Chronocidal

Maybe if you spend a lot of time pressing down on the shield, it might lead to stress there, but I don't think there's any persistent stress on that joint while in fighter mode. It's just laying in the nook against the back of the lower leg. Maybe if the arm wasn't transformed correctly before trying to close the shoulders? On the other hand though, if you're transforming the legs out of fighter mode by twisting them downward to disengage the latches from the shoulder covers, that could potentially be stressing them pretty badly. The lower arms sink into the recesses in the legs, and trying to force the legs down without the shoulders free might be pulling on the arms at a weird angle. I've never transformed my VF-19s that way though, I always pried the shoulders up before dropping the legs, and made sure to sand down all of the latches that hold onto the shoulder covers to make that process easier, since they were really tightly held down in some cases.

Phew, the big print is done. Almost 200 hours printing, and about 1.5 lbs of plastic. It's a hefty build, and thinning down the parts for the larger print could have saved me some time and material, but I didn't feel like messing with part designs that worked. The big changes were adding the cockpit, and all the little greeblie panels that got left blank on my first one. Now I get to fill and sand all the print artifacts... It came out smooth enough that I might fill in the big gaps with superglue or putty, and then just give a primer coat though. We'll see. Lots more to do for it, but it's a relief to just have all the parts print successfully.

No lie, that seriously looks like you built a shrink ray. Beautiful work!

So, normally this is the place where I go, "I wish I still had this thing I made as a kid." HOWEVER.. Turns out, I've had this thing stashed away all this time in a box of balsa wood gliders. I'd normally call this a cautionary tale about never throwing anything away, but sometimes it's worth holding onto old stuff. It's very different from the actual Firefox design, but was close enough for me not to care when I was probably twelve years old.. in fact, I'm pretty sure I remember building this during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, because I kept getting interrupted because I had to take notes on the games for a homework assignment. Overall it's about 15 inches long, so not a bad size. I learned early that stealthy aircraft are easy to make out of cardboard, since they're all flat surfaces. I did make one other like this (that I still have anyhow), a Blue Angels F11F-1 Tiger, but it wasn't planned out nearly as well, and just sloppily wrapped with layers of paper and tape to hold together. I started with CAD and game models in about 7th grade, and I can only imagine what it would have been like to grow up with the 3D printing technology we have now.

I always assumed it could mount weapons under the wings, but we never saw it done, and I don't know if there was ever art to depict it. Technically speaking, I don't even remember if there was any art or animation of the YF-19 like that either, but it always gets associated with all of the weapons seen in that one illustration.

Wow, thanks for reminding me this exists! I remember piecing together a pretty large scale pseudo-copy of this as a kid using cardboard and construction paper, based off of a single magazine photo about the movie. Thanks for the reminder.. one more model to add to my "to print" list. My Excalibur update is coming along, I've got one more 24-hour print before all the parts are completed. Then comes the "fun" part, where I sand and polish all of the pieces to get rid of the printing layers and ripples. Or, maybe this time I'll try a sand-able primer? Not sure yet. I'm really bad about actually finishing kits though. I don't exactly know why, but I always get a weird satisfaction from the pure un-painted forms.

More like every pilot Bandai has ever made for any Macross product, regardless. They always make undersized pilots, no matter what scale.

Maybe Bandai won't chicken out, and actually release the MAX-L and VF-17T.

Hopefully they'll do a little more with it this time, instead of just sticking it against a wall where you can't get any good photos. Or maybe a battroid pose? That would be a lot more interesting to compare with the Yamato one. I wouldn't mind HMRs of all of them either, though.

Shouldn't be that long, looks like Kakizaki has a 10-19 release date, while Max is 10-31. Unless you meant that they both regular releases put up for sale at the same time as TWE items, which I wasn't keeping track of. I was actually hoping to get duplicates of these, just so I can get some extra TV missiles, and those particular tinted canopies.. and having a spare Max for a Q-Rau battle pose is always necessary.

Interesting, it looks like there are multiple color variants as well. I might have to pick up another one to check. Not a huge investment, in any case. I just wish they made a standard F-22A, instead of the YF-22 version.

Yeah, no, I just checked my VF-25F. There's one small nub on the pivot that gives absolutely no friction when rotating the chest plate. They didn't make those same changes to the most recent VF-25 Alto. I do think there were three separate ratchet points on the YF-29 Max though. Will have to wait and see whether they did that with the Michael re-release when I get mine.

