Chronocidal

So are tickets to the concert still available? I'm still tempted to try going to this, even if I can't convince some of my friends from up north to come along.

I picked most of mine up during HLJ's sales, so I lucked out on cost, but these are by no means a cheap kit, especially when you start looking at the armored one. I definitely want to get one some day, but right now I don't feel like dropping the $80 for an armored Ozma, considering it'd be easily close to $100 US after shipping. That being said though.. as frustrating as the kits can be, they make for a very nice challenge, or at least a challenge very different from any other plastic kit I have. I'm torn between all the different ways I want to build them up, whether to paint them, etc.. I think painting some of them will be worth it, but it will definitely take practice and patience. Speaking of building, I need to get back to finishing my Alto kit. It's been sitting collecting dust for the past couple of weeks now, so hopefully when my new paints arrive next week I can get to touching up the things I'm not happy with.

Sorry not to reply about that more earlier, I really haven't had any problems with mine in that area. Honestly, those aren't tabs so much as stubs, and even if they do wear down or break off, I don't see it causing a problem. Really though.. I don't see any reason that bit should be stressed in the first place, unless you're pulling the plates straight down at the front instead of rotating them to open them. Now, as for the bottom plates, there's a few little things I've noticed that seem to help those fit better. First off, make sure to check how your shoulder covers are rotated. They can move back and forth a little over the shoulder, and they need to be aligned right before they will fit well next to the legs. Second, yes, it's essential that that metal bar across the back snaps over those screw mounts fully. That will stop the back plate from lining up correctly. One thing I did notice that might not be able to corrected.. whether those belly plates fit can depend entirely on how the rear engine plate is shaped. On my YF-21, I noticed the belly plates just would never sit correctly if the rear tabs were correctly inserted into the undersides of the engines. When put in there, the plates would be bent upwards at the rear, and the rear set of center alignment tabs would get stressed if I tried to push the plates together. Eventually that led to the middle tab breaking off. So, I've just had to live with the gap there. In comparison, both of my VF-22s have perfectly fitting plates. They mesh together perfectly at the rear, and there's no stress on the plates in the closed position. In fact, there is actually a little wiggle room for them, so they definitely are under no stress. What I'm pretty certain causes this.. I noticed a long time ago that the upper engine plate (the one that slides) on my YF-21 was not level. If you look at it from the rear, you notice the upper flat surfaces of the engine nacelles both lean inwards. Because of this, the engines are actually rotated a little, and the end result is that the places where those tabs on the belly plates go are higher than they should be. The belly plates mesh together fine if you don't insert those tabs under the engines, but putting them in correctly makes the plates bend from being forced against the legs. On the other hand, the engines on both of my VF-22s are much more flat on top, and the belly plates fit fine. I'll have to have another look at this later to be sure I'm not missing some small problem inside, but I've gone over the YF-21 several times, and never seen anything else that could cause the plates to bend that way.

Those tips have always been yellow, as they should be since they all were like that in DYRL. The only reason they appear red on the Hikaru box is because Yamato didn't feel like taking a separate picture of the Hikaru, and just photoshopped a picture of Roy to swap the yellow markings for red. The skulls on the booster packs should be red too, but I'm pretty sure they're black like Roy's.

See, on the rare occasion they choose to use it, their time-paradox shipping is top notch!

Phew, was worried for a moment that VF-0S wasn't gonna happen.. Checked my order status last night, and it was down to low stock, with no notice that my order had processed yet. Come this morning, looks like it's being readied for shipping though, so looks like I lucked out. Plus, I got one of those spare sets of decals which I'd actually forgotten all about. Dunno if I'll use them or not, but depending on if they fit, I might use them to turn one of my 1/48 Hasegawa Vermillion Squad kits into a DYRL 1A.

Since the only 1/48 I have is a Super Hikaru 1J, I can't compare releases, but I can vouch for it being very sturdy. You might have a very hard time finding the version with fast packs now though, I don't think it was ever reissued. The only issue I've ever had is that the fit between the intakes and cockpit section is a little off, so it either sits with the intakes dropped a bit from the upper plate, or the nose section gets angled down a little. Now, comparing to newer releases, I would say the new V.2 1/60s are definitely more refined in terms of engineering than the 1/48, with a much higher level of precision. Comparitively, the 1/48 looks much more rough in terms of molding. But with that roughness also comes a lot of strength*, and you won't find any shoulder hinges shattering on a 1/48. ____________________________________________ *On a completely different note.. stupid language question.. I found myself wanting to say the 1/48 has a lot of.... well, it's sturdy. In the same way calling something "crappy" implies it is made of, resembles, or contains crap, does calling something "sturdy" mean it's made of "sturd?"

