Chronocidal

Quick note, I can confirm that that extra "click" you hear when you pull the tails out farther is them jumping outside their normal track. If you pull out the feet, and look at the rear of the tail, you can see there's a tab on the bottom edge of the tail, and a wedge of plastic it bumps up against on the outer leg panel. Pulling on the tail enough will let that tab jump over the angled plastic track piece, and wedge the tail tightly between the two sides of it's track. Now, this doesn't look like it's stressing the tail once it slips past, but I don't know what kind of stress this puts on that tab, or the internal structure of the leg. Once the tab is past the stop the tail seems to be kept from rotating out any more, but I don't want to take the leg apart to look at why this happens. Really, the leg internals look like they might be built to do this on purpose.. from the rear, you can see there is a small gap that looks like it will let the upper portion of the tail mount flex, and allow the tail to squeeze between the tracks. This might be a question for Yamato actually. One of my tails does this fairly easily, and it makes the tail stay put nicely, but the other is tighter, and I'm afraid what might happen if these tabs get broken off. Their only purpose seems to be to keep the tails from rotating out further, but I'd like to be sure before I start leaving the tails in this position for extended periods. Actually, the biggest evidence I see against this being the intended tail position... when you do it, the paint line at the tip of the tail isn't level anymore. It's tilted up, as if the back of the tails is too high. All the line art I remember seeing has this line drawn parallel to the aircraft's flight path.

Nice to hear about the shoulders, I'll look forward to getting those fixed. Canopy tint, meh.. I never really cared one way or the other, it just looks ugly when it starts flaking away. Hmmm.. You know, I've been looking at the VF-17 and VF-171 recently, and they aren't that different. The shape of the tails, wings and nose changed, but it's the same transformation overall. With Yamato's love of sleek fighter modes, if they actually do make a VF-17, it might wind up looking close enough to the VF-171 to just paint it up, and call it a day. Maybe if they make a VF-17 and it sells, Bandai will change their minds about the VF-171. Or, heck, I never was a huge fan of the M7 VF-17, it always looked kinda stubby to me. I doubt it would happen, but it'd be funny if they just decided to retcon the VF-17 to look more like the VF-171, just with a few subtle differences. I do hope we see a VF-4 or VF-0D, but oh the possibilities. Given the M7 license, there're a lot of options to be explored. I kind of think we'd see the VF-17 first, since Bandai has their VF-19 coming. But considering they already did the YF-19 and VF-11... it would require a lot of new molding, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to do a Fire Valk and MAXL. I dunno how the licensing would work on those though, even if they are in a different scale than Bandai's. Probably the easiest thing to do though: VF-11D Jamming Bird. It's just a VF-11C with a bigger nose, booster/sound packs, and a new head. Since the nose unit is a self contained piece, and folds down over the front without really attaching to anything, the existing VF-11 transformation wouldn't have to change much, if at all. You'd just need to figure out some way to do the double cockpit shield, which given the bigger nose, might not be impossible.

I don't usually buy TFs at all, I think I have had a total of maybe 3 over my entire life.. but when I saw MP Skywarp finally hit the shelves of my local Walmart, I couldn't pass it up. I had to make an exception for one of the very few relatively kibble free TF jets. And it was very much worth it. Not perfect, but for something I can drive to the other side of town and pick up, I have a hard time not buying a couple more for customizing. Looks very nice next to my Yammies. Now the question is whether they'll make a Ramjet later on. Would probably be a pretty simple custom actually.. If done right, you could eliminate the hip panels entirely, and just have the big delta wing in one large folding section, but you'd have to move the pivot point.. put it in the same place, and those delta wings would pop way over his head. Might be possible for a custom, but you'd need an entirely new wing mechanism. After getting this, I looked through this thread, and there were a couple of posts about custom jobs done. The best one I saw cut the hip plates into two pieces. The part with the tails they attached on a sliding joint to the lower legs, and the forward section they just permanently glued to the underside of the wing plates. It looked very good. I'm kind of surprised they didn't keep the original design, but I think understand why it was changed, even if it did mean adding FAST packs to the normal F-15C design. That forward section ahead of the wing would've been pretty fragile I think, and it dipped low enough to cause leg posing problems as well. I'm up in the air about the leg panels really.. I'm not a big TF purist, so I'm happy to have a nicely transforming plane that looks like it could fly, not like a plane they glued a robot to underneath, and hoped no one would see. I do like the customized look, so I might buy a second and try that later though. On the other hand, if it weren't for the leg panels, this'd probably never work.

I was debating doing that.. but I don't have the guts to break mine again on purpose. I may try shopping it off later though.

Actually, first thing that popped into my mind with that pose was a famous movie poster.. Once the thought hit me, I just ran with it. Well, it was either this, or The Shoulder Redemption... I'll wait for that one till it gets fixed.

