Saturday, June 27, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 9

Did lots of stuff this morning, now waiting for putty to dry.
I added Bondite to the thruster and used needle file to file it to shape.
Here's how it looks compared with the rest..
Singapore version Vitagen, Korean version Yakult from max, Baby Falke version...
My Ashley says she likes the tiny thruster the most, though she drinks Vitagen everyday.
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3:27am and I almost finished building the baby...
I added details to the thruster, and spent hours scratch building the nose details and gatling gun.
Not entirely happy about the gun but no more time to make changes.

Mounted on a stand and took a test shot.

Another angle

Undercarriage shot

Take a break before I finish up the dive brakes.

Color scheme I finally decided to do the snow one from the Falke Profile instead of the usual green...
Hope I can finish in the morning before church service... Why do I always hang myself?lol

Friday, June 26, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 9

Thursday night/Friday morning was very productive.
I carved away the rear end of the plane for the main thruster using micro saw and hobby knife. The Bondite was tough, but not as bad as other types of epoxy.
Used a piece of foam to cover the underside.
Started making the main thruster with a black plastic pipe from the old fish tank filter. I wound labelling tape I bought to do panel lines to create the shape.
Here's how it looks like

Glued the AG pods onto the plane, these are not the protective spheres themselves, but the plastic packaging reinforced inside with Bondite. I don't need to sand them later as they are perfectly shaped as compared to the protective spheres which have holes.
At 3am, I added the small shapes and patched the rear ends with more Bondite.
Other participants have either finished or started decaling... Friday night I am still building ... Aiming to finish most of it tonight so I can paint tomorrow.
:)

Baby Falke WIP 8

Wednesday night turned out to be a short one, I slept at 1am due to exhaustion.
Little bit of progress...I patched some holes and added some details using Bondite and spare parts.
These are parts from an old aquarium filter which I am trying to mod into the thruster.
There's a lot of seriously cheap plastic stuff we can get from local fish shops for modeling.

Incidentally, shipment 15 came in as well...
But this will have to wait til I finish up my build...

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 7

Was stuck cos I ran out of Bondite... Tried Selleys Epoxy Putty ($5:XX) but its totally unsuitable for modelling, dries within minutes and is rough. Not to mention dries very hot and smells like rotten eggs.
Restarted work today after getting more Bondite from the hardware store for $4:85 per pack.
Wanted to scribe panel lines but its very tough due to the curves and running out of time, so I decided to just quickly attach the two engines to the cockpit/main body using Bondite. Used wire inside to ensure it holds.
Here's how it looks after 2.5 hours of work adding Bondite and smoothing one side, wait for it to harden a bit before attaching the other side.
Top view
Front view (you can see its not symmetrical, but ites very tough to get it right)
side view
Finally a shot of the Bondite in case you guys go hunting for it...I love it, works smooth, soft and remains workable 20-30 minutes and can be worked smooth by water.

Lack of Updates

Sorry guys for the lack of updates for the last couple of days, I was outta the country in a church camp... This week will be a busy week for me to finish up my baby Falke, I started the Hasegawa Falke as well in order to study it, will post WIP up. Snake eye my bro has just challenged me to a WAVE snake eye smackdown build here...

So its gonna be a busy busy week!

Oh, did I mention shipment 15 is coming in?
Raptors raptors and more raptors, also some of the usual stuff.
Mostly requests this time I'm afraid...

Stay tuned!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 6

The bondite epoxy putty cures equally hard as the alteco branded one, but is around $4.50 vs $7+ for the alteco brand, so I will stick with bondite. Tamiya is just too expensive, I have some, yet to try it out on this baby..
Anyways here's the update


I've glued the two spoons together onto a piece of plaplate, and added lots of epoxy putty to make the cockpit.
Slow progress, adding putty and filing, and trying to get the look right...

Here's how it looks to the side, I must say it sure looks like a lobster! There is a lobster decal in the Falke kit and I might just use that...

Here's how it looks with 'daddy'
I am out of epoxy for the moment so will proceed with some filing and sanding to smooth out the sides before I join them up into one piece.
The deadline looms!