That is the one thing I always worried most about on ths kit.. the pieces fit so tightly, and the tolerances are so miniscule, how is there supposed to be room for you to paint it? I think when I finally get my Alto kit put together, I'm going to work it around for a while to and actually just see where the paint scratches. Afterward, I'll just sand down the areas that rubbed, and repaint them. That should give a little room, and it'll give me an excuse to repaint the areas I'm still not happy with. Really glad I managed to grab a nice set of tamiya acrylics from HLJ's free shipping sale, including some clearcoat I can brush on over the tender spots.

Heh.. I certainly hope so. I had thought some people got the 0S from HLJ recently, and had confirmed it was the fixed re-issue. Considering how long HLJ had it marked as sold out or even discontinued, I'd assume that anything they're selling now would be a reissue. If not, I suppose I'll just have to deal with it. I was able to fix up the arms on my 0A decently enough. Frankly though, even with the shoulder issues, the only thing that really stopped me from getting one before was the price. I rarely if ever buy Valks unless there is some sort of sale going on (think the ONLY exception to that is my V.2 1/60 M&M pair), and in all those Yamato sales from the past couple years, I never once saw any VF-0 discounts. I've been waiting a long time for a VF-0S sale, and I'm not gonna miss it now that it finally happened.

They're back up now, I just made an order there that I never thought I'd make: just paints. I don't need to be spending any more on any valks for a while, so I just bought a small stash of the currently stocked tamiya acrylics, and a big bottle of thinner for them. Now that I think of it, I could have probably tacked on a VF-25 kit (still want at least one armored Ozma), or maybe a Hasegawa, but I've got plenty of stuff to build as it is. Ehh screw it. I'm getting that VF-0S before the sale ends. Hopefully they'll combine the two orders in the morning.

Well, the one advantage to the VT-1 in terms of broken shoulders... I can't recall if we ever saw it use its arms in DYRL to begin with. It might have popped them out for a second during the rescue sequence, but it pretty much stayed in fighter or half-gerwalk for the entirety of the movie. Nice job on the weathering too. I pretty much keep mine fresh out of the box, but I'm tempted to sticker mine up now. I don't know why I've got such a soft spot for the VT-1 honestly.. maybe it's just a thing for dedicated trainers.. or maybe it's one of those weird fantasies of being stranded on an abandoned planet with both a beautiful woman and a robot fighter plane at the same time. Which reminds me, at some point I need to come up with stranded Hikaru and Misa figures for mine.

Coming from playing Bridge Commander way back when, the ship designs and lack of variety were kind of what turned me away from STO in the first place. Really, the only place I've ever really seen a ST game shine is once it's opened up to the modding community. Given this is an MMO, I don't see that happening any time this millenium. If the game ever starts opening up to fan-contributed content, I'll probably be all over it. I frequented the Bridge Commander modding community for a good few years, and was able to make a few contributions, but the sheer amount of fan-made material is what made that game, as well as ones that came before it (Klingon Academy, the Starfleet Command series) so fun. Bridge Commander had a lackluster single player campaign, and very simple multiplayer at the start, but once the fans got a hold of the SDK, the content exploded to include mods and patches that went above and beyond the original game's scope. We're talking saucer separation, beaming commandos into enemy ships to capture them, custom made bridges and interfaces, and more ship variations and weapon types than you can count. The material is out there.. I just wish more developers had the passion to pursue game development to half the extent the fans do. Granted it's not always financially feasible, but for something like an MMO, with a relatively continuous cash flow and maintenance requirement, I'd think there could be tons of opportunity to add more content.

