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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Boy do I ever want the Sv-262Ba, but I will be really sad if we don't at least get that red one.
  2. Chronocidal
    So as I understand it, it's not so much a direct reliability thing as it is an operational capability and survivability thing. If a plane with one engine gets damaged in enemy airspace and loses that engine, the mission is over, and you have lost a plane, and possibly a pilot. If a plane with two engines gets damaged in enemy airspace and loses one engine, that plane may still be capable of finishing the mission, or at least limping back to base. The bottom line of getting the plane and pilot back home safely rather than potentially losing both entirely due to a single engine failure is a pretty strong argument for the extra cost in fuel and maintenance. Modern engines are definitely more reliable than they used to be, but when you're talking about combat aircraft, along with all the risks associated with long flights over nothing but water, and all the extra risks associated with carrier operations, having that redundant engine is not a bad safety net to have.
  3. Chronocidal
    Dragging things back on topic a bit, I actually didn't realize this and only discovered it by going through my Enterprise-D subscription emails.. One of the extras from last fall was a pair of shuttle models. Not labeled as XL, but they're fairly large scale, I think I want to guess somewhere around 1/48 via comparison with a random pilot figure I have on my desk. The pack included both the Type 6 shuttle, and the Type 15 shuttlepod. The pod I've always thought was a rather silly little box, but the Type 6 I always appreciated as a somewhat believable update to the shuttle design in ST:V. Not a bad model, I think Eaglemoss is at their best making these sorts of solid designs. Though I must admit, I'm curious at what source they used for the text for the shuttle's name? I wouldn't have expected the font to be the TOS title font, especially when the print on the booklet shows the same as the rest of the TNG registry font.
  4. Chronocidal
    I don't know if this is the official reason, but from what I've read before, the Navy taking the F-35 at all might be to prevent some of the problems they had when they abandoned the F-111B to go all in on the F-14. The F-111B wasn't the plane they wanted.. but it was available, and did pass its carrier trials. Some folks have speculated that if they'd taken on a limited number of them as a stopgap until the issues with the F-14 were resolved, they would have avoided a whole lot of pain. That's all I really think the F-35C is for the Navy: a placeholder until they can get the plane they actually want. As far as landing mishaps go on the F-35C though, this one is pretty bizarre to even think of, because of how insanely good the plane's record is. When the plane was going through carrier trials, they had to make repairs to the deck plating. The landing guidance was so accurate, the repeated hook strikes in the same exact spot were knocking chunks out of the decking. I'd be really interested to find out what the actual cause was.
  5. Chronocidal
    Agreed 100% on the thermometer. Mine's carrying the spare charger pack from my Hayate with the sound booster. I'm guessing the folding chest pieces are just a holdover that they left alone since the original release had them, and it was easier than re-molding the chest plate. They might play a bigger role in giving clearance to the other head designs.
  6. Chronocidal
    I would love to see those back in stores, the prices on Amazon started around there, but have steadily climbed until they're really asking a lot for those little kits. The Grissom/BoP duo especially feels like about $10 worth of plastic, tops. Not to knock the quality of the kit, because it's fine, they're just itty bitty ships.
  7. Chronocidal
    Wouldn't mind Buck Rogers, but I'd be far more interested in some good quality Babylon 5 ships. They've got a pretty massive variety to choose from too.
  8. Chronocidal
    Honestly, your projects are fascinating just because you can accomplish so much with just masking tape. I think as far as finishing goes though, if you want to hide the tape construction and texture, you might try covering everything with a smooth layer of standard office paper, construction paper, or possibly recycled cardboard from packaging. That would involve gluing everything with white glue though, which could get messy, but you could also cut the panels to cover the model almost seamlessly, and draw all of the panel lines before cutting out the pieces, which would probably be a lot easier than drawing them onto the finished model. Either way, the new canopy looks fantastic! Think my favorite part is how you managed to get the shape so smooth, especially the roundness of the dish.
  9. Chronocidal
    I wouldn't want to even try and get anything like that on the plastic, honestly. The panels fit so tightly, there's really no gap to get the lube into, and the slides themselves are completely covered.
  10. Chronocidal
    I'm not going to hold my breath that the TOS 1701 will be less than $50, but it's still better than trying to pick up the Diamond Select ones, and would probably still outdo their quality control issues with the last releases they had years back. Never cared for figures in the first place, but yeah, they're pretty bad all around. Though.. I'm actually kind of surprised how good Khan's face came out. Maybe sloppy painting, but he's the only one out of the bunch that I think actually looks kind of like the actor. On a really weird note.. Data ... kind of looks like Anthony Daniels cosplaying as Data, which is just bizarre to think about.
  11. Chronocidal
    That does help. I think the root problem is that those arm panels are so hard to slide. If they actually reach the position they're supposed to, everything lines up pretty well, but they love sticking, and there's no really any good way to grip them.
  12. Chronocidal
    Little bit of good news on my end, I'm not terribly anxious to get my backup 31AX order, so I'd been holding my questions to see how Luna Park delivers. They just messaged me about my copy shipping out via DHL, so while they have taken a bit to get around to it, glad to see they're delivering without me pestering them.
