Chronocidal

I asked them for shipping options at least three times, and they never responded before defaulting to a ferry. Never tried that option before, so we'll see how long that takes.

I think the twin engine thing isn't so much about reliability, but more about survivability. But yeah, I remember the JAST program, but hadn't heard about CALF. I know some folks who were around back then when it was still JAST, but most of them have retired at this point.

To a point, but I'd call the STOVL requirement more of the Marines saying "Give us this, or we're not buying any." It's not that simple, obviously, and the UK is involved there too, but the base F-35 design itself is almost -purely- what I would call a very typically Air Force design, being that its capabilities essentially work out to being a less nimble stealth F-16, with all the modern bells and whistles they could cram in. From the Navy side of things, the F-35 is a massive compromise. They don't like single engines, full stop. There's a reason they're buying so few. It's a fleet stopgap to cover the retirement of legacy Hornets, and give them time to develop a design to their own specs. On the other hand, there's also a good reason the Marines were the first to deploy: they didn't care that all the bells and whistles weren't working yet. They were coming off of the Harrier, and a fair number of those didn't even have a radar at all. They just needed an airframe that could land on their short-deck carriers, and they would get the job done one way or another. I'm probably exaggerating some aspects, but what I've always felt it boils down to is that the F-35 is a plane that the Air Force really likes, the Navy can make do with, and the Marines desperately need. It's missing a lot of what the Navy would want, and it's got a ton of things the Marines would probably never ask for.

Entirely true, I did catch that part, which amuses me on another level that it's just another Navy design that the Air Force adapted.

I'm definitely going to grab a set of the instructions, but the parts I'll have to pick up give me pause. I know I have a substantial chunk of them, probably enough to build the orbiter, but the tank and boosters might come out to more than the new Discovery kit. Right after that Ideas design got rejected officially, I actually went and picked up a bunch of smaller kits to help me build it myself. The bay doors I got from a pair of little space-themed sets will definitely be required, but turns out I won't need that float plane set I got for the nose section after all.

I think the vouchers used to just be a discount you could get by applying VIP points to your purchases. That was changed a while back into an option to exchange VIP points for vouchers of various amounts. While it's more annoying to redeem for online purchases that way, they also let you redeem them for in-store discounts, or other bonuses on the site, rather than purely a discount on of your online orders. (And of course, it means you can't really ever use ALL of your points that way. )

Only problem with producing an after-the-fact stack is that you'll probably need to substantially re-engineer the orbiter to mount solidly. I didn't watch the build-up video all the way through, but I didn't see any big structural reinforcements where those mounting points would need to go. It still pains me that this didn't happen, though. On the other hand.. it does exist here now, in a slightly revised format that fixes a few issues. Much better wing construction, and it doesn't use the big molded nose shape (which I'm not sure I like, but it does solve the problem of a really complicated sticker shape). Would like to see it with some of the newer cones and proper white barrels for the booster exhausts though. Maybe someday. https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-46228/KingsKnight/space-shuttle-1110-scale/#details Edit: Apparently the rebuilt tank in the newer design was made partly to reduce the cost of getting the parts together. The orange parts in the original were part of one of the older Shuttle sets, and really expensive to acquire.

It's actually kind of funny to me, but aside from the very stiff shoulders, and one loose wing flap, the Eta I've messed with the most seems to fit together better than the Zeta I have out on my desk. The Zeta seems to have trouble with getting the sensor pod to stay down correctly, and the Eta's tails seem to fold out and stay put better. I fixed the floppy wing with a drop of CA glue on one end of the peg, and that's become my daily swoosher, since I can just pick it up or set it down without fiddling with the landing gear. While I like the Zeta's head design better for soldier mode, the antenna means it sits on the gear most of the time. To me, the Iota just looks like an Eta with an uglier head. Really do wish there was a better way to stow those antennas.

I think it'd be more appropriate to call the F-35 "bleeding edge technology." It's not that its individual technological features have not been tested, but they're all being integrated and rolled out simultaneously in one giant package that's being debugged in real time. To make a slightly hilarious gaming comparison, if the F-15 can be compared to Skyrim, the F-35 is Star Citizen. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and we won't really know how this pans out for a long time. It's a very capable jet, but it is also very much a flying pile of evolving computer code, with all the benefits and drawbacks thereof. Historically speaking, in terms of the Navy, I've seen a few comparisons made that what the Navy is doing with the F-35C is what they should have done with the F-111B: buy a minimal amount as a stop-gap to support the fleet while they wait for an aircraft they actually want. The last time the services cooperated to this extent was probably the F-4, but one of the big differences in that case was that the Phantom was a Navy design that the Air Force picked up. I think the last time the Navy adopted a primarily Air Force design was the Fury, a navalized F-86 Sabre.

