Chronocidal

Ok, just to clarify.. yes, putting my 19S in that pose did screw up the ankles. They're loose now. I just place myself in a category where I can tolerate that, because I bought it purely for the fighter mode. I might transform them once in a while, but I love the VF-19's fighter mode, and this thing nails it for the most part. Truthfully, for whatever reason, with all the other brilliant engineering involved in the VF-19 design, the ankle really is a failure. I can't understand anything about why they would choose to design it this way, and unless you stick to fairly static poses or use a stand, it's bound to give you issues. Once I get the guts to go tinkering with the legs on these, I might take out the ankles and see what else can be done. I doubt I'd be able to develop a replacement, but I might see about rearranging the way the parts work. Truthfully, the only thing keeping those ankles from working well is the fact that they're mounted SIDEWAYS. The big pivot joint above the foot is facing the wrong way, and you wind up with massive side-to-side range, and no ability to point the toe. There's no reason I can see why the ankle shouldn't work with that joint facing the other direction. It's just a matter of figuring out how to get it to mount 90 degrees off from where it is now. It's the kind of thing that makes you think someone just happened to misinterpret a drawing, and designed a part that's 90 degrees off from what it was supposed to be. I'll see about putting pictures up later of what I mean, but I think it's pretty clear. Edit: Screw it. No, really, why the bloody hell do they always have to go back to supergluing covers over all the important screws? They had a good thing going when they went to the v.2 VF-1, and then they went back to gluing everything shut like the Macross Zero stuff. There's really no way to get to the ankle assemblies without destroying the legs. Edit 2: Ok, here's a fun trick.. if anyone's willing to try it.. just loosen the screws on the ankles, or take them out entirely. After trying that, my Fire Valk is pulling off an even better angle than my Blazer can. Sure, if I move the ankles back, they're loose, but even with the screws removed, the ankles seem to like staying with the toes pointed as far as they will go. I dunno if this is just because I've barely used them before, or what, but maybe the trick to this is just loosening the screws, then tightening them once you pose the ankles the way you want. It's a lousy solution that shouldn't even be needed... but it might be enough to hold a good gerwalk pose for a display.

Ok, after playing around with this one a bit, I think the ankles are better. Still iffy due to the potential for the ball joint to loosen up, but I definitely can get more range of motion from the Blazer than I can from the Fire Valk. I went ahead and really tried to push the ankles far this time, just to see at what point they become loose. The Fire Valk's ankles wouldn't move as far as the Blazer's (note the angle of the lower leg, and how much lower the FV's nose is), and after re-centering the feet, they're fairly sloppy. The Blazer's? Not quite as much. They're still semi-sloppy around the center, but not quite as bad. Also, I should note.. once you stress the ankles in a particular direction, they'll generally be pretty firm around their limits. Okay for if you want to pose a lot in gerwalk, not so much for battroid. They're still a far cry from the old ratcheted ankles we've gotten used to. But I suppose if you push the ankles to where you want them, and leave them there, they might still work ok. You just might have to re-tighten the joints if you want a different pose.

Nope, that's definitely the metal bar that sheared off. What's scary about these breaks is that you're bound to put some stress on that metal just from prying the legs away from the underside of the chest plate. Those clips hold the intakes really tightly, and I can definitely see someone finally prying the intake loose, only to have the metal bar snap from the sudden stress when the clips let go. I'll see about taking some pictures of how I transform the legs later today. Been too busy fiddling with my Blazer to mess with the VF-25 much.

