revlimiter

Sorry in advance for the metric ton of pix in this post. I culled as much as I could. 1/14/23 - ABQ Comic Con Day 2 - booth duty TK troop 49, 4th for 2023. Saturday! Booth duty in my FISD shirt, TK undersuit, and Disney nerd hat. I did my 2 hours between shifts being armored up. I spent over SEVEN hours in armor on Saturday. I almost got my fill of it. Almost got enough time in the armor. Almost. First, the selfies. I took hundreds. These are the creme of the crop. When there's trouble you call DW. I'm still fangirling about having Darkwing Duck to selfie with. One of my dear childhood 80s memories. She-Hulk! I was waiting outside by the taco truck for lunch (yeah, I ordered and waited in full TK) and Shulky came up and wanted a selfie with me. I happily obliged as long as I could get my own as well. PRINCESSES!!! Will always princesselfie. PRINCESS!!! They were amazing. They had a little Kylo in a stroller, but this pic of just the parents turned out best. MAUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is Brandon who's usually the ROTJ TK in pix with me. He spent 15 minutes shy of 3 hours getting this makeup applied. He also got his Maul approved this same day. Bravo Brandon!! @elwessbrandon And of course, my family. This is most of them. We're a little odd, but we're good. Good family. Shot while waiting on a group photo with some comic con celebs. With Dmitrious Bistrevsky (Vader stunt actor from Obiwan), and Tait Fletcher (Paz Vizla actor). I'm beside the WW2 Trooper. And with Amy Allen, actress for Aayla Secura. I'm in same spot, but beside a TB now with the gunner in front of me. What I did most of the day - Artoo detail. It was my first troop with an Artoo and I just loved the little guy. We were located next to the Army tent. They had a pullup bar and a basketball toss. I got egged into pull ups in armor. I was delighted to find out that I had enough arm articulation to do it! I did 5 before deciding I was done. Back to Artoo. I spent hours with the little guy. I started talking to him and replying to his beeps. *bweebp blap tweeetledoeee* "No Artoo, they don't all have to stop to take pix with you." FOR HOURS. And it was brilliant. For a while we were more popular than Vader for photos. Kinda want my own droid now... And that sums up ABQ Comic Con for me. I skipped Sunday (today) to catch up on work I missed the past couple days. Also, my armor needs hosing out bad.

1/14/23 - ABQ Comic Con Day 1 - booth setup TK troop 47, 2nd for 2023. I didn't attend last year's comic con, so the 2023 event was my first con in armor. VERY Excite!!!! Here's our little group booth area. I helped do setup on Friday, so it counted as a troop. I, of course, had to get a selfie on the Death Star. In armor. Yes. BECAUSE..... 1/14/23 - Comic Con Press Conference TK troop 48, 3rd for 2023. Why in armor? Because the city had a new Electric Bus program/thing being unveiled that day at 2pm and wanted to do a press conference in conjunction with Comic Con. The bus would drop off some cosplayers in front of the convention center as a joint interest story for the bus and the con. I was proud of the above selfie and thought it was pretty funny. Then Vader came along and just stomped all over my little selfie. The coffee cup was *chef's kiss*. We troopers got on the bus and waited patiently... for a long long long time. We hung out for like 45 minutes with no driver in sight. So I took matters into my own hands. Fortunately, I missed all the traffic, pedestrians, and barriers on the way to the drop off a few blocks away. True story though - the bus driver was no where to be found, so we were all having fun and taking pix along with the event organizers. The main bus PR lady asked if anyone could sit down for a driving pic and I basically launched myself into that seat. There was no way I was missing out on driving the bus in TK armor. The bus dropped us off (TB & TKs followed by Vader, Jango, and TX, followed by some Avenger and the event officials). The officials gave their speech and then the press wanted to talk to the 501st members. Randy took off his bucket and answered questions for about 5 min. I'm to his right. It was a proud moment for us. -edit- My garrison decided that booth setup and the press conference were two separate troops, so this event counted for two in our official record books. I'm updating my troop tracker and the posts to match. FOUR troops in 2023 by Jan 14th! Crazy.