Actually, yeah, go for however big you can afford to make it, at least as long as you don't have to make it transform later. Size becomes an issue with internal mechanisms, but as long as the first version is just for sculpting purposes, bigger sizes should be awesome. Btw, if you need reference pics, I just went and screencapped a good chunk of the available VF-171 shots in Frontier. One thing I did notice tho.. are you going for Alto's armored EX, or just the plain EX model? I caught a lot of shots of both, and I'm not entirely sure the armored one is actually physically possible. It seems to shove the leg armor right into the arm area. Might drop the knees a bit I suppose.. but it's iffy. Oh, I did attach a semi-side profile for reference, but don't change what you did so far.. I like the shape of your nose better. Edit: Ya know.. after looking at those pics more, I think I see why Bandai hasn't tried making one yet.. unless things are sliding into spots I don't see, the wings are pulling some YF-19 style anime magic. If you look at shots of the underside, I think the wings are buried inside the legs in fighter mode.

Don't blame you. I wanted to check all my pins, but they're just in there too tight, and I don't see any problems yet, so I'm gonna let well enough alone. If I tried to remove them, I'd probably wind up breaking them anyway.

Just watched that the other day, and yep, the airbrake was definitely open there.

Valkyrie Nixon in 2012! Anyway, now the big question.. shoulder pins smooth or knurled? These'll be fun to decorate I'm sure, but I'd much rather build them myself, and be sure that the shoulders are done right. You'll have to halfway disassemble these to paint them anyway, so might as save a few bucks and get the kit.

Nice start Is it going to be in any particular scale? For a scratchbuild, I'd almost say go for 1/48, just to give yourself room for the internals. You could reduce it down later, but starting larger will give you a lot more room to work with when you start experimenting with the transformation mechanism.

Ok, might be an impossible task, but I'm curious.. has anyone managed to make a super VF-25 with removable armor? I just got a super Alto, and I'm relieved that all the parts are there for a regular VF-25, but I can't decide whether to build it as a super or not. I'd love to make it so you could remove it, but it looks like the parts won't allow it. The only real problem looks like the legs, since the super version replaces several of the leg panels from the normal kit. The chest and backplate armor look like add-on pieces, and the boosters obviously just snap over the wings, but the entire leg assembly is different for the super. Heh.. anyone got a spare pair of VF-25 legs they'd like to sell?

If you've got the ability to build a prototype in some sort of computer CAD or graphics program, I'd definitely recommend it. It's not impossible to do without it, but a computer model (depending on how it's built) will let you play with the transformation and mechanism to make sure everything fits together before you ever start building the parts.

Normally they are, most of us just don't live in their normal customer service area.

I wonder if there are actually 3 types of pins then.. early heavy knurling, completely smooth, and later light knurling.. Actually, considering how knurling is done, the difference between the two types may be somthing as simple as changing a single setting on the machine that does it.. maybe these smaller knurled pins are a stopgap that was introduced before the smooth pins went into production? Maybe that's what Yamato meant when they told their quality control people to be more careful.. not necessarily during assembly, but during the knurling process for the pins. I almost can't imagine they'd actually use manual knurling for something mass produced like this.. but then again, it was put together in China.. Heh.. I wonder. If local Japanese customers get the stuff made in Japan, and the foreign-made stuff is used for export, that might explain why Yamato didn't hear of these breakages from within Japan.

Well, bit the bullet and took apart my 1D and Hikaru 1J to check on them both out of curiosity. Wound up leaving the pins in on both, but I can tell the ones on the 1D are knurled to some extent, since the edges of the ridges are just barely visible at the edges of the hinge (no idea about the 1J). Now, this may not be a problem at all. There are no stress marks, the hinges rotate just fine, and nothing is cracked. I think for the time being we shouldn't panic on these. It doesn't look so much like they went to entirely smooth pins as it looks like they reduced the size of the knurling. Really, removing the knurling entirely wouldn't work so well, because the pins would gradually work themselves out of the joint (at least, the hand-made ones I used to replace them do a lot ) What I do know is that there is a noticeable difference in these smaller knurled pins compared with the ones on my VT-1. The original knurling can be seen clearly from the end of the pin, so these are like version 1. The newer version 2 pins are smooth capped pins with smaller knurling that you can't see unless you push the pin out. So far, I don't see any stress from the version 2 pins. For now, I'm going to try not to worry about the 1D pins, or any other ones without obvious knurling. They may break, they may not. I'll wait to bomb that bridge until I come to it. Anyway, onto the pics. These worked out better, I forgot to tweak the ISO last time, and I maxed out the resolution. These are my first two V.2s, Roy, and Hikaru 1A. All four shoulders were stressed, and two were cracked. I superglued them all, and replaced the pins, but you can still see the cracks a bit. The stressed hinges don't show up at all on camera after I worked on them. Btw, I checked the pin rotation, and yes, even the smaller pins rotate with the outer shoulder piece, not the inner joint to the fuselage. EDIT: Oh, one last thing. One thing I learned to do while taking these things apart is to loosen the main shoulder joint that is screwed to the back plate. If you unscrew it too much, the shoulder joints will slip around and not stay above the support tabs in battroid, but loosening it a little (maybe a quarter to half a turn) gives you more room to raise the shoulder joint over those nubs, and reduces the stress to that joint during transformation.

