Chronocidal

So, this is probably mostly my own headcanon, but I never saw the problem with having intakes in space, for two reasons: 1- The engines might be able to use an air-breathing mode in atmosphere for better fuel efficiency. 2- There's really no detriment to having them, and I think there's at least one comic that demonstrates some kind of emergency reverser mechanism using them. I'm pretty sure 1 is actually part of the canon tech used in the VF-1's reaction engines, to allow them almost unlimited operation in atmosphere.

FREAKING FINALLY. Cannot believe it took them this long to make the engines bigger than a 4-stud diameter. That actually looks almost comparable to the custom version I had started to build up in CAD. Of course.. they had to keep using that stupid single-piece canopy, and while they enlarged the engines, they also overdid it without making the rest of the ship bigger, so now they just look gargantuan. Still.. that's gotten a lot better overall. Just need the guns in 3-stud diameter to get them in scale, and bulk up the entire thing a bit.. It's got potential. I might have to grab one. This one would be quite a bit bigger.. but I'd absolutely grab at least one

Happy to say I got mine delivered, and while the shoulders were a little tight, it wasn't anything that stopped them from moving. I loosened the screws a little to give them room to breathe easily. To start, two observations.. First, I still wish Arcadia would go back to their original "premium finish" without the panel lining. It's not terrible or anything, but there are some rather sloppy spots where it looks like someone just scribbled with a pencil, and others where they just drew lines along body contours that aren't actually panel lines, and it added a weirdly unnecessary accent to that corner. I think they did add a clearcoat to the whole thing though, none of it was scratching off when I tried to clean up one of the sloppy lines. Second.. am I just missing something, or were they never intending to print the U.N. SPACY on the legs and fast packs? Or did they just forget it? Maybe it's one of those ones people couldn't decide on? I really don't care one way or another about that particular marking, I'm honestly just curious. So.. after pulling it out and admiring it, testing the shoulders, checking it out.. I started disassembling it. I was actually very happy to see that they didn't get any glue on the screw covers under the wing gloves. They were just snapped in, and I was able to pry them out with a fingernail in a matter of seconds, unlike my original release, which I probably spent an hour carefully trying to jimmy them with a razor blade. On the other hand, this one had a lot more glue between the wing glove halves, but nothing too hard to separate with patience. They came apart easily, and while the wings were pretty well glued, it didn't take much pressure to pop the seam enough to pull out the swingbars with no damage to anything. One thing I do like is that there really isn't any reason to replace the screws holding the wing gloves to the legs. Those sockets are plenty tight to hold the wings steady, and it makes them easy to just pull off if I need to. Pulled the swingbars out, swapped in a pair of my POM hinge replacements (I used my metal ones on my frequent swoosher), reassembled, and the wings are now locked solidly against the legs in fighter mode. I can't actually tell if the hardpoints are canted out at all, it's close enough that it might be an optical illusion. The only sign that I did anything at all is that the wing gloves have a small gap along the leading edge, since the parts don't stay entirely closed without glue. If I was sure I wouldn't ever want to put those hinges back, I'd re-glue them, but I like keeping the option open if those plastic hinges ever break. Overall, really happy to finally have one with all the markings, and I'll probably just keep it in fighter mode for display, and mess with the others if I want to transform one.

Speaking of overly tight parts.. Does that happen to apply to the intake covers as well? Those were always really loose, so it wouldn't hurt for them to stay in a little better on this release.

You know what's funny to me.. looking more closely at this YF-19 years later, it always bugged me that the gunpod looks like it's drooping when on the gear. But.. it's really not. The nose gear is just kind of short. The gunpod does droop a tiny amount, but it's almost level with the wings in the profile view, and considering it would probably fly nose-high anyhow, it's probably pretty close to aligned straight forward in flight.

Don't know about the shoulder launchers, but there is a hardpoint visible on the bottom of the folded wing.

That's.. actually weird. Is that molded as a single piece? That's probably the easiest one to repair though, of the three sorts of breakage reported so far.

Don't know if this has been posted here before (I didn't see it, but that doesn't mean much ) but I'm kind of amazed at what people can pull off with Kerbal.

I went digging through the archives (180 pages of posts worth ) and dug up a few key points from the original YF-19 release thread. We might want to pin these in some way to keep them easy to find. Where to file the edges of the backplate to avoid scratching the nose point: Location where the spine can get scratched by the backplate: Original post about the wing mounting solution I came up with: Shortly after that post is one that contains a link to a Shapeways version of the neck cover for fighter, in case anyone loses it.

For the things that have been shown to break, I believe both versions can be fixed by adjusting the screws holding the shoulders. The recent one that twisted off the entire pauldron should be able to be fixed by loosening the screw under the shoulder mount like I did, and the previous ones can be accessed after removing the arm from the shoulder by that same screw. If the arms are so tight that they're breaking after loosening the screws, I think that'll be an entirely different level of issue. But for now, just play it safe, and don't try and force anything to move if it doesn't want to. Edit: As a reminder, given it's been a while.. keep in mind that you may need to do things to protect the paint around the spine and front of the cockpit. The black panel behind the canopy can get scratched by the spine rubbing it, and the place where the cockpit fits behind the head under the coverplate with the 4 thrusters on it can scratch the black paint on either side of the very front of the cockpit. I filed the hinges (metal) of the backplate so they wouldn't scratch on either side of the canopy, and put a piece of masking tape on the spine to cover where it can be scratched in battroid.

Beautiful! Out of curiosity, how floppy are the wing hinges? Probably wishful thinking, but that's one thing I wouldn't mind them gumming up with weathering gunk.