Huge +1s to both Ardeshir and Justin on this one. These are clearly screen-visible variants. These aren't malfunctions or gaffer tape incidents. These are variants. It would be wonderful if the CRLs allowed for these.

^ high effort memes @Morgi! Impressive, most impressive. I was reminded of rage memes this morning and felt nostalgic

Yup. I've seen that video. Terrible response by law enforcement and likely also a bad response by the cosplayer, though the vid was silent. Add to that, it was just one cosplayer (who was a relative (kid?) of the shop owner). This was an official troop with a LOT of experienced troopers and sufficient handlers to speak to the public. Handlers make a huge difference. If the one poor trooper in the video had a handler, the entire situation would have been diffused quickly.

I definitely didn't play with AI art creation bots earlier today

New year new troop!!! First troop of the year is down. 1/8/23 - Lobo Anime Troop for Abq Comic Con (troop 2 of 2) (which means it's the 2nd of 2 troops at the same place for the same event) 46th TK troop, 1st for the year. CDZ-5435 (er, CLOR-5435) - troop 17, 1st for the year TI-50597 - troop 8, 1st for the year An hour of standing around in the parking lot at a comic store, waving to cars passing by, and generally having a good troopy time. WITH MY WHOLE FAMILY! Starting the year off strong! Goin' my way? Anchorhead? Maybe even Mos Eisley Spaceport? Fire Team Rio Bravo breaking necks and causing traffic jams. Selfie in which I didn't miss. This small citizen was having his windshield replaced just down the street and wanted to come out and say hi. We talked at length about Star Wars, blasters, TKs, and every other possible thing for a long while. My cheeks hurt under my bucket. I think his dad was as excited as he was. I love being a TK. And then... the cops showed up. A couple cars rolled in. And then a couple more... and a couple more. There was under a dozen when they'd all parked, but just barely. A *lot* of police cars and trucks. And then they started parking by us. And one officer quietly approached and asked for a group photo. We posed for many group pix. Dozens. So many smiles all around. One officer drove past and saw us in the parking lot. I guess he called it in and everyone available showed up to hang out for a bit. And then my wife got out her Imperial HR clipboard and hat and started issuing HR citations. You can see the effect. Some were cited for uniform violations. Others weren't at their post. One ate Vader's leftovers. Several were breathing too loud. Seriously, it was brilliant. Everyone loved the citations. Some went home to chiefs and commanders. I handed out a bunch of trading cards for kids (or commanders) and it was just about the best interaction I've had with the police force to date. A+ troop. Can't wait for more of what 2023 has to offer!

So many TDs.

The AP knee is a bear. I removed mine and boiled it to reshape. A little hard to tell, but the outside edge (closest to the pot) is bent waaay down from where it was. They came on the same plane from AP. Mine needed to be reshaped to have that outside edge angled down toward the boot by a lot. In doing so, I cracked the knee here. But it relieved some stress. I was then able to reclamp things and get the sides to line up correctly. Notice the gap at the bottom of my knee. It's not excessive, but was required to get everything to line up correctly. It's about a 5mm gap. I then drilled a hole at the end of the crack and backed it with a small piece of ABS scrap. Possibly some cover strip. Then I added ABS paste and let it fully cure for 24 hours. And then I sanded it flat and polished it back up with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound. This isn't photoshop trickery. It really came out this smooth. If yours doesn't crack, this is about 15 minutes of work. Maaaybe 20. It was quite easy to do, I just got over aggressive with the reshaping.

Hey Pascal, welcome to FISD!!! Got an armor maker picked out?

That was a fantastic story. And the name is incredible. The Hand of Judgement - it just sounds menacing. It would really stand out for a team name. Not that I have or should have a say. I'm a guy. Just wanted to "me too" the enjoyment of Zahn's rogue trooper story. -edit- I told my wife (current ANH TIE pilot) about the possible women's team name and she flipped over Vader's Valkyries. She went so far as to state "I would build TK armor just to be on that team." So that's a vote.

omg. Perfection on that one Caleb

OMG sewing sticky velcro is the absolute worst. It's well worth the money to buy a small roll of non-adhesive velcro just for the few times like this when you need it. Flashbacks of constant needle cleaning sewing sticky velcro into my daughter's jawa hood... uck.

