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Chronocidal

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Everything posted by Chronocidal

  1. Chronocidal
    Appreciate the photos, thanks! Yeah, that's a strange place for it to just shear off.
  2. Chronocidal
    I was wondering if they might have used too short a screw, but that should have been a long sturdy plastic shaft, and it's not a rotation point, so I don't know what stress was even on that part to make it fail. Maybe the shaft had a flaw that failed when the ratchet tooth pressed on it? I don't know. Unless the ratchet tooth was actually part of that shaft that broke? That would be concerning, since it just feels like a weird design choice, when it looks like that tooth is a separate insert piece, so it can be made of a different material. Apologies for the 20 questions about it, I'm actually curious what the full assembly is now, since I never wanted to pry out the screw covers to examine these, and every bit of information about the construction is helpful for avoiding or fixing these kinds of breaks in the future.
  3. Chronocidal
    Youch, that's an insane place for it to just break apart. I wonder if you could actually contact Arcadia for a spare leg? It doesn't look like a hard repair to make given the right pieces, at least at first glance. Looks like the shaft it was screwed together by just sheared off entirely.
  4. Chronocidal
    I want to say fixing the nose should just be a matter of replacing all of the 2-wide elements in the cone with 1-wide elements, so it goes from 4 to 3 total, and then replacing those giant slopes on the sides with more subtle tiles and curves. The whole fuselage really needs to taper down more though, which means angling in the side panels more, which is going to be a trick to achieve. That canopy really has got to go though. The inverse slope just destroys the natural contour of the cockpit. It needs to start at 5-6 studs wide, and taper to about 4 for a natural blending into the upper fuselage.. which also needs to be higher at that point, since the bottom of the canopy should angle upwards. Bottom line, it really just needs a canopy built from plates and hinges. The one-piece elements are nifty, but nothing they ever make approaches the right shape. The closest I ever got was leaving a canopy half-closed, and making my own frame out of cut-up mailing labels. I do have to give them a little credit though.. It's almost invisible because of how thick the layering is, but they did use pale blue plates all around the canopy frame. They just needed to use jumper tiles on that white panel below the canopy to reduce that panel to 2.5 studs tall, and let some of it show through.
  5. Chronocidal
    Looking at the site photos, I may have been a little unfair to the X-Wing based on the initial shot. I think there are still some oddball proportions going on, but this one does look like it tries to duplicate some of the details that none of the other versions have tried so far, especially on the greeblie panels. The proportions here don't look bad as a base to work with. I think we really just need a 5-stud diameter engine. The canopy needs a replacement though, and I think the nose would be helped a lot if it tapered more, probably down to a 3-stud width nosecone, which I think would be entirely possible with those curved bricks they used. It's just too flat and wide. I'm also hoping the wing mechanism isn't too insanely over-engineered so I can reduce the gap between the wings. I do love the fact that they replicated so many of the markings with colored plates though, instead of printed panels.
  6. Chronocidal
    EMS does tend to be one of the most expensive methods lately, and DHL will probably save you a bit. I generally avoid them because of the insane third-party shipper shenanigans involved in them getting things to where I am, but they might be just fine for you.
  7. Chronocidal
    Well that was about as painless as I could have hoped for, was able to login, grab the new X-Wing and logout in about 10 minutes. Been a long time since I saw the LEGO Shop site working that smoothly. Would have actually kind of liked to get two of them honestly, just for the selection of parts, but maybe I can do that later.
  8. Chronocidal
    Cool display.. but what are all the missiles for? Would be a whole lot cooler if there was a little Sv-51 chasing him..
  9. Chronocidal
    One would hope Bandai would eventually discover that they need to change something about the formulation of their plastic to prevent that.. but they seem remarkably resistant to making obvious improvements.
  10. Chronocidal

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    Chronocidal replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    I need to make some custom pylons to just stick the Hasegawa 1/48 missiles on the Bandai DX. Still can't believe how bad those pylons are.
  11. Chronocidal
    I grew up always packing models in foam peanuts, in boxes much larger than the model.. usually things like old CRT monitor boxes and Home Depot shippers. You can cram a lot into a big box as long as you leave wiggle room.. I probably have a couple dozen 1/48 kits packed that way, though very few of them are very fragile to begin with, since I never tended to glue antennas and landing gear on them.
  12. Chronocidal