Comments and criticisms encouraged!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Neuspotter Head Kits Collection

with the Lunar Gans...
Been wanting to post this for sometime now... And while there are little updates to my WIP, I decided to finally sit down and write this. I've finally completed all the Ma.K kits with the Neuspotter head. From left to right : Land Konigs Krote by Rainbow Egg, Nitto Neuspotter on top of it, THAT Neuspotter Variant type B by THAT, WAVE Land Gans first release (center), WAVE Land Gand second release (center bottom), modelkasten Lunar Gans (center top), Nitto Krachenvogel (right top of the Oskar below) and modelkasten Oskar. Sorry for the two pictures, I forgot about one kit and had to retake the photos. Too lazy to take them all out again and take a photo... maybe later.

... with the Krachenvogel...
I am a completist, if that's the word for it. When I start collecting kits, I will try my best to get every single one of them. And I am proud of this collection, took me slightly over a year to amass this number of kits. Why did I collect them, I ask myself. What's my motive? For one, I really like them. If you'd remember, in a post I made in 2008 here about my favourite kits, I sold them off in order to help pay for the new church building. By God's grace, I slowly bought them all back again (heehee! Ma.K addict is like that...) He knows I need to destress sometimes.

The other motive I must confess is PRIDE. I often show my good friends who come over these kits and tell them I might be the only guy in Singapore, or maybe even South East Asia, to have all these kits. Not a very nice part of my human behaviour... Brag about having the entire collection of some stuff. Anyone who has time and money would be able to do that. The more money one has, the less time he needs. The only good thing regarding this is that I am no longer so attached to these kits, and if the need arises that I must part with them, so be it. I wouldn't lose sleep over them. In fact, I've yet to open some of them!

Pride knows no boundaries, and I thank God that I am mostly over this :) I don't feel more contented in owning all of them. Besides, one can never really complete the collection. What about the Winter KK, or the Lunar KK, or Kerberos (of which there is only one scratch-build by Sensei Kow in existence?)

A modeler or a collector? I aspire to be a modeler, and am working towards it. As someone said, a completed kit is better than a thousand unbuild ones. I fully agree!

Anyone who reads this thread and is poisoned by these kits, haha I must first apologise to you, it was not my intent to do so, just a side effect. Just to put our feet to the ground, here are the recent running prices (in usd):
Neuspotter:60
Krachenvogel:120 - 200, usually around 160
Oskar:160-200+
Gans 1st release:95-120
Gans 2nd release:85-100
Gans Lunar:260++
Land Konigs Krote:460++

Anyway, thanks for reading so long a post. What started out as a post to brag turns out to be another self-reflection which I think is good for me. Some of my model pals tell me I am crazy about Ma.K. And I am, just not insane... lol. I am still the same old average Will you know, not a saint, and still telling everyone he is handsome... :)

Next post will be the Lunar Gans review, as I've already taken the photos a few days before...
Also I would like to talk about more of the nice people I got to know along the way, like Vayeate, Snake eye, Leafster, KJ, andy...

Stay tuned and keep Ma.King!

Monday, June 8, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 5

Today my wife and kid went to stay at my mother-in-laws, so 'no government' in the house! :)
Tried out Bondite epoxy putty on the Falke engines... Here they are drying stage.
side view
front view
top view
I must say its very easy to use, sort of like plasticine, and no nasty smell too!
Smooths out using water. Its tough to make both sides symmetrical but I tried my best.

I was still agonising over how to build the cockpit when I chanced upon the
packaging of the Bondite (transparent plastic on the right) and found it to be a perfect match for the base of the Falke! :)
I must say, this project has made me study and appreciate the design... Love the process!
Will be using two spoons for the top of the cockpit and hatch, Hey this qualifies for the spoon build in the Ma.K forum! :)

Time to sleep...