Mine is hand sewn. It's never seen so it doesn't have to be pretty. Any rigid material like Velcro will help shore up that elastic. Just don't cover the whole thing. It needs some stretch. But it also needs some strength.

This is what I did to my shoulder straps to keep them from bulging out. I sewed in black nylon over the top inner edge of both. That provides a bit of bracing that keeps the elastic where it should be. A simple change, but it took someone brilliant to come up with it. And that wasn't me. Someone randomly posted it in one of the facebook groups one day and I instantly copied. Also, as I said in DM, you're looking GREAT!!! I anticipate an easy approval.

reminds me of one of my favs

er... some? heh. Ideally you wouldn't have much visible aluminum above the TD. The TD and belt should be about the same width, and the TD should be centered on the belt, so you should just barely see the metal in an ideal world. But your belt may be thicker or thinner and you may have some visible aluminum when dressed properly. You don't want a big obvious tab above the TD, but you don't want it to be hovering above the belt in a non-centered manner either (no metal showing in other words). Reference pix borrowed from @gmrhodes13

This is a Jimmy kit that I got 2nd hand from the 501st forum. I paid about retail, but got it NOW and basically free shipping. It's a very pretty kit. The details are SO sharp. I mean, them abs. Look at that 9 pack. So sharp. And tons of pinholes and low spots, but so sharp. MMmmmmmm. Bucket! It came with all the good jimmiroquai stuff. Visor, Mimban visor, etc. And it's ITCHY. Omg. Every time I pick up a piece I'm itchy for the rest of the day. I hate haaaaate fiberglass. So after the armor recently came back out of the BBB, the first thing it got was a light coating of Justin's Fibreglast 1110 vinylester flexible resin on the inside surface. Just one coat. I know it'll need more, especially after some parts are trimmed, but now I can at least pick up armor panels without itching for the rest of the day. I also have a rather beat up Black Series bucket that's gonna get sliced all apart and turned into something more accurate. And, as the background hints, I've got a shiny new baby resin printer just kickin' the parts out for various projects. I bought Nico's helmet print files. I'm not sure I'll print the entire thing, but having key parts on hand to help bring this toy into Screen Accurate Land (tm) will be nice. I got these prints out of it last night. Just lovely stuff. I've also printed a set of @BigJasoni's belt boxes. Using his suggested Siraya 80% Fast / 20% Tenacious resin mix! It's an amazing resin mixture. I've thrown several of these boxes across the shop and watched them bounce off the wall with no damage. I hollowed the boxes and hope to actually have them be functional on the belt with a combo of magnets and elastic. The sharp edges and perfect finish are just incredible to me. I've been printing filament for about 10 years. Never got into resin till after this past Black Friday. I was missing out. So. WHAT am I building? That's the question I keep asking myself. I don't necessarily want to have this armor set be a Rogue One TK, but that's the most logical first step. I'll get it approved for R1 and then go from there. I really like the Mapuzo troopers from Kenobi. They had just the right amount of filth. They weren't partially dressed like many of the Mando remnants. So I might try to do that after finishing the kit. MAYBE help with or at least follow in the footsteps of a CRL creator? I don't have any burning desire to blaze paths or be the first for a given CRL, but I do wanna help with them. I also really love the yellow guy. The Artillery/Mortar/Shell Trooper. I have indeed purchased the 3D files for the mortar pack and launcher and they may be printing on 3 of my 4 printers at this moment... This armor could end up with some yellow stripes. One bucket will almost certainly stay yellow. I also like the R1 Incinerator TK. So red and angry! This armor might stay red at the end of it's build, but that flame gun would take soooooo long to print. I dunno. All I know is I have to build a Rogue One TK first. And I have to get off my butt and do a build thread. So here we are.