Ken Lim

One quick resource you could try is MAHQ They have pictures and short bios on the machinery appearing in various anime series. (the link is for Gundam) Should give you an idea of what fought what at least. The designs within each 'Century' or 'Era' would be consistent with each other, separated only by time. Different 'Centuries' or whatever should be treated as separate universes entirely.

One easy rule- "two eyes good, one eye bad". If you're going for strict 'historical accuracy' you have to consider a few more issues: - Are they from the same series? Otherwise you could end up with Zero vs F-15 or X-wing vs Viper, so to speak. - Are they in fact allies or enemies. A recurring theme in several series is "They have a powerful new weapon. Lets go steal it and use it against them" So two eyes is not always good. - No multiples unless its a cannon fodder design. The vast majority of Gundams are one-offs used by the main characters to blast their way through expendable grunts

You could also try 1/72 armour unit markings, although they tend to be chevrons triangles and numbers. 1/72 nose art would be good too. Anything around 1cm square, fingernail size, should be visible but not garish.

Don't forget, most Gundams can fly (or at least jump really far), many are actually one-man spaceships and a few transform into winged aircraft shapes. We dig giant robots. Nice!

Unless you're building inflight i would avoid the earlier DO-335s. I remember them having rather nasty landing gear. ON the other hand, Dragon might be somewhat labour intensive- quite a few non-optional PE parts.

Ah thanks. Chop and discard then.

The Seahawk's cabin door has a cutout panel to clear the weapon pylon behind it. Anyone know how this panel operates? Basically when the door is slid back is the panel visible on the outside or retract under the door? I seem to remember the Hasegawa instructions directing you to just chop it off.

Maybe they could re-imagine it as This.

Definitely. But you may have to wait till they gain the same prestige, notoriety and widespread use as the F-15/16 of the previous generation. Consider: how long has it taken, from red white and blue prototype to the highly detailed 1/32 F-16s?

Yeah Hobbycraft copy. Softer plastic and UTTERLY WORTHLESS DECALS. The crosses are blue!

Ah the mysteries of names. If the F-16 couldn't be called just 'Falcon' because of a French biz-jet (which was actually very fast and had a lot of engines), why was the YF-17 called the Cobra, didn't anyone at Northrop hear of a Bell product by that name? And going further, why was the AH-1 called the Cobra? American rotary wings, especially armed ones, all seem to named after native tribes. Look forward a bit, to when all the best known tribes and birds that kill things have already been used and 'Falcon VII' is simply not an option. Are we going to have things like an F-65 White-bellied S

Havent built it but i do have the beast stashed away. The thing that freaked me out the most was... the optional mounting pins so you can hang it from the ceiling.

From what i hear Trumpeter armour is generally accurate. Not that it matters to the armour guys who immediately dump the rolling bits for resin and metal replacements, scrape off all the trash attached to a tank hull and scratch build replacements and install a turned metal barrel. Then cover the lot in a cup of mud.

Tamiya WILL do the F-35. After all they recently came out with a highly detailed F-16, and it only took them a few decades from service entry. They have to run out of Luftwaffe variants SOME TIME right?

From what i remember of the Hobbycraft originals.. buy more putty.