Darth Aloha

You freaking rock that ATA kit even being a tall dude. Great paint job and overall attention to detail. Your belt and knee pack are spot on. Will you be outiftting a blaster with a folding stock and going centurion? (the EIB requirements say "should" have a folding stock for ROTJ, which I take as "may") Aloha, -Eric

Hey... did Rob paint your ab buttons for you? The new teeth look way better for sure. Shame he doesn't put green lenses in eh? I had a real witch of a time painting my vocoder... let me know if you need help when the time comes. Agreed about the back of the TD. Ditch it. I use mine to test paint for my helmet and added a couple Jesse TD clips to the RT one.... my more accurate Jesse TD is still a work in progress. Rob's new TD plate is much nicer than the old one... fo sho. Did you just tape up the parts for display or have you managed to glue thighs, forearms, and biceps already? Rock on with your RT-MOD bad self. -Eric

On the subject of sniper knee plates... as Kevster can attest mine caused a fair amount of angst. So much that he got on skype with me to bare his sniper knee over the interwebs. I tried using a heat gun gently but decided it would not make much difference in aligning/fitting. I would suggest not risking it. I did think I had to trim my sniper knee some to get it to go on correctly. I was wrong. I trimmed a bit underneath the front of the plate to get it to sit nicely on the shin. It turns out that it would have fit just fine without trimming. Trust in the Rob that he trimmed it properly for you. Here's a closeup of the the knee plate now: Before glueing I fit my sniper knee in two steps... First I clamped the plate with many many spring clamps to the front of the shin such that "A" was as as vertical as possible. Don't try to make it inline with the the front face of the shin. I had better luck with making it as plumb as I could. The front face may not end up being perpendicular to the floor after glueing, but it is an easier goal for alignment's sake. Make sure there are as many clamps on there as you can fit. Once you start fiddling with the sides of the knee plate the front will want to move around. I would suggest letting it move around a little for your own sanity. Second I pulled the sides back carefully so that "B" seems to run along the same line as the top of the shin. It turns out that you only need to do this for the last inch or so of the plate side. The whole side does not run parallel so stop trying. This maneuver takes quite a bit of force and squeezing. If you look down into the top of the shin you can see where the sides of the plate actually becomes warped and curved (I don't think I have a photo of this handy.) Please dont be surprised if the sides are squished where you end up glueing and clamping. Observe what parts of the sides actually touch once the knee plate is in place. You may not need to spread glue everywhere, only the mating surfaces. I made a mark with an exacto knife (sharpie will smear when glue gets on it) in the inside of my knee plate where the top of the shin hits. This let me know it was aligned properly once the panic and anxiety of freshly spread glue begins. For glueing please do not use CA for the initial knee plate attachment. You need more time to get very pissed off at your clamps, so E-6000 is the way to go here. Make sure you rough up the shin and the insides of the knee plate sides before applying goop. I might have used 600 grit maybe? After fitting, glue it on in the same order you fit the plate. Glue the front on first and clamp the living poop out of it. You may find that there isn't much surface area to glue the front onto the shin. That's ok. Just spooge it up as best you can, even if it is barely touching the shin. A well placed RT knee plate does not fit flush on the front. Carefully fold the sides of the plate onto the shin with copious amounts of E-6000. The red shaded area in the image above is roughly where the sides make contact with the shin (I would go look at my knee plate to check but my son is napping in that room and none of you are here to help with a cranky baby.) I spread glue everywhere of course, but I'm pretty sure that red are is the only surface holding the sides onto the shin. Next: clamp clamp clamp and then add another clamp for good measure. Check your reference mark in the inside of the knee plate and slide it up or down depending. Leave your sniper plate for 48 hours, or even more, to cure. One side of my sniper knee started to separate a bit right before my last (and first) troop. I daubed a bit of zap-a-gap CA in there, clamped it for 30 minutes and moved on with life. All is well in sniper knee plate world now. I hope this helps the other RT folks who end up wanting to melt down their sniper knee plate into a tiny little white middle finger and mail it to Rob. Aloha, -Eric

Hmmm looks to me that your cod should come. It doesn't look flush against your ab... Then your thighs can come up too so your shin tops don't get caught on the bottom of your thighs. Your butt is hanging low too (I amuse myself way too often) and when it comes up your thighs won't hit your butt in the back. What's your inseam? Rock on. Aloha, -Eric

Kinda looks like half of a hasbro scope part: (photo by Jorran) Aloha, -Eric

I would agree. The standing one is better. The photos are a bit dark so the gun on the aiming action shot gets washed away. Seems to be a common problem. The sepia tone your armor took on from the red curtain is easily fixed as well. Will this be acceptable for your card?