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    Chronocidal replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    It's not a cheap thing to do, but if there's anything to get multiples of, it's the YF-19 full set, because that's pretty much the only good source of weapons for.. well, everything else, unless you're very handy with prepping and painting 3D prints. The long AMRAAM-looking ones and the HMMs look great on all of the VF-31s. Really wish they would just release an exclusive weapons pack full of things to put on all of their valks... or, you know, maybe include something in the base package. Heck, I don't even care if they're painted or assembled, just give me good molded plastic kit of armaments for all of your valks, Bandai.
  13. Chronocidal
    I was just hoping they'd finally paint that stupid crotch plate.
  14. Chronocidal
    Bleh.. I got impatient and grabbed a second from HLJ. Whole lot cheaper than the BBTS order.
  15. Chronocidal
    Yeah, the snaps for the nacelles are a little sloppy, and can cause some alignment issues along the axis of the nacelle. It's definitely not too late to fix that, since you can make sure the halves align properly before assembling them. One thing you might want to consider is clipping out the mounts inside the nacelles, and making a new mount. Bandai's pre-painted Refit was probably the best small-scale version of that design, but the Polar Lights one is a really good kit. The 1/350 kits are incredibly good, but yes, they're far too big. The 1/1000 ones are pretty much an ideal size, but the snap-together construction causes a lot of issues. Unfortunately, I think the TOS design actually has some of the most subtle shaping and details that no one seems to get. There's so little detail on the ship as a whole, it makes it hard to recognize what might need fixing. There just aren't a lot of panel lines or details to give you good reference points.
  16. Chronocidal
    So it's not that the canards are super thin. It's the fact that they did this to add the extension to the airframe where they attach. These two parts right here? Butt-join against the stock Su-27 leading edge, and then the canards glue to that. I can't find any photo that looks anything like that separation joint on the real plane, because that entire section would have had to be rebuilt to house the canard actuators. It's just a bizarre add-on piece they included instead of making a new fuselage. You pretty much have to glue those on, putty the entire area, and then scribe any panel lines that should be there from scratch. Looking good! I want to ask before you get too deep into the TOS kit, have you checked the nacelle alignments? When I started building mine, I realized the stock tabs/snaps to put the nacelles onto the pylons leave the nacelles rotated at a pretty decent angle (and that's completely separate from any front-to-back alignment issues). I'm actually thinking I might use some scrap lumber and build a jig for the ship, to hold the nacelles in place once glued.
  17. Chronocidal
    I was wondering why that name sounded familiar, and I went to look it up.. I couldn't help it.
  18. Chronocidal
    I mean, if the cloudy canopy wasn't already a giveaway, yeah. I don't trust any of their pics for anything anymore.
  19. Chronocidal
    Looks like HLJ is getting a few of these in, I decided to finally pick up the PF version. https://www.hlj.com/1-60-scale-kanzen-henkei-vf-4a-lightning-iii-hikaru-ichijyo-use-premium-finish-aca82155
  20. Chronocidal
    So, it might be possible to make something decent out of it, but the molding is just bizarre. The main thing I noticed is that the "Super Flanker" kit is actually a standard Su-27 with a flat sheet of plastic you glue along the leading edge to extend it for the canards? I mean, I don't know that much about Flankers in general, but I don't think that's how aircraft upgrades work. It just looked like a really really cheap molding. The nosecone looked so lopsided I thought it got left out in the sun. This guy seems kind of optimistic about it, but the only other review of this kit I remember seeing was someone who gave up on making an actual flanker, and used the parts to make some sort of steampunk airship. Edit: Someone has built it up here, and done a decent job with what he had to work with, but yeah, this is not a good molding. https://archive.aeroscale.net/forums/233002/
  21. Chronocidal
    Oh.. wow.. yeah, "MiniHobby Models".. I recognize that name. I have a Flanker made by them.. it was like $5.. and I still got ripped off. XD
  22. Chronocidal
    I have to assume there's both aerodynamic and radiometric science involved to minimize both drag and radar interference, but it might be partly about where the primary line-of-sight for the radar is located, since it looks like both the 22 and 35 have their arrays tilted upwards.
  23. Chronocidal
    As opposed to the regular edition that's only available for 30 minutes online at a stupid price?
  24. Chronocidal
    And still with white gear that we know don't actually exist.
  25. Chronocidal
    I've considered doing something like this a few times. I think where you run into issues is just leakage, since unless you tape everything down, the pattern might still get messy, and need a ton of cleanup. Unfortunately... the Galaxy class saucer is also that screwball oval shape, which means that even if you can make a re-usable pattern, you still have to make a pile of unique patterns to cover the whole thing.
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