Chronocidal

just got my upgrade kits... holy crap. I see what you mean about the vacuum loading, I think my darts are almost too big for the barrel. Honestly though, the spring they provided is almost scary. I actually wound up putting the original spring back in, and just using the new metal breach. I might put it back later, but the thing was so loud I thought it would shatter. Combined with the modded darts I've been trying out, it was the most accurate I've seen a recon fire. Also, the darts were nearly denting my furniture. Anywho, in terms of darts, I've taken to tweaking a few of the massive amounts of clip system darts I've got (the raider came with 100 ). Biggest reason they tend to be inaccurate is the balance point being too far aft (or just being too light in general), so I've gone through a few methods trying to improve the weight distribution. I know a lot of people make their own darts out of foam stock, but I like not having to mod my guns to use custom ammo. Besides, not using those 200-something clip darts I've accumulated feels like a waste. First thing I tried was just wrapping about 2" of electrical tape around the dart head, about 1/4" back from the very tip. I wrapped it tightly enough to squeeze the tip, and it kept the diameter of the dart fairly consistent. Results were good, the darts definitely flew straight, and were pretty consistently accurate over the width of my apartment, which isn't much, but it was a noticeable improvement. The downside is that over time the tape's glue began to slip, and the tension started to let up, which had two effects. First, the tape section got bigger, making the darts stick a little in the barrels. Second.. the area where the tape slipped left a strip of glue residue that made the darts stick to the barrel even more. Second attempt is probably the most effective, but also the most tedious. I just shoved modeling clay into the dart tips through the little hole in the side. Forget how I did it, but it took a while to get a single dart modified this way. I think I just shoved small bits of clay in with a toothpick until the tip was full. End result was nice, a good balanced dart tip that you could actually shape a little into a bullet point (of course, impacts would just result in a wide flat tip again). Hurt a bit when I got hit by this one too, just from the weight. In fact, it may have been a little too heavy, due to the weight of the clay. Probably the most practical thing I tried was the last one. I went and got a fine-tipped glue gun, and started filling the tips with hot glue. I tried using the holes on the side at first, but realized I was just melting and warping the tips that way, so in the end I just stuck the tip of the glue gun right in the center of the tip and melted a new hole. This kept the glue a little more centered, and also let the air escape from the side hole. Think I've made about a clip's worth of these, and they tend to work really well. Only problem I think here is just keeping the glue distribution consistent. Get it off center, and the darts will be just as inaccurate as before, just with a little more impact. Using those glue-tipped ones with the heavy spring was making some fairly loud impacts on my front door. It's metal, I didn't want to dent my walls.

Sheesh, that was fast. Honestly, the extra parts aren't as interesting to me as getting a couple of spare A/J heads. I already have two of the kits, but I've got an over-sized group of VF-1Ss

Actually, it's not too hard to get a vacuum seal on a recon that way, two of my nearly stock ones do that too, after removing the restrictors. I hope they get more kits in stock soon, I would love to replace the parts from the first recon I modded, which became rather leaky. Edit: Actually looks like they have a few recon stage 2 kits in stock again, just ordered both for the recon, and the stage 1 AT kit. I can't wait to see what they do with the longstrike and longshot.

I take it by "out of place" you mean,"where do those thrusters even go in fighter mode?" There's a reason none of the various VF-1 toys have them, I don't think they actually have any place to go. I did see someone work the side cover panels into a very different mechanism for how the shoulders work in a custom hasegawa kit, but it was really complicated, and there still was no place for a bank of thrusters to be mounted.

Given how often we actually saw the VF-25 carrying underwing stores, I can't really fault them for that too heavily. Any time they needed firepower they were carrying super or armor packs anyway, which don't really allow for underwing stores. Pretty much the only time you saw anything mounted on the wings was with the speaker pods Michael carried, and I still have no idea how he carried those with the packs on (the set he left in orbit that Alto escaped with). I guess if the wings were swept fully straight out, there might be room, but no one at Bandai can seem to get it through their heads that those wings are supposed to ever pivot straight out. Now, if they ever get around to it, they won't have any excuse for the VF-171. That thing was loaded for bear, with the same missiles they used on the VF-0 no less.

"Space... the final frontier. Our mission.. To sell T-shirts, toy phasers, plastic communicators, and anything else we can think of. To seek out new life in old plots and complications. To boldly go where everyone's been before!" STAAAARRRRrrrr DRECK.. ooooOOOHHHHhhhhhooooo......