  13. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I'm not kidding when I say I got most of my old Yamato VF-1s for less than the Bandai HMRs cost. To say nothing of the deals I got on the VF-11s and YF-21. In hindsight, I wish I'd bought more.
  14. Chronocidal
    I was eventually able to get a couple of things to mostly seat in those hardpoints, but one wing is worse than the other, and loves to force things to pop off very quickly. Coincidentally, those VF-171 pods were the first thing I found to try as well. I also wound up trying the gattling guns from the 31 armor set, and maybe those are just beyond what those tight hardpoints will tolerate, because they just refuse to seat at all. I recall them being fairly tight on the older 31 releases, so those might just be right on the edge of what will fit on the AX without modification. Edit - Actually might just be the 171 armaments that are an issue? The YF-19 pylons seem to snap in without too much trouble on the arms. I can say that I see the plastic around the center block of the hardpoints deforming slightly from trying to get stuff in there though.
  15. Chronocidal
    One note about the 31AX's hardpoint mounts.. I don't think it's consistent, but I may have just gotten a massive tolerancing lemon. I can't seem to get anything to mount on the arm panel hardpoints. Things just don't fit on them, and either won't secure at all, or pop off seconds after they seem to stay put.
  16. Chronocidal
    Saw someone make a really funny point. Is Candy Crush still adware if it's owned by Microsoft? Or is it just going to be an official part of Windows that's impossible to remove now?
  17. Chronocidal
    Sadly, I don't believe the hardpoints will be the correct size. The ones in the wing hinges are a different size compared with the usual missile ones.
  18. Chronocidal
    Not to derail things too much further.. I'm actually slightly considering a kitbash of the various 31s to see how it would look. I've already got my AX carrying a spare charger pod and gunpod.. I wonder how hard it would be to get the old 31 nose section to fit as well...
  19. Chronocidal
    At this point, I'm fairly well content to use a spare DYRL pilot, and just use the TV edition as the DYRL variant. The cockpit panels are easy to swap, and the benefit of using the TV version is that they actually printed the numbers the right direction.
  20. Chronocidal
    To be fair, I don't think this is anything remotely near the level of failure that the VF-171 was. That spontaneously exploded. This is just.. carelessness, and sloppiness in a design, not a material manufacturing failure. Oversized tabs are fixable, even if it's dumb that we have to do it. If I'm quite honest.. It's incredibly refreshing to receive a Bandai valk with a flaw that I can actually fix myself without destroying it in the process. That might be a first.
  21. Chronocidal
    I can't argue the looks aren't good, but it's just really weird how many things went wrong. I'm not sure I can call them QC issues even, since for the most part everything is beautiful. These feel more like design and engineering flaws, because certain things just don't work. Quality control should have absolutely caught them, but it's like they completely bypassed the prototype stage for such issues to exist in the final product. Maybe they got complacent because they expected such a minor update to work just as well as the old 31 series? I don't know. The sloppy molding issues I've seen make me suspect this design got contracted out to a different factory.
  22. Chronocidal
    Yeah, definitely not isolated issues. I haven't tried battroid at all yet, so I can't verify the clips failing, but have to agree that the 31 series as a whole has the worst gunpod design to date, both because the handle is a flimsy piece of junk, and because it requires those idiotic pointing hands. The 31AX makes the whole issue worse by making the gunpod friggen huge. I didn't notice the gunpod tab issue not pegging into the belly without extending, but I did notice it tends to pop out of the slot very easily. The two might be the same thing. The tolerances team was out to lunch on this release.
  23. Chronocidal
    I do wish I'd bothered to pick Gamlin's up when he was easy to find, but I wasn't that much of a completionist at the time, and had never seen the animation it was from. I was plenty happy having my M&M set with the original YF-21. Grats on completing the group!
  24. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I shudder at the thought of how Bandai's engineers would tackle that mess of panels. I will make one positive point for the new design of the arm though. Because of how they reworked the shoulder rotation hinge, it no longer has to pass over that lip from the backplate, so at least they removed one of the old sources of paint wear. Not that it fixed any of the other rubbing spots (or prevented my copy from coming out of the box with a bunch of worn spots on other parts of the arms), but it did fix that particular problem. I think the wing/leg tabs are just the most baffling thing though. You can see where they added some sort of lip on the inside of the holes on the legs, as if they're meant to grip the tabs with a snap, but coming out of the box, the tabs were just far too big to even enter those slots. Someone just made a massive tolerancing error on those tabs, and even removing the sloppy molding seams on them wasn't enough to fix them, I had to file them down pretty significantly on all sides before they would slot into place.
  25. Chronocidal
    Think I would need to see that gap highlighted in a photo to know exactly where it is, because there are a few levels of "gap" in the way the guns mount. I don't think it has much of an effect on anything besides the gun pivots, since those arm panels are right up against it when it folds down, and not having the arm slid all the way up will force the gun barrels down away from the arms.
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