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Baby Falke WIP 4

Thanks, still working on making it look 'right' close up, its got lots of imperfections at this stage.
Alot of elbow grease, sawed off 3 out of 4 wing attachments, and filled up the holes with epoxy putty on Thursday.
Also puttied up the lower body to make them smooth instead of the original shape of the plane.
Today I filed away the extra epoxy. Took about 30minutes.
Left engine is before filing, right engine is after filing

Next, super glued stealth fighter bombs to the tail section and then added epoxy to extend the two bodies.
Engines extended with bomb and epoxy

Now I wait for the epoxy to dry before I add more epoxy to form the shapes of the rear end.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

SAFS Space Type 2 Snake Eye (WAVE) Mk-11

Well I finally gotten my hands on the new WAVE Snake Eye today and decided to give you guys a quick review. Lots of good things about this kit, the ability to do the split-suit thingy, new decals, cool female pilot head and helmet... I can go on and on. Here are the details...

Details
Scale: 1/20
Type of material : off-white injection molds
Number of parts: 9 PE sprues + 1 PC sprue
Decals: yes
Instructions: yes
Overall quality: Very good
Overall accuracy: Accurate
Date of release: May 2009
Release price: 2600 yen

Let's go to the pictures !

Pictures
Box with new artwork from Sensei Kow, love the shark mouth camo!
Contents: 2 bags of sprues, instruction book and decals. I was half expecting camo cards but I forgot, this is not Hasegawa.Camo schemes will probably be found in the next issue of Ma.K Profile book dedicated to Snake eye.

Sprue A - SAFS: This initially looks very similar to the older WAVE release of the Fireball SG. But closer inspection shows individual fingers for the manipulator arm.
The manipulator fore-arm's back ward ring is now part of the fore-arm, instead of being a separate part. I'd prefer the older version as no seamline removal for the part is required. This sprue also holds the new base that allows for the split-suit ability.
The shoulder and leg armor are different from the older release as they are hinged.

Sprue B - SAFS: This holds mostly the parts for the feet as well as the fixed pose cockpit hinge and movable cockpit hinge. (You can choose which one you want to use)

Sprue E - Snake eye: Snake eye cockpit hatch and fore ward ring for forearm

Sprue J - Snake eye: Laser arm, shoulder and groin armor, radar and sensor

Sprue K - Snake eye: backpack, side of body that connects to the arms, thruster base

Sprue L - Snake eye: Thruster bells, one piece each, no seamlines to fix! kneecaps and 2 pieces of the pointing thing which is for the back.(I wonder why?)

Sprue D and O - Snake eye: One piece pilot (female) and one piece helmet.
Very nice, minimal seams on the back of the head and front of the helmet to clean up. The clear part is for the sensor to be placed on the hatch.

PC Sprue SAFS: Joints and power cables

Decals : Nice shark mouth! Also included are the penguins and pigs

Instructions:
Cover and back page

Page 2 -3

Page 4-5

Page 6 -7

After all's said and done, I think this is a wonderfully easier kit to build compared to the older releases,
and lots more moving parts for those who wanna pose and even 'play' (pew pew) with their kits (think Gundam fans like me)
Pity the lack of the yellow camo card. I am glad I got two of them and can't wait for the next release!

Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

WAVE 1/20 AFS Night Stalker is coming soon

As most of use already know, yet another AFS variant is upon us.
http://www.hobby-wave.com/LINE_UP/kit/Ma_K/data/AFS_NS/index.html

But this version has two hands! I'll be sure to get it to make my two handed Polar Bear... I have two more Polar Bears coming in from my pal Leafster...

Finally I can make the diorama of 3 Polar Bears walking in the snow!

Baby Falke WIP 3

Baby Falke WIP 3

Not much of updates until today, I am at home to help wife take care of toddler Ashley.
Doing up the air intake using the Falke as a reference. The original intake is on the left,
I removed the detailing and added plaplate, and portion of plastic tube.
So that I can glue the two halves of the body together and fill up one side of the intake with epoxy putty. Here's how it looks after an hour and a half of work.
Comments and criticisms encouraged!

Lunar Gans review coming up!

Heh heh heh heh heh..... nuff said, stay tuned!