I love how it looks like you've left room for Diamond and Emerald Force in your Mac7 section. Awesomely beautiful collection there. One more vote for a shelf by shelf tour though, I'm curious what's behind the glare.

Ok, here's full comparisons of several Valks' feet, and their range of forward to back motion. These are all taken with the ankles fully extended, feet closed, and rotated to the maximum position up and down. VF-1 This one kind of sets a high standard. The range of motion is really nice both up and down. Looks like about 150 degrees or so. VF-11 Good range, though this one is biased a little toward pointing the toe, useful for good gerwalk poses. About 90 degrees of rotation. YF-19 Again about 90 degrees total, balanced up and down. Fire Valk I wish I was kidding. This one just does not compare in any way, shape or form. Can't be more than a 15-20 degree rotation total, if that. Note, I did this very carefully, and this was as far as the feet moved before I started feeling like I was straining the joint. On the other hand, to compare, you have this: I just can't understand this at all. It's why I think the foot mechanism needs to be rotated 90 degrees inside the leg. You have a full 90 degrees of rotation this direction. The legs don't even spread far enough to make use of that range. I guess they just felt that Basara never made that many action poses, which considering how often you actually saw the Fire Valk walking, may be true. Moreso, he was usually flipping all over space, so he didn't really need the feet to bend. Doesn't mean I think there's any excuse for such a lousy range of motion though. As beautiful as this valk is in every other way, the foot just is completely incapable of achieving the range of motion of any other Yamato valk.

I can soon, need to dig them out of storage to get to them. Edit: Pics are posted in the next post down.

This might be one case where "problem free" is a subjective term, due to people's expectations. My ankles aren't loose, but I had to tighten them after attempting to pose the feet. Compared to every other ankle joint Yamato has put on valk in the past ten years or so, the range of forward to back rotation of the ankle is extremely limited. People expecting to be able to point the toe up or down are going to be disappointed, and may see this as a problem. The problem isn't that the feet are bad, but that the design is so different from everything they've produced in the past. People are used to ankles that move up and down a lot, with just enough side-to-side rotation to allow a spread-legged stance. These new ball-jointed ones are entirely the opposite, offering tons of side to side flexibility, but almost no range of motion front to back. The bottom line is, the restricted range of motion that people are seeing isn't a mistake, it was designed that way on purpose. Whether people see that as a problem is going to depend on how important flexible feet are to them. Frankly though, I do have to say.. it's a ball joint. It's round. Why isn't the range of motion around it symmetrical? Unless all the sideways motion coming from the joint farther up inside the ankle. In any case though, I do personally think the ankle needs a redesign. That side-to-side joint up inside the leg could potentially be rotated 90 degrees so it gives the feet some up/down rotation. I mean, they're supposed to be thrust vectoring nozzles after all, and the VF-19 is the first Yamato valk I think I've ever seen where it wasn't possible to vector the feet up or down in fighter mode. That's partly due to the ankle cuff restricting them, but pulling the feet out should at least let you move them slightly. On the other hand, that particular design should be perfect for the VF-17, considering it's feet are mounted sideways in fighter mode. It still won't help posability in battroid though. It is good to hear they're looking at the ankles some, and strengthening that thigh piece. Either way though, I love this design so much, no amount of ankle weirdness is going to dampen my enthusiasm for the S/F/P. I can't wait to get those. The only question remaining is how many I'll actually buy.

Honestly? Best one I think I've ever seen in the "awesome AMV" category? This. Crazy anime, video is incredibly well done, and I love this song. I will never be able to associate it with anything other than ballet, no matter how hard I try. Honestly, I'm waiting for someone to make a version with footage from Black Swan. On the funnier side, just look up anything under the title AMV Hell, and prepare to potentially die laughing. There's too many good bits to list, but I'll post a personal favorite clip.

Holy crap that Su-35 demo was.. well.. seriously.. wtf do they even call that maneuver? I'm running out of aircraft terms...might have to resort to skateboarding stunts to describe what that plane just did. It looked like he pulled a half culbit into a controlled inverted flat-spin 180...then later pulled a full 360, and the video cut off before he approached 540. There's no real frame of reference to see how much altitude he lost during all that spinning, but I'm reminded of that bit in Hot Shots where he claims to have learned a particular maneuver from Paula Abdul... or was it Nancy Kerrigan? After all the times seeing various valks drop their legs to throw their thrust full forward and stop on a dime, I wondered if any real aircraft could pull off something similar without falling apart. Obviously the plane was tuned up, and lightened to let it do all that, but still, seeing a plane flip itself around and fly backwards to slow down is impressive. Reminds me of the kinds of stunts guys in bi-planes tend to do.. or the F-22 I saw pull the jet equivalent of a hammerhead stall once. Also, Russia should just state the obvious and call it the Tu-22.5, or maybe the Tu-45.. it's about what you'd get if you threw an F-22 and F-23 in a blender.