Those pics are kind of hard to tell from, but you can definitely pick up the transparency. I might just have gotten a particularly bad case, which is bound to happen every so often. What I notice the most though.. Angle the wing into the light so you can see a reflection on it, then run your fingernail along the underside of the trailing edge, pressing very lightly. When I do that, I can see a sharp bump in the surface of the wing, caused by my fingernail. Here's a few shots I took of what the edges look like. What this really reminds me of is the mold flaws that happen in styrene kits, where either not enough plastic gets into the mold, or excess plastic forms a jagged edge along the back edge of a part. The first pic really shows it best, especially if you look at the reflection. The edge is really uneven, and there's a definite curl to the surface. In comparison, the Fire Valk's wings are indeed thin, and you can see a little light through them, but no where near as much as the S-model. The wings are much thicker feeling, and the edges are nice and straight. I should say though... as precise as they are, none of my Hasegawa valk kits have wings anywhere near this thin at the edges. They're so thin, I can nearly shave off material by scratching at the edge. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the wings get damaged just from being ejected from the molds.

Well before anyone panics, I might've gotten just a bad molding on the wings. But I'd suggest everyone else look at theirs for anything similar. Two things I noticed: the back edge of the wing might be uneven, and the trailing edge of the wing root on mine has a tendency to droop below where it should connect with the tail. I can press the wing root up to meet with the tail, and it might stay for a while due to the peg on the tail, but it doesn't stay connected long, and springs back down.

Well, not usually.. but people might frown upon them when they are contained generously.

K, I think I understand what you mean. You basically twisted the feet sideways enough that the stupidly huge side-to-side range actually acts to let you point the toe more. I guess that works. I still want to rip the entire assembly out and rotate it 90 degrees. Having that much side to side motion makes no freaking sense at all when the foot won't even rotate 10 degrees forward or back.

Well, only reason I'd use sharpie here is that on this dark blue plastic, I can't really see a difference. That, and I don't happen to have any gundam markers. Seems to have covered it fine in this case. It's a little different shine than the other black paint, but it is a very small area I'm talking about, so it's hard to notice.

Ok, the only problem with that.. pushing the ankles to where they match your pose is pushing them too far. Mine don't move anywhere near that much without stressing the joint, and moving them enough to pose mine the same way made the ankles go floppy when I straightened them out. One other thing I noticed.. it's only happened on one of my shoulders, but be aware, the black section on the tip of the shoulder plates is not black plastic, it's blue with black paint. Prying the shoulders up away from the legs with my fingernails has completely worn the black paint off the tip of the shoulder already. Nothing you can really do about that, it's kind of the only place to lift. Fortunately it's still dark blue plastic, and easy to touch up. I'm going to go dig out a sharpie, and see if that covers it.

I might have to watch this just to see what it's about.. possibly the earlier series too. I'm kind of a sucker for long multi-series storylines. Also, appears that Itano Circus is in full effect, and seeing the name Gabriela Robin attached gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

On the good side of things, I don't think stressing the head guns is too big an issue. Yes, they're thin, and probably relatively fragile, but they also are not attached firmly to the head. Put them under any significant stress, and depending on the direction, they may just pop off the head instead of bending. I'll have to compare these ankles to the ones on the Fire Valk like I did before. I still do not understand the thinking behind the ankle design one bit, because the ankles still have that stupidly huge side-to-side range, and still allow next to nothing in the way of front to back motion. I do know that one of my ankles is floppy already, because I pushed it too far. It's sad, on such an otherwise well-designed Valk, the ankles are next to useless. I might have to see how hard it would be to disassemble and rework the ankles so they actually bend a useful amount.

They continued that trend through Frontier I believe. I can remember a few instances where Alto was dodging around like crazy, and the head lasers looked like they were going on full auto as an anti-missile defensive weapon, shooting in various directions simultaneously.

Ok, there actually is one thing you can do that might at least partially reduce the stress that bar goes through if you're worried about it. I'm not sure how people tend to actually transform this thing, but one thing that always struck me as funny about it: during transformation, you pretty much rotate the hips a full 360 degrees, due to the way the fuselage folds over twice. First, you rotate the swing bar, then you rotate the crotch plate up. If you keep the legs oriented correctly during this, it's probably putting a lot of extra wear on the hip joints (which can't help with them getting loose..) There is a way you can rotate the whole thing without rotating the hips on their ball joint though. If you bend the knees fully, and then rotate the lower legs so the feet point directly outwards to the sides, there is just enough room to swing the legs around the full 360, and they'll pass under the arms. I don't know if this is what anyone does already, but I prefer that method to twisting the hip joint completely around. If anyone wants pics of how to do this, I can take a few.