Double checked, and something weird is afoot. I think even the FIXED pins have a small amount of knurling, just not as much as the first releases. Technically, this makes sense, since you need something to hold the pins in.. completely smooth ones would be more likely to fall out. I think the newer pins might just have reduced knurling. I checked my VF-1D, and the pins look to be smooth on the ends, and look considerably smaller than the first editions, BUT: I looked behind the hinges, in the gap between pieces, and I can see a ridged section of the pin inside the joint. My 1D is also stress mark free though, so either it's brand new and the pins haven't had time to stress the joint, or they are actually smaller. Can anyone confirm that the newer pins are actually completely smooth? I realize, this requires taking apart valks that seem to have nothing wrong with them, but I know there are customizers out there that do it all the time (I'm afraid to do it personally, since removing the pin might break it completely ) Are the newer shoulder pins completely smooth, or do they still have a small amount of knurling?

Good to hear the Roy reissues are fixed, I might actually consider ordering one, and leaving my first edition in fighter mode. Out of curiosity, do either the Roy or Hikaru have the new nose hatch?

While it can become just "I'm waiting for this..." discussion, this thread has served a bit of a purpose recently, and is good for a few things which I've seen discussed in separate threads before: -Up to date comparison for relative shipping times/methods/service for various vendors, and opinions on which might be the best to use at the moment -A nice summary thread for people wondering what's popular at the moment, and where good deals can be found (instead of a new thread every time someone has a sale) -Some simple first impressions and recommendations without having to dig through extended discussion about individual toys Not to mention, it makes a nice valkaholic support group. Maybe the best thing this has been doing recently is consolidating the typical "Why haven't I gotten my *insert recently ordered product here* yet?" threads, and making it a little simpler for people to share info when a shipping delay occurs (like seems to be happening with the Macross Quarter).

There's actually a really simple solution to this, with very little effort on Yamato's part. Since they already have the unassembled kit version in production, just overproduce the particular sprue that contains the shoulder hinges, and send that out with the pins. After all, there's no reason to waste good labor on assembling complete arms just to have them cannibalized for the shoulder hinge. I'd like to see the parts breakdown of the kit version to see how practical this would be. If the shoulders are on the same sprue as the fuselage, wings, etc. Yamato might not like the lost plastic, but even if we get a sprue with the parts for two full arms, Yamato would still save money since they don't have to be assembled. Only downside I see to this is that all the spares would be bright white, instead of color matched to the valk. Not a problem for the GPB sets, and maybe not so bad for DYRL valks, but they'll stick out like sore thumbs on VT-1s and VF-1Ds.

I'm almost wishing now I hadn't glued mine, it makes it almost impossible to see the damage. Maybe I'll get "lucky" and the VT-1 will fall apart in the next few days.

The main thing to look for would be the pins that are knurled on one end. They've got a distinctive ridged edge on them that you should be able to see. Even if you only have stress marks now, they might need to be replaced over time. If you have stress marks without the knurled pins, breakage is less likely, but not impossible. We might need to clarify the poll a bit, I think I screwed up the topic some by bringing up the VT-1. At the start it was mainly about who had hinges that needed replacing, not about hinges that hadn't broken yet. I think I derailed that when I noticed my VT-1's pins, and figured I'd probably need a new set eventually.

Yeah, use those. I guess this would be one very solid reason to go for the unassembled valk kit.. you can make your own hinge pins, and avoid this problem entirely.

No idea, but it's worth checking out. Apparently not everyone got the same pins though. I wonder if an old stockpile of knurled pins got mixed in with the new ones, and no one noticed. I'd check every valk you own just in case there's a bulk order of spare arms put together. I double checked all my Valks tonight, and my 1Js are all safe, as is the 1D. My Roy and Hikaru 1A both broke out of the box, and while my VT-1 isn't broken yet, it's probably only a matter of time.

Wait, which version VF-1J, and when did you get it? I got my Hikaru in the past couple months, and it has the newer pins. Btw folks, check your VT-1s. Mine's not broken yet, it's just got a bit of stress on each shoulder. Apparently they let out a run of those with the bad shoulders too. So, that's up to six new shoulders for me, two pairs of DYRL white ones, and a pair in VT-1 tan which I'll probably need eventually.

Well, here's at least one with knurled pins. Note to self, buy a camera that doesn't suck. Sorry about the grainy quality, this was the best I could get. My macro focus just wasn't up to getting pictures of detail that small. The only real indication of the knurling is the jagged shadow outline around the pins, but that might be convincing enough. Hopefully someone else with the same problem has better equipment though. The good thing is that at least these pins are very barely stressing the plastic right now. And honestly.. considering we never saw the VT-1 with the arms out to begin with, I have no trouble understanding why there haven't been more reports of this before. Personally, I never even considered posing this thing with the arms out, so if it weren't for the recent problems, I probably would've never noticed the pins. What really doesn't make sense to me is how old stock Hikaru 1Js are having shoulder problems... I one that I bought from Overdrive in October, and it's got the smaller pins.