I need to yank all my valks out of the closet for a photoshoot one of these days.. I don't have a place to display them all, so they stay in their boxes most of the time. They haven't seen the light of day in months since I was across the country.

Honestly, I'm a bit doubtful they'll even make any of the other main character's schemes. This series of little kits just seems like a tiny marketing stunt to make up for the lack of new kits for the movie (so far). Really, Alto's all-white plane is ideal for a simple aircraft kit, because it gives aircraft modelers a nice clean aircraft to start with, and decorate how they want, without any of the complications involving all the other colors the other VF-25's use. Here's what I've done with my first kit so far, it's really just my half-assed "slap it together and paint some details on it" method. The cockpit is all done, so that's out of the way, but the rest of the kit isn't sanded, glued, or filled at all. I'll probably glue it all together later, and fill the more visible seams, but some of those seams actually need to be there for the transformation details. Here's what I modded on the kit, the wings normally don't go farther forward than parallel to the leading edge of the wing glove. I just snipped away the tab ahead of the pivot, and they can achieve a nice low-speed position. I also painted the intakes solid black, I really don't care for seeing the compressor fans that close to the front. Funny, I think I actually was much less frustrated with this cockpit than either of the 1/72 kits I've done. I think having a white pilot to start with makes things much easier to deal with, since you can just scratch off the excess paint on the white parts if you go over. I love painting with acrylics. I don't know if I'll ever glue and sand this one, I may just hand paint some fun markings on this one and call it done, but I plan on experimenting with the others, and making a few low-vis or tribute schemes.

I'd actually try to keep them out of the heat as well. I've got an old GI Joe shuttle that was always kept in a box, but that box happened to be up in the garage attic, in central california. Over the years, it turned a nice shade of yellow on the more exposed surfaces. Also, if at all possible, shelter them inside something else that's made of a dark plastic, or some other material that would absorb UV rays (cardboard doesn't cut it). I can't be sure that it will actually help, but the weird part about my shuttle? While the body of the shuttle turned yellow nearly all over, the little scout craft in the hangar bay is still a pristine white. Since it was sheltered by the solid black plastic doors of the bay, and surrounded by the dark gray interior, the only explanation I can come up with is that the other layers of plastic absorbed the UV and kept the plastic from yellowing.

I'm pretty sure they're planning to redo the entire line, considering the super and armor packs caused some of the biggest problems the first line had to begin with. I can't really think of any reason for redesigning the leg lock the way they did unless it's to improve the way the super and armor packs work. Plus, you can already see they're prepping for the other versions. A couple of shots show Alto's backplate clear enough to see the plug for the spot where Luca's dish will plug in, and the piece directly behind the head has a seam that looks like it's a swappable piece to adapt different head types. The only thing I don't see is slots/holes/tabs to plug the various super/armor parts into the back/chest, but I can't imagine them making the same mistakes as the first run. I'm hoping it just means they've found a more subtle way of attaching the pieces.

You know, I'm actually pretty confused about the feet on this thing.. are they even supposed to move forward to back? I mean.. I can probably get a good 60-70 degree arc of rotation side to side.. but I can't point the toe or heel at all. They just don't move. I get maybe 5-10 degrees of rotation there, and it just seems like the pieces aren't designed to rotate front to back at all. Personally, it's not a huge issue, since I don't do a ton of battroid poses, and I love the fighter so much that it stays that way anyway (as will the blazers and P when I get them). But there just seems like there is something wrong with the way the feet on mine work. Can anyone confirm this is the way the feet are supposed to work, or did I just get bad ankles?

One MAJOR thing wrong with this... There is no way Yuki would die that easily. Makes want to see a massive GITS mod for GTA4 though. I would love driving around in a tachikoma. I do need to get my laptop hooked back up to the tv though so I can see Disappearance in a decent size.

