Daetrin

My experience (at 6'0") is that the only downside of the TE type suits are height are the legs. You'll have a lot of black showing. Some day I'd like to give TM's longer parts a go - I want to look like TKDueno, Rich330, etc. too!

FWIW, just as I want to be what's seen on screen, I really do appreciate all the prop replication guys have done and continue to do for the hobby. It's in part of their blood sweat and tears that trickles down to us, and even if we don't prop replicate the knowledge they've unearthed is quite valuable in and of itself. That, and as display pieces they are truly works of art in their own right. So to be clear - a big happy family is how I see it.

The short answer is that you've already answered your question. Since the 501st is about trooping and the public sees us from 5' away and we wear these costumes from hours at a time, the goal is to reproduce what one sees on screen, not the props themselves. When you watch the film in real time on a real screen you don't notice the crappy paint jobs, no stripes, gaffers tape, etc. and these guys are only meant to be on screen for a few seconds at a time. And this is just the TK - there are many costumes were short cuts were taken especially on background characters, as no one really cared about these things and even VHS tapes weren't common until after ROTJ was released. As a fan you can do whatever you want and totally go to town trying to replicate the props as they were (as opposed to how they looked), but again the 501st can't 100% quite go there. Fortunately, there is room for both in this hobby - e.g. Star Wars fandom is larger than the 501st, so both can co-exist equally fine. Some folks are really in to prop replication, but for practical reasons the 501st can't exist that way.

+1

As it turns out after IP analysis, the worst offenders are a few members of this board. Either they come here every 5 minutes of the day or perhaps their computers have viruses. we're on it..

Hi Everyone, Due to exceptional CPU usage, FISD was shut down earlier today. This is a result of too much traffic being generated through the forums. We've always kept FISD's content open and readable to guests so that they can review content without having to first log on to the site, however the amount of crawling that's occuring specifically from Asia is killing us, and unless we want to move to a $100/month plan it's time we removed full open access. As a result, if you are not logged in all you can see is a single forum with a single thread telling people to log in. While this may sound extreme, it's actually quite common on many 501st forums and particuarly detachments; I do think we were one of the last to change so it's not like this hasn't been coming due for some time. If there are any questions on concerns regarding this change, please let me know. Paul TK-8020 "Daetrin" Detachment Founder

Wish I had the money for this to be a casual purchase...

The answer to why they are here is because in the end they are base clean white TK's, and we're a TK detachment. You may not like them, but others in the Legion do. In fact there are more TKC's than ROTJ Legion-wide. It's a waste and duplication of effort to take the same costume - paint excepted - and create a whole new detachment on it. It would be like plain white clones creating their own detachment. The duplication of information in armor building, assembly, etc. is non-trivial. Heck, FISD almost absorbed MEPD at one point, as there are fewer differences between a sandtrooper & ANH stormtrooper than an ANH stunt & ROTJ. If you look at MEPD - what information is there really? Nearly nothing on building armor, as all that information is here. In the end - hiding out in your little corner of the world just shrinks it. If a Legion member is really passionate about clean TK's (and I'm one such person) then instead of retreating to their own space (as people told me I should do), I instead take that passion to as many people as I can, because what's cooler than a clean TK? A whole squad of TKs! And what's cooler than a squad of TK's? 100 TK's marching together, that's what. This is why we created the EI and later the Centurion programs, and why we slave relentlessly on a newsletter - to help the Legion slowly but inexorably up the standards of our craft and open the possibility of what can be. The reality is that the numbers of TK's in the Legion in decreasing, and the only way we're going to reverse this is to evangelize what we know and make it easier for other Legion members to get in to outstanding TK's. Does this make sense?

Mathias is correct. The TKC & ICN also have ANH hand guards as well, whereas the SKY has ROTJ ones. We usually don't use comic books as a source for the reasons cited.

Very nice - I really dig this trooper.

I'm 6' 185lbs and the only parts that needed shimming were the shins.

I am not affiliated with any armor maker. You can contact him via [email protected]

It seems like only yesterday I flipped the switch that brought FISD to life. Back then we hadn’t decided on the name, and it was simply whitearmor.net, or WAN. At the time I wasn’t even sure if I could get the 10 signatures needed to sign off on the charter. 6 years, 245,000 posts later and FISD is now the largest unit in the Legion in terms of membership. To go back to our humble beginnings, just look at some of the oldest posts – it truly is amazing the transformation that has occurred. I want to thank everyone who’s had a hand in shaping FISD. Our mission has ever been to be the best online resource for Legion stormtroopers in the world which took new meaning from our unofficial motto for the past 4 years: “Troopers Helping Troopers” (our official motto is “Unquestioned Loyalty”). Six years is just the start – imagine what our 10th anniversary will be like! With unquestioned loyalty, Daetrin TK-8020 Detachment Founder

That is the dream - 100% self-containment

It's not hard to do depending on what type of seat, and how tired you are. If you are truly tired, you'll make it work. Usually I have to unsnap my thighs and rotate them, else they'll dig in to my body. Otherwise I'm usually OK and have taken cab rides.

They're both awesome. I love the hero look far more than the stunt personally.

Congrats - good looking trooper. Now head on down to bay 210-6 - some freighter was caught in a tractor beam and they need a security detail down there ASAP. Vader's heading there too, so stay out of the boss man's way.

How many of you guys are coming to C6?

Nice! Good pulls too

YMMV, but be careful. You can also experience "happy trooper" if the front isn't very secure, and it looks silly to see your code floating up and out, or bending back in. While some enjoy this, it seems very hit and miss and you can really wreck the look of your suit. As for flexing, well unless you live in the UK the TM flexy plastic is *very* expensive - 2 to 3 times as much as other armor makes, so if you can afford it good on you

Technically, yes you should. Once you start a new set of armor, it's like starting over again. As noted, if you're doing centurion it's just a copy/paste to get EI first.

What an aloha spirit that pervades the Pacific Outpost. You set the example of "troopers helping troopers", always. I'm sure you're friend will not lack for suiters after this photoshoot.

Mine is from the lead character in C.S. Friedman's book The Madness Season, which IMHO is one of her best books from when she was at the peak of her writing prowess.

Wow, simply amazing work!

Hope you're having a good one bud - from one Gemini to another.