Mostly I just used a set of small hand files I bought for modeling a long while back, the kind that has assorted shapes for different jobs. I don't know if I would recommend something like a dremel though.. unless you go very slowly, you may just sand clear through the plastic. I'm really not sure it's a huge problem in the long run. What this does do is give a little breathing room so the antennas are not forced against the tails so much, and it lets the boosters sit more level, since you don't have the tail pushing up on the front of the left booster as much. Before I did this, I always noticed the tip of the left booster was angled up compared with the right one, and it doesn't happen any more. Before anyone starts worrying, this isn't worth panicking over. These things have been out for a long while now, and it hasn't actually caused any serious problems for anyone yet, outside of a little scratched tail paint. Mostly, doing this is just to help protect that paint a little more, and make the boosters finally sit level. The tails still touch the antennas, since all this does is lessen how far the tails are forced down. What I've done to help is file down the smaller of the two antennas a little. Since the bigger antenna is still there, it kind of helps keep the tail from hitting the smaller one. So, instead of scratching paint in the middle of the tail, you might scratch it at the edge. For M&M valks, the back edge is unpainted, so this works well. I guess personally, I prefer a small scratch on the edge than a worn spot in the middle of the tail. As for why this happens... really, yes, the tails should fold flatter, but even if they did, it wouldn't fix this. The boosters are mounted too low on the backpack. The only reason this is a problem at all is that the booster is pressing down on the tip of the right tail in the folded position. Because it's the tail you fold first, it's underneath the other one, and pressing on the bottom tail has a nasty leverage effect, forcing the other tail even further, and right against those antennas. Remember, without the left booster attached, the tails don't even touch the antennas. The tails are just fine as they are, and they fold plenty for clearance. The boosters are just mounted too low for the left one to clear the tail like it should. To permanently fix this, you would need to add material to the booster mount to raise the boosters, and then completely relocate the existing tabs on the boosters that attach to the backpack. I know some people here are perfectly capable of that too, it would just involve removing the old tabs, drilling a hole, and making a new tab that's lower.

Which attachment point are you talking about in the first part above? If it's the rear joint that you disengage for gerwalk (the one where the fast pack or leg snaps underneath the wing), I've always had a tried and true method for doing that without just pulling. Basically, I pull the wings out, and press the tip of a thumb into the small crevice between the fastpack or leg with my fingernail against the leg, and press down gently with my other fingers near the foot. The finger acts like a wedge to disengage the big tab, and it generally pushes the leg down without much trouble at all.

Right now, I've got a small strip of scotch tape covering the spots those antennas hit, and that's working okay it seems. I actually considered just clipping them off before. My biggest concern for this kind of mod is that someone will wind up cutting clear through the bottom of the booster. It might still hold together okay though, and I guess it wouldn't be visible anyway with the tail there.

Well, I think my engineering background has a lot to do with it, but it's definitely a compulsive tick I have. I try to avoid putting anything under stress it isn't meant to take. Like, I won't set a valk on it's belly without landing gear or something to keep it from resting on the leg fins, that sort of thing. Heck, I avoid a lot of common "special" ways Lego bricks can be attached, just because they can break from the stress over time, and I've had it happen. I'd assume the tails can take it, given how many people have reported theirs snapped in half... if it was more prevalent, I'm sure there'd be at least a dozen threads about it by now. I would like to hear from people who leave their valks displayed with the packs for extended periods though. I know paint scratches can be a problem, but I've never heard anyone say whether the tails will warp over time.

Please note this might go better in the Modification/Customization area, but I wanted to run it by the widest audience (to make sure I'm not just nuts for thinking this is a problem). From the day I got my first V2 VF-1 (a strike Roy) something has really worried me about the fast packs. Anyway, I'll let this picture summarize. Those curvy lines are highlighting the tails. When I first saw how the fast packs force the tails to bend, I was a bit scared. I don't know if it was an intentional feature of the design, or if Yamato just didn't think it would be a problem. Due to the fact no one has reported any tails snapped in half, I'm assuming it's probably the latter. Either way though, I've never felt comfortable leaving the packs on for display. On top of that, this bending is the reason that the antennas on the backplate have a tendency to make nasty scratches in the tail markings. I even noticed that the force from bending the tails that way pops the front of the left booster up, knocking the missile packs out of line. The problem is really only the left booster. Remove it, the problem goes away, the tails stop bending and sit flat, and there's even space between the tail and antennas. This problem got me to thinking, and I remembered that my old 1/48 Hikaru's fast packs had what looked like a mold flaw that I never really paid much attention to. After looking a little closer at the packs when mounted, I realized that gouge was on purpose, to keep from forcing the tail down like on the 1/60. Since the backpack folded so tightly on the 1/48, it was pretty necessary. Well, suffice to say, the 1/60 packs obviously don't have that cutout. Or, didn't yet. I grabbed my files, and went to work. The cut away area had to be quite a bit larger on the 1/60 pack, since they seem to sit a bit lower on the backpack. I essentially filed a straight edge, cutting across one of the beveled edges of the underside of the booster. Given the option, I would have liked to make the cut even deeper, but I started to get concerned I might file clear through the plastic, since I don't know how thick it actually is at that point (lots of structure inside that panel). The end result is quite a bit easier on the tails, and even leaves a tiny sliver of room above the smaller antenna. I get the feeling I'm being slightly paranoid here, but so far I'm liking what this does. The left booster stays on better now too, and stays level with the right one. The tails still bend some, but I don't know if I could make that cutout any bigger without ripping right into the bottom of the booster, and I really don't want to do that. I might modify the rest of my packs to match this one, but I doubt I'll do any more unless I can pick up a spare half dozen sets or so to experiment on.

