wasn't designed for. 2. The VF-171. I'm not going to pretend I don't like this design, and it's very nearly an amazing toy, but Bandai's pants-on-head engineering for it has really destroyed it for me, both in a figurative and literal sense. The rotten design for the leg twist and knee mechanism left one of my CF-171s in literally more broken parts than all the pieces I have ever broken off of any other valk I own combined. Aside from that though, the lousy issues with all the shoulder parts, the sloppy hip bar mechanism, the stupid nonsense with the replacement wings, and the generally unenjoyable transformation just kinda ruin this one for me. 3. The old Yamato 1/60 YF-19. To clarify, I don't have anywhere near the ire for this that I do #s 1 and 2. It's just the next in line, and overall, just a disappointment to me. I'm not going to hold the durability issues in the shoulders against it, because that was a larger issue around the time of the original VF-0s, and the plastic felt very similar. The design itself is just disappointing, and really was put to shame with the new VF-19 molds. Between the gullet, pointed up nose, and too thick side profile all around, it just doesn't look very attractive (though the top view is fine really).

There are likely going to be small changes at least, and Arcadia's become infamous for its screwy colors, so the new version may turn out quite pinkish, and who knows what shade of red will actually be used. I would honestly hold onto the Yamato for now, and once you have both in hand, sell the one you like least. One thing I might do myself is swap the transparent canopy off of my Yamato Millia, and replace it with another, because that one was one of those oddball canopies that got super-duper rainbow coated to the point where you can't even see through it.

Not to add a ton more sanding and polishing of new parts to your situation, but would making new wings from scratch be an option? If your goal is to make the set removable, that's stretching things a bit though, even if the wings are fairly easy to replace.

Yep, 1/72 is basically one of the go-to scales for aircraft kits in general. I want to say the overwhelming majority of aircraft kits from Hasegawa, Tamiya, Fine Molds, Revell/Monogram, etc have been either 1/72 or 1/48 for a very long time, and people love those scales. In the case of 1/48, it used to be called "quarter inch" scale I believe, since every 1/4" is equal to a foot in real life. Both 1/72 and 1/32 are fractions or multiples of 1/48, being 2/3 and 3/2 respectively, in terms of overall dimensions. As far as 1/60 goes though, it's an oddball scale that lies numerically between 1/48 and 1/72, and works out to 4/5 of 1/48. It's also the scale Bandai tends to produce their Perfect Grade Gundam kits in, and due to their in-universe size, it works out to a very nice large scale mech. Otherwise, Bandai seems to stick with 1/100, and 1/144 at times. I believe there were a few pseudo-1/48 Gundams released years back, but they were more large-scale action figures than models. Truth be told, after I picked up a Masterpiece Starscream, and realized he's also around 1/60, I wish more kit manufacturers would use 1/60. It's a very nice manageable size for larger aircraft, like F-15s and F-14s, without sacrificing too much detail.

Would probably be pretty easy to rig up a little vinyl decal to put on the canopy for a removable hole.

I do have to ask, did Messer even use battroid at all in the series? I may have just blanked it from memory, but it seemed he spent 99% of his time in fighter mode scissoring with Keith. Kind of mixed feelings about the head probe popping off.. on the one hand it might mean sloppy build quality.. but I never liked the probe anyway, so depending on the hole it leaves I might just leave it off, or mount something else there like an ECM blister. What does the area underneath the probe look like? Does it leave an unpainted recess when it's removed, or is it just a hole/slot to plug in?

Yeah, I did that for one Hikaru, and the blue actually doesn't go so badly on the CF, I think, but I'd rather have more clear ones. Fortunately, as long as I keep a couple of the other releases in battroid mode for display, I've got spares for the Hikaru versions I'll have in fighter and gerwalk. I'd probably grab a lot more CFs if the missiles were white instead of tan, but the tan ones don't look bad on the M&Ms. Probably would be simple enough to spray them white anyway though. Now if we could just get some super packs re-released for all of them...

So I'm vaguely curious about the production runs of the Hikaru 1J... last week I was browsing HLJ, and it popped up on a search with status listed as "Orders usually filled within 6 or 7 days" or something like that. So I decided later that day to order one more, only to find out it was listed as "Discontinued." I do another Hi-Metal search this week, and it pops up again, with the same status about orders being filled. So, I actually go through with the purchase this time, and it's showing as in my open orders.. but it's back on "Discontinued" status. Is Bandai still churning them out, or is HLJ just getting random shipments of old stock? Also, about the Hikaru, anyone know if the canopy is molded in transparent blue, or just coated? I really prefer the clear canopy look on it.