Yah that's way better. Butt plate straps still could be shorter to close the gap. It might mess with your belt placement too. With the chest up higher I bet the cod sits better no? Aloha, -Eric

Tough to tell but I think if you pull the ab up a bit, your cod and butt will also go up. Maybe connect the chest and ab together somehow? I used elastic. The ab coming up should help with the butt meeting the kidney. Then it might be a matter of sliding the back down to meet the kidney, which may mean lengthening your shoulder elastic a bit. I suggest making whatever is holding butt to kidney and kidney to butt as short as possible. Aloha, -Eric

Stop! In the name of the empire... Before you break my heart. No? Ok.... Imperial crossing guard helping tiny tk's cross Main St Coruscant. No? You put your left hand plate in... You take your leff hand plate out... You do the trooper pokey and you turn yourself about.... No? The humpty dance is your chance to do the hump... No? Attempting world record for continuous moon walk while trooping? No? Ok... I'll stop.

Ha! Nope... didn't even know we had a bigish quake until reading this post. I'm reading that it was four quakes at 5.0, 2.5, 3.1 and 2.1. I think maybe they ware too far away from Waimea. Or maybe we're too used to feeling them? And not being on twitter all day I missed it... Hilo people go nuts on the twitters here on Hawaii Island whenever there's a quake. Kinda fun it was a 5-Oh on the richter Aloha, -Eric

Can i go on record as being proud that I made "boobies" a searchable term on this here website? Aloha, -Eric

You're basically my size... I'm a little bit taller. I'd go with the RT. I hate to sound like an armor douche but I think the RT looks better than AM and you'll have way less to trim. I also think RT is more suited (ha) to taller troopers but I've also never seen AM in person. My waist was a 40 when I took thoe pics in my build thread and that's about as big as the kit will go and still have the sides come together. But it will still fit me the more beer I end up drinking over time. It may take a while for Rob to ship you your armor.... But it's worth the wait. Plus... There's a ton of retail therapy to be had in the mean time. Have a hard think about the RT helmet. I love mine to death but yearn for a screen derived lid. For a symmetrical idealized fan sculpt it can't be beat. And it comes assembled so you can focus on other build related things. PM me or post if you have specific RT questions as you're trying to decide. And post pics when you start your build. Aloha! -Eric

Suh-weet! Congrats. Aloha, -Eric

Yep. Even tho our RT kit comes trimmed it was an anxious and sweaty first couple days. I turned into a real woody Allen for a while. I see you bought the bag of plastic spring clamps from home depot. I wish I had. The metal spring clamps from work and my magnets were challenging to control. Does that sort of blue tape leave residue on your armor? I ended up going back and buying the cheaper regular blue tape... And nearly used the whole roll from fitting fun. I ask this of most other RT troopers.... I ended up trimming my forearms and biceps... did you? And who's photo is that under your bicep? I'm building a list of such things at the moment. Aloha, -Eric

Thanks for making me feel like a thin armed girly man. I trimmed a bunch from both Aloha, -Eric

Looking mighty great. Did you trim biceps and forearms much? I bet you're not wearing pants in that photo... are you? Aloha, -Eric

Did you ever know that you're my hero, And everything I would like to be? I can fly higher than an eagle, For you are the wind beneath my wings. If you only knew how long I've waited for an ANH hero to come along to sing some Bette Midler here on the FISD forums. Looking great. I think you're a few blaster photos and a TK ID away from centurion. Maybe Mason could give you a pre-approval letter as if you were applying for a mortgage. I think he'll be hard pressed to suggest any changes. Aloha, -Eric

Nicely done sir. Tom? Is there a new EU CRL on the horizon? Aloha, -Eric

Rob... that's bada$$. Have you thought about working with Jim Sauter (TK6294) to integrate his iComm and Aker amp products? Aloha, -Eric

So inaccurate one trooper recently refused make a lamp out of an efx to hang over a bar Aloha, -Eric