Sometimes they take days to update you when it's shipped too.. I once had an order arrive before they told me if left. Yay for faster than light delivery!

Yeah, kinda glad I didn't feel the urge to get one of these now. That mix of greens just isn't right, not to mention the flat pilot. Brera never needed stickers, so I have no idea what they changed. Maybe they included stickers to replace the paint when it falls off?

Yeesh, that looks crazy.. now I wish they'd add those standard hardpoints to all the planes so we could put missiles on them like that without the clips (and having to shell out for Bandai's exclusive nonsense). Btw, one quick question about the new forum design.. is there a way to restrict the way attachments display to a certain maximum resolution? I really like the new gallery system, and how it lets you click between images, but it also bypasses the normal zoom in/out features of the browser, and won't let you fit the image to your screen. You can still open the pictures in a new tab or window, so it's not really essential, and it's usually not a problem. Just, occasionally someone's really big picture will explode out the side of the message board, and leave the entire screen taken up by something like a wing, or sometimes a single screw.

Very true, I forget that too often. I guess what puzzles me is that the only other time I've gotten FedEx from HLJ, it was during another free shipping sale. It probably has something to do with EMS being 20% off at the moment, but since it was free shipping I didn't look at the rates when I ordered. Either way, it's almost here, and then my V2 1/60 collection will be complete!

Only problem with that is midi's will usually contain every instrumental part for the song, many of which would sound odd on a piano. Doesn't always work that way, but most midis of the song I've heard are of the sung version at the end of DYRL. What you really want is a version like what is played after that, or elsewhere in the movie. I know there are interludes done on piano, and from what I remember of them, they would probably sound very good at a wedding, but I don't know those segments contain the entire song. I'll have to check the complete soundtrack to see. On the other hand, there are multiple versions of Ai Oboete Imasu ka out there. In fact, I'm not sure, but I think the "Bless the Little Queen" track from Frontier is primarily in piano, and might make for a good start. There's also the version in the pilot episode's end credits, not to mention the Mylene version, and probably a few others. Edit: Looking through Amazon Japan, it looks like this book might have what you're looking for. It'll need someone who can read Japanese to be sure, but the web translator I ran it through did mark "love you have remembered or" with an asterisk, indicating "* Publication music is arranged in the one for piano solo." I don't know which style the song might be arranged in though (I would assume the "Queen" version). Macross F Sheet Music If that doesn't work, you might try looking up some of Yoko Kanno's own books. She has done a sheet music book or two with MacF material, and from what I read her books tend to be her own arrangements, not dumbed down in any way for consumers.

See, that just annoys me. I know I clicked the FedEx option, and they still went with EMS... maybe it got mixed up since they charged me for shipping, then removed it again. Oh well, this is actually the first time they shipped EMS directly to LA instead of San Francisco, so it might get here a bit quicker now that it's in the country.

Btw, as whimpy as Shin may have been at first, remember, he did manage to evade a swarm of micro missiles in a 30 year old fighter design. That has to count for something. As for any further debate, I give you these two words: supersonic culbit. Or, whatever you can call that crazy maneuver he pulled on Nora in the final episode. It started as a cobra... then turned into a thrust-vectored, high-alpha, flippity vertical pinwheel of death.

Seconded, thirded, and however many more times it takes to convince them. Although, they did come out with 3 planes from each side in Zero, so it would unbalance things a bit if they do just a VF-0D. In other words, they need to make another SV-51 version to keep the balance. I vote Dobber's splinter version.