Didn't see any freebies, but I think I grabbed the Shuttle at least. Sad I didn't have enough points for more of a discount, but I did manage to get $10 off or so.

Hmn.. much as I'd love to grab more, I double dipped on both the Eta and Zeta (partly for redundancy, partly for double gunpod wielding ). I need to cut back on how many things I'm ordering, and that one is probably my least favorite head design. Also need to save up for a potential Tread, after all.

So, if you haven't installed them, my thought was that you could just leave out the little cross-bars in the front of the lower legs, and that would eliminate the alignment issue entirely. You'd just have to find another way to mount them. You might be able to just glue the legs onto the thighs and align them manually. Or maybe just scrape out the guides inside the legs and mount the cross-bars at the right angle? I don't know why the magazine example didn't do that instead, because it sounds several orders of magnitude less work.

If I'm remembering correctly, I think that mod was done by entirely filling the slot in the thigh pieces, and re-cutting it? That always seemed like a lot more work than necessary, since I think the way the lower leg goes together would be much easier to mod by just changing the way the attachment tab fits between the halves of the leg. I could also be entirely imagining things, hard to say, I haven't dug into my copy of that kit for a long time.

Always thought the 1/72 VF-1 mold was wacky for the way it did the entire backpack assembly. No real support for the tails, and that goofy way of attaching the rear flap underneath the backpack.. don't know why they didn't make it a single level piece. You planning on doing any adjustment to realign the lower legs?

So I decided to take a break from banging my head against the wall with old AMT Trek molds, and tackle something a bit different. This is probably the most unique kit I have ever owned. This is the entire kit. It is four parts. Six if you count the stand, and I'm actually missing the tailhook, but it's a simple enough part I can make one from sprue, and I don't actually know if the version I'm making needs one, since it's an early prototype. There are no panel lines, and no sprues. Judging by the logo stamped on the interior of the wing, I believe this is literally one of those contractor-manufactured promotional models offered to engineers who worked on the aircraft. I'm guessing maybe the molds were acquired by Microscale years later, and they figured it would be a good vehicle to advertise their decals and supplies? Or maybe they even made the original kits. After a little research, it's clear the plane is modeled on a very early prototype, which never used the markings it came with, which is all the same, since the decals were missing when I got it. General plan for this is to mark off a few key panel lines and scribe them in, things like control surfaces and major details like gear doors, maybe the canopy separation line, but there is something that feels oddly special about how utterly smooth this is. On the other hand though, it's also a blank canvas with a lot of room for improvement. I'm not feeling like building a cockpit for it, but I did decide to try out a little inspiration I got from browsing resin upgrades for the Tamiya 1/48 version of this plane (which I also have, and will be my main reference for panel lines). Some of the really popular resin upgrades I see for many kits are seamless intake ducts. I think to myself, "Hmm.. I wonder if I could print something like that." A few caliper measurements, and several hours later: So far it's fitting pretty well, and I could probably make a few adjustments to the print to make it more solid, and add supports to hold it in place in the fuselage, but I'm thinking that'll be plenty easy to do with scrap sprue. Given how well this worked out, I might do something similar with the exhaust, and add a simple afterburner can, since right now the back end is just a flat blank. This will be a fun build, partly because it's so simple (and the fit is actually amazing), but also because I'm not planning on making this look "real," so much as I'm going to make it look like a display model. I've got no intention of adding a ton of markings, and the ones I do intend on including I'm planning to mask off and paint. I'm thinking of making some masks to apply and spray everything. We'll see how that plays out, since I've never tried anything like that, but I figure something with so few details to mess up is the ideal canvas to give it a shot.

I would say the majority of the issues with the 171 are just a part of the design. While some experienced worse breakage than others (the CF-171 in particular), they all have similar flaws that may pop up over time. Be VERY CAREFUL with the leg transformation, and read back through this thread before transforming them, because the instructions are wrong. The EX models were arguably more reliable than the CF-171s though, maybe from better/different plastic. Just be aware of the issues with the design, and treat it carefully, and it should be no worse off than the Alto or Luca releases. And of course, no matter what else may go wrong, it'll still make a good fighter mode to display the art on the back.