As a follow-up, it feels wild to exist in a time when I can order a Bandai DX valk from Amazon, and have it on my doorstep in two days. Good news is, this one has none of the fit and finish issues of my first copy from HLJ. The weird news though.. Did I miss a whole bunch of improvements to the VF-25 base transformation? I ran this through a quick fighter-gerwalk-battroid-fighter cycle, and was incredibly surprised and pleased by the fact that the entire chest transformation is ratcheted now. The chest plate has three distinct detents: one for fighter mode, one for battroid mode, and one that holds it in a solid position to rotate the nose into place under the head. I'm a little blown away by this, because I don't recall this even being part of the recently re-issued Alto VF-25. Have they been making stealth improvements to this mold in between release cycles? Because this was by far the easiest time I've ever had transforming a VF-25-based valk.

Out of curiosity, do the wings on yours tip up towards the tips? I don't know if that was on purpose, or just a molding/warping issue.

I have the Dragon one myself, and it's decent, good fit, but pretty light on details. I know my dad has an Italeri one from the same timeframe, and it definitely was a different mold. You know what's actually wild though? This thing. I've seen at least four or five separate packaging versions of this same toy, all different companies. It's absolutely a toy (in HMR scale, amusingly enough), with simple retractable gear, but it's honestly not a bad little display model. I picked one up in 2003, in Disneyland of all places, for about $6. I keep that one on my desk at work. Also, just looked, looks like the Hobby Boss kit is still available on Amazon for $55.

Screw it, I grabbed a spare. Maybe it'll be less of a lemon than the one I originally got.

Ooh nice! I saw that one pop up on the market long ago, is it still being produced? But yeah, looking like they did markings for a theoretical production model on that one, based in Florida, if I remember my tailcodes correctly. I'm getting to the point where I can appreciate the smaller kits a lot more. I grew up loving 1/48th for all the nice details, but 1/72 is a whole lot easier find room for.

Still waiting on that Hikaru 1A as well.. maybe that'll just come as a bundle as well? One can dream.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they reissue it or a DYRL version at some point. If that happens, the TV version will probably start cropping up all over the secondary market.

Boy oh boy.. minimum effort indeed. At least the box was honest and showed that there's literally no paint on the underside. In fairness, the shape of this one looks more accurate overall. Better contours, more accurate shape on the nacelles, looks like the saucer is a bit thinner, so it might make a better base for upgrades than the old one. Sound effects have a bit of decent variety, even if a couple are kind of odd. Credit for the saucer separation sound, at least. Downsides, yeah, there's no paint at all on the underside (literally the entire bottom of the ship), deflector looks incredibly derpy with that orange paint, the cobra head is butt-ugly, and the plastic around the lights is painfully transparent, and looks horrible in the dark. Stand looks ready to snap from the strain at any moment. Maybe a decent fixer-upper? I don't know. Might pick one up if I find it for the same cost as the original, but it feels kind of like ten steps forward, ten steps back.

I thought kaki was a tan color?

Yeah, Wave uses hilariously large boxes. I got all four of my VF-4 kits in one box. When you say wings "with and without pylons" though, are you saying they molded the pylons onto the wings, or just added slots/holes to mount them? I don't figure they would do something so boneheaded as molding them on, but I've seen dumber things.

I'm mostly just irritated that they screwed up the valk itself with attachment ports all over it for the dumb.. I don't even know what that is. A heart with bat wings? They started doing this back with the second release of the Kairos with the goofy fish attachments. Maybe they still include wings without all the holes? Yeah, ditch the garbage that screws with the valk that way, and I'll be plenty happy to get an HMR-ish Kairos. I could really care less about having the figures, but they do make a nice quick build when I'm bored.

All of this just makes me miss the older pack designs. I was never a real fan of having the boosters so high above the wing on the original VF-31 because it felt off-balance, but there's no denying those packs probably had the most solid attachment of any super pack in the history of the franchise.

Man, Rhino 3D takes me back.. I grew up on that, before I had to move to 3DS Max for the plugins and animation tools for flight sim models. I still miss how useful and intuitive a lot of its UI was, especially allowing transforms like rotations and scales to just snap to an object to give you an exact match. It would probably be a better tool for making printable models as well, but I've made Max work for me, at least most of the time. Blender is truly an entirely different beast, but that model is looking good!