Hey, they've gotta come up with some way to use all that extra internal space the Enterprise acquired. Starfleet must have made contact with Gallifrey and acquired TARDIS technology. Scale shenaniganry aside, I do have to give them credit for their handling of the visual update of the original TOS design. It's the first new starship design I really wanted a model of in quite some time.

Ok, yeah, at this point I'm highly suspicious of two things: 1. They probably gave everything a weathering coat, and it's gumming up the works. 2. The people breaking these things might be ham-fisting the transformation and trying to force things to move instead of doing the smart thing and loosening the screws first, because they're absolutely accessible. I'm not even sure I'm going to attempt to transform mine when it arrives. I always intended to display it in fighter mode anyhow.

I really hope this one's wings are as loosely glued as the original release, otherwise replacing the wing hinge is going to be terrifying. 😱

Funny to think the Arcadia implementation of the VF-25 booster pack set is arguably better than Bandai's in many ways. The wing boosters on the Bandai are notoriously finnicky to stay on, and unlike the Bandai shoulder... pads?.. the Arcadia ones actually rotate and open up into missile launchers. I do wish they'd come out with a full release of them, but while they're cool to display in fighter, they're too clunky in all the other modes to really feel natural.

Aha! It's in! Stayed up later than I intended, and got the email right as I was headed to bed. Also.. for the record, the yen total charged was 51,750, which came out to A little over $413. The conversion saved me.. almost enough to ship it.

Ok, where's a 1/12 F-14 when you need one...

I kind of hope they re-release the VF-19P alongside the VF-5000.. whenever that one happens. The one I'm STILL waiting for is a VF-19F from the Master File though, just the plain white one with black stripes. It would make such a good base for customs.

You know what, I'll bite, for the fancier gold paint. That's even less than I actually paid for the original Yamato Fire Valk on its own.

Ok, exchange rates are kind of wild.. that's a sound booster bundle.. for the same price as the original Fire Valk release.

Heh.. I just went to look at the product page on HLJ, and they've updated the release expectation to April now. Wonder what's going on with their stocking situation.

The old Yamato isn't going to work, because the entire arm mechanism is different, and uses a sideways hinge, instead of extending the elbow with a slider. Any old beat-up Yamato VF-19 should do the trick though, if you could find spare parts. The way these are breaking looks really wild though, as if they're being massively ham-fisted trying to rotate the arms. If they're stuck that badly, someone at Arcadia really borked up the assembly or painting somehow. It might be worthwhile for someone to Shapeways a replacement for those parts. Now that I know how to get them apart, I might disassemble mine the whole way, and upload a model to test.

That actually reminds me of one funny, and probably unintentional feature of the Arcadia version. Since all of the other YF/VF-19 molds come from the base design of the Fire Valkyrie, all of the other variants can actually hide their center head laser under the arm shield. Remove the shield, then rotate the laser down, and it'll nestle up between the elbows, provided you've folded down the little panel at the top of the spine.

No, this is entirely new. The shoulders have been solid on this ever since the original Fire Valk release, I think, which uses the same shoulder design. I just messed with my older "beater" YF-19 that I transform and mess with all the time, and no, the screws to directly loosen that joint aren't reachable, even after transforming it. They're covered by the shoulder pauldrons, and I'm not sure how those can be removed. They're all glued shut. The best option looks like it would be to remove the arm from the shoulder pivot, which can be reached without transforming the arms, just by dropping the legs, and lifting the torso using the spine linkage. It's a tricky angle though, and you might chew up the body getting in there (though it wouldn't show with the arms transformed, so may not show in any mode). Once that's undone, it looks like this would actually be an easy preemptive fix. The shoulder comes free once that screw is out, and you can easily access the pivot holding the failing joint, and loosen it up (or swap out the arm for a non-broken one). What actually concerns me here is that I have to wonder if the weathering job is the reason for these breakages. It's not hard to imagine them just applying all of their surface treatments to all the parts, without thinking about the effects that would have on the mechanisms. The arms might be all glued tight with weathering compound. Edit: Just as a note, getting that screw back under the shoulder cover can be tricky. Because of the angle, the best way I was able to do it was to drop the screw into the hole, seat it in the shoulder socket and give it a couple of twists to hold it steady, and then push the shoulder flush with the mount and screw it down tight. You'll probably want a non-magnetized screwdriver to do it too, mine kept yanking the screw out of position.

I would hope so, but Arcadia absolutely does not need another case of shoulder cancer in their new releases. It looks like it'll be prudent to loosen the shoulder screws before trying to move the arms at all... which I think can be reached, if I remember? Frankly.. if this happens to mine? The arms have next to no markings in the first place, I'll just swap in a pair from one of the original releases. Also, a reminder.. if you want to take the leap to disassemble the wings and remove the high speed mode, Sculpteo still has my original replacement bracket design available in POM and acrylic. Sadly, they discontinued their metal cutting service, but the other materials are much more affordable anyhow, and should be plenty sturdy. https://www.sculpteo.com/en/print/pom-wing-mount/ii6HRFai?basket=1&noclickredirect=1&uuid=sV8kLMUyFQxaLWonmDI6Ie Just be aware, you will have to file away some of the longest edge of the bracket so it doesn't collide with the legs. This was the first version of the file I added, and I never re-adjusted this pattern for the POM cutting process, which requires an added margin for the laser to melt. If I ever find those original files, I might upload a revision, but the material is easy enough to modify by hand that I didn't think it was necessary. Top is how the part arrived, middle is the one I filed down to not collide with the legs, and the bottom one is one of the metal ones I ordered, before they discontinued that material.