Just got my invoice for Zeta Toys Flash, time to test how shipping speeds are working these days.

I have to say I find it hilarious that they're speculating about replacing a plane that's literally brand new. Though, on the other hand, given the development cycle, they'll probably need to get started in a few years to be done by the time they retire the F-35 fleet.

The tooling on all of the AMT Enterprise E kits should have been retired before ever being released. I got both that mold and the 1/1400 one when they were brand new, and they haven't changed. They're just disappointing kits. Incredibly mushy detail (for what they bothered to mold, anyhow), lousy accuracy, and just a general level of rubbery-looking blandness that most of the other Trek kits seemed to avoid. If we make the comparison that the details of the Polar Lights kits are crisp like Pringles, the AMT Enterprise E kits are like month-old re-microwaved crinkle fries. I would have absolutely loved to see Polar Lights tackle a new mold of the Ent E, but seems like they're just not making anything new lately? Honestly, the best option for an Enterprise E at this point is buying the Diamond Select version.

I may just be missing something, but is there a setting to turn off notifications for people "liking" posts I've made? I don't mind seeing if someone's quoted a post, since that's usually related to ongoing discussion, but getting notifications about likes is generally just annoying, because it makes me think something new was posted in a topic, until I go and read the log to find out that nothing worthy of attention has actually happened. I don't know if there are separate settings for likes and quotes, because the notification settings don't seem to have them broken out.

This looks really fun. Edit: Okay, I was not aware of the giant sloped panels they used on top of the wings to cover the gear. That is going to need some modding to fix, because that's just incredibly dumb looking. Why on earth couldn't they just cover that with a couple of tiles? I think I'd seriously just remove the gear before doing that. It looks like you can literally just cover that stupid hole with plates, and all it would do is push down the tires slightly. Double edit: After looking at some photos of the shuttle, I know why they did it that way. Those plates do fairly well replicate the profile curve of the wing airfoil where it joins the fuselage, because it's a big thick delta monstrosity. It really is that thick at the base. What looks so wrong about it is that it should taper smoothly toward the tip, not sink a full brick's thickness in the space of three studs horizontally. There might be a better way to taper it down, but they will probably all involve sacrificing the nice printed marking tiles on the upper surface. We'll see. Even with those in place, I think it would look better to taper gradually with several layers of plates, rather than one giant clunky sloped element. They really seem to love using those as shortcuts, and the results are not always good (looking at you, UCS Slave I ).

I love that there are more of them available (especially after the initial rush), but I wonder, is this one of those things where the foreign audience really latched onto a different character than the Japanese audience did? Show-wise, Hikaru's the main character, and his 1J is probably the iconic VF-1 from the show, while Roy's 1S is a flashier callback to a 1980s US Navy squadron. Far as character traits are concerned, I can't really speak to how he's perceived in Japan, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the things that make him such a badass with American audiences come off as serious flaws to the original viewing audience. As far as the future of the DX line is concerned though, I'll be interested to see how Bandai treats the M&M VF-1Js, if they do them at all. I know that pair has a history of being more popular outside of Japan.

I've definitely transformed my model versions more than the DX, but I do pull the DX out every so often just to puzzle my way through it. I find the transformation kind of fascinating. Kind of makes me want to pull it out now and mess with it, in fact. That being said, there's a reason I own two of them. The one that had some missing paint out of the box is the one I transform, while the other stays in fighter mode.

Not even a wrong move. You can break the legs off by following the instructions. Bandai screwed up horribly writing them because they didn't write separate battroid-to-fighter instructions, and the steps don't work the same in reverse.

The 262 is a notoriously convoluted pile of rotating bits and bobs, and frankly, I think it needs to be redesigned. The 1/72 model did some things differently, and arguably better, in spite of having to detach the hands. It just didn't have as many moving parts... unfortunately, it also is far more fragile, and repeated transformations will cause bits to break without some structural modifications. If anything, I hope the long delay with no new 262 release is because Bandai took it back to the drawing board for a rework. One thing I've always found amusing about the DX 262 though.. for something so incredibly complex and complicated to transform, I can't actually recall anyone complaining of things breaking. It looks insanely fragile, but I don't remember hearing any wailing and moaning over it disintegrating due to ham-fisted transformation sessions. Maybe people were more careful with it because it looked fragile? Or maybe it just never sold well enough to get a proper working-over by the wider Macross Delta audience? We may never know.