My HLJ order got here yesterday afternoon, and I was finally able to peel myself away from the Fire Valk to fiddle with a couple of these kits. I picked up 4 each of the VF-25 and YF-29, since I intend to do a few custom schemes. I would've gotten the Sheryl version YF-29, but it was out of stock. Have to say, I can't remember ever getting a Bandai kit before where I didn't need the instructions. It was nice and relaxing to just trim the parts and slap them together. Overall, I think the VF-25 is slightly better than the YF-29 kit; fit is a bit better, and less gaps to fill. I just snapped together one of each quickly to have something to sit on my desk. I don't plan on using any of the included markings for any of either kit though. Stickers just suck, and besides, I've got the 1/72 kits to build in the SMS scheme. These are going to be for fancy paintschemes I wouldn't want to scratch up with moving parts and such. May have to get some decal paper for printing custom ones though, or stock up on 1/100 aircraft markings. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do some old style squadron markings for both, but haven't decided what to use yet. Btw, did a quick modification to the VF-25, and it is possible to get the wings to sweep nearly straight out. Just requires a little cutting around the pivot ring on the wing, removing the little tab that stops it from moving forward. I could never understand why the 1/72 kit is the only version of the VF-25 that can do this, since it's clearly done in the show.. not to mention on every swing-wing aircraft in existence.

No trouble there, I didn't push it at all. I just was surprised how little forward to back motion is available, while side to side has not only a ball joint, but a second pivot.. doesn't make much sense to me, as if the joint should have been mounted turned around 90 degrees so you can point the toes more. But I suppose without the upper thigh gerwalk joint having too big a range of motion, it's not a huge problem. Heck, this thing is so beautiful, I may never take it out of fighter anyway. It looks perfect sitting on the gear. Mainly I'm just disappointed that my favorite display pose doesn't work on this one, since I'm not going to let it sit on the ball joints constantly. I display my others sitting on their feet in fighter mode, nose pointed straight up, but it's not going to hold up if I do it with this one.

Just got my Fire Valk in the mail (three days sooner than Fedex said too).. and all I can say is wow. I had fun with this one.. cranked up some Fire Bomber in the background as I opened it up. There is absolute genius that went into this design. I mean, just the sheer forethought that went into every stage of transformation, and how it all locks together in so many ways.. it's just amazing. The thing that really floored me though... all those joints that might loosen up? Most of them are readily accessible with a screwdriver. Things like the hip swivel, the wing root hinges, etc, nothing is hidden and glued like the YF-19 was. I'm still a little concerned about the arm design, since it failed so miserably on my YF-19, but this one's holding sturdy so far. Also, I do like the variability the ball joints give.. but honestly, the foot mechanism feels overly complicated. It can move around so much, I had some difficulty getting the feet back inside because they didn't line up easily. Also, the ball joints actually don't offer as much forward to back movement as a ratchet I think. It's not bad by any means, it's just a bit less that you can move the feet. Really though... I can't wait for the other variants. Yamato hit this one out of the park, and I can't wait for the F model.

Well, not quite. People who watched the second season noticed a definite shift in the artwork. It didn't stay consistent, but you can really see the difference if you watch Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody in it's chronological place in the series. The jump in the art is a little jarring, but not too terrible when you take into account that there was a three year gap between them. One thing people complained a lot about was that Haruhi began to look not so much like season 1 Haruhi, and more like Yui from K-On cosplaying as her. It wasn't drastic, since they resemble each other a bit already, but the shape of Haruhi's face and her expressions changed a bit, especially in her eyes and mouth. Arguably though, I think that style more resembles the illustrations in the books anyway. For the movie though, they stuck very close to the art from season 1. Reminds me too.. now that I'm back in my old apartment, I need to rewatch Disappearance on my tv, which is about 3x the size of the one in the apartment I was renting in Virginia.

I am now VERY tempted to perform a kitbash involving a certain Hasegawa kit and a certain Bandai kit. ' Really looking forward to this eventually being available.. these things might convince me to buy a PS3 yet.

I don't remember if I linked it before, but it's definitely a simple mod to replace the cylinder with a clip on a Barricade. I'll have to look for it again later. Just involves cutting away a little of the casing, and mounting something to hold the clip in place. The mechanism will launch darts just fine out of the clip as well, since it's just pushing them forward toward the wheels. Might need to use other darts though, I don't know if the stock ones will work in a clip.

Actually, now I'm really intrigued how those work. The pegs are definitely vertical, and not like the tabs on the VF-27... but I have no idea how those attach. The pegs aren't even submerged when the wings are down, so I have no idea how they are going to connect. Unless there's some complex moving piece in there to lock things together, it looks like the pegs are sitting to the side of the place they should be attaching. Unless, the pegs are actually locking sideways into the leg, which it looks like it might be. I'm not too worried, but it does look a bit fragile. What it really looks like though is they're leaving spaces to connect the super and armor packs ahead of time, which is always nice to see.