I wonder if the gunpod is supposed to be further forward though. While the grip collapses to avoid the bulge of the die-cast back-plate underneath, the front edge of the gun bumps up against the crotch plate, and seems to still be angled pretty far down. I kinda don't care though, it's so pretty when it's clean. Random discovery of the day: If the S-model head looks too busy for you, there's absolutely nothing holding those extra lasers on except friction. I went to adjust them, and realized they can just pull right out, resulting in a single laser VF-19.

Woohoo, just picked mine up, it arrived at the Fedex depot early this morning. Looking beautiful, and the blue is absolutely gorgeous. Haven't transformed it yet, but I might not bother, I just love the fighter on this mold so much. One thing though.. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but.. Ok here's the thing. Graham, you might want to bring this up to Yamato before any more VF-19's come out. I personally think that these wings are too thin. As in, the molds are so tight, there's almost not enough room for the plastic to flow in and actually fill out the wing. We're talking the wing almost looks like an incomplete shape (the back edges of mine are scalloped around the control surface engravings, it's definitely not a straight edge), it flexes extremely easily, and I can see light through the edges. I definitely appreciate the precision of the mold, but I'm worried the back edge of the wing is just going to snap off because of how little plastic is there. Edit: Oh, also, the small amount of plastic does seem to have let the wings warp a bit. They don't meet up with the tails nearly as well as the Fire Valk's wings did. They're not flapping, or drooping, but they seem to have gained a bit of extra camber. I may eventually go ahead and cut myself some wings from scratch plastic, just so they're sturdier. I want to anyway for the P, so maybe I'll just get a jump on the release and see how tricky it is to make spare wings. Aside from that though, it looks pretty much perfect. Did have some mold release on it, but I'm wiping it off as I swoosh it around my office.

Darnit, why did the package get so delayed? If it's like my Alto, it might get here tomorrow.. but they're saying not til monday It's in Oakland as of 9 pm tonight, but unless they go overnight like they did the last box I got from HLJ, it won't get anywhere near my town by tomorrow. Hrm.

Well, it's only a real problem when it keeps tampos from sticking, which is why it was such an issue from the v.1 VF-25. Fortunately, the VF-19 doesn't really have any markings that are in risky areas as far as I remember. Possibly the nose markings, but the rest are fairly in the clear during transformation.

That's kinda crazy, but awesome if they pull it off. Which shipping method did you use? Best I've seen was my v.2 Alto, took about 60 hours total to get to the Fedex place here. I've been using Fedex for a while since they stay open longer, and I can get my packages after work.

Whee, got my shipping notice this afternoon. Saying it will be here on the 5th, but if it's anything like last time, I might have it by friday.

Oh I didn't really mean abs test shots specifically, I just meant that up to now, we've had next to no pictures of this thing at all. I believe this is the first time any of us have really seen the back side of it, let alone any of the details involved in the transformation.

Why didn't they show this earlier? I'm in for two, a Millia and Gamlin D.

Definitely in for an armor buy, and hooray for reaction missiles.

I still have absolutely no idea why Bandai thought clip on weapons were a good idea to begin with. Yes, they simplify things.. as in, they take less thought. But I would have assumed they learned something from the first time. I mean.. how long has Yamato used actual hardpoints now? That being said.. the VF-25 never mounted wing missiles as far as I can remember, since they always carried packs. All those weapons they released came from the VF-171s (which funnily enough were actually re-using missiles from the VF-0 ). Only thing I actually remember them ever mounting were the speakers on Michael's. I do hope they have the decency to include the reaction missiles with the armor packs this time, though I'm not counting on it. It's like they only thought of them after the armor packs were done, and added all the extra missiles so it wasn't so silly buying a pack of four missiles on a web exclusive.

I noticed this about the Fire Valk too, the molding on the wings is very precise. I love toys with lots of sharp points.