BAZINGA

Welcome to the fun! Bart

Don't let it get you down. I'm stuck even for EIB right now with changes I cannot do myself. I know the feeling of the wind being taken out of your sails. Looks like the suggests here are totally doable though so you should have no problems. Bart

Well I can say on my first troop that I stepped away for a few seconds from the photo area to stretch my back and someone had to come and call me back because someone insisted the stormtrooper appear in the photo with him so I was kinda pumped by that! Bart

Nice! Bart

Curious for all the reasons because the number one reason I hear from interested parties is, "Would be fun, but I'm not spending that kind of money on a single costume." Granted that also seems to be the reason in general for any 501st costume. Bart

I always like seeing another Badlands member here and can hardly wait until you are finished and trooping with the other Sask TKs! Bart

Code may be taller than you but not that heavy either. He made AP armor work with some trimming. He had a bit of an adventure here but it might help you out. Bart

My go to defence. Bart

Now I am getting all those positive feelings again. Bart

^^ this ^^ That is a hurtle to get over for sure. How can it not be for most? I mean you are going to have to meet a standard and are going to be held to a standard whenever trooping. That's a lot at the beginning and finding the right members to coach you along is one way through that. Bart

I can tell you from personal experience that it just takes one person (and in my case it was a 501st TK) to throw water on someone's hopes. Thankfully a lot has changed since then. I vowed that should I ever get to the 501st that I would never be "that guy" who dashes someone's hope. After that, for a short while, I had nothing good to say about the 501st. It was an elitist group that forgot what they were supposed to represent and were taking themselves far too seriously for walking around in plastic armor. My point is, not everyone is good at PR and should a 501st member be that someone it is better to defer to the member who is good at it. I spent many hours at the club table during my first troop talking to lots of people and no one was anything but excited about the 501st. Everyone got the idea of the bad guys doing good and were excited about it. When the day comes that a Karen or Ken is going to try and give us grief I'm prepared with the facts. You might not change their mind with those facts but you can deliver them and move on to the person who does want to see you there. I see no point in whipping a dead horse if their mind can't be changed or they just want to make trouble. Bart And, there is still nothing cooler than seeing lots of the shinny white armor together in a group. That is just plain cool and will never grow old.

Congrats! My one bit of advice is to get trooping ASAP so you don't miss any fun! Bart

That is what I purchased based on what Wook1138 also suggested. Seems to have stuck. I'll see how it holds up. What I found is that the glue stayed on the glove, but it pulled away at the latex which left little tear outs in the latex. Bart

I think a 501st member in Saskatoon. The same guy who has the R2, also did this. I'd be working with a 300x300x400 bed and single printer. Lots of forethought will be required before jumping in. Bart

For the last couple of weeks YouTube has been popping up with suggested videos of 3D printed R2 units. Some of them seem quite incredible. Has anyone here ever attempted a 1:1 print of this complexity? It's not like I went looking for a 3D printing project however since about 1977 I've wanted R2. I'd be more into the idea of printing over the traditional building methods. I'd also be more into the idea of just a random turning dome and lights over moving it around with R/C. Locally, if you count a 3 hour drive as local, one of our 501st members has a fully functional version he built. It gets out to a few events. This could be a back up more for photo ops as well. I'm just curious as to opinions before I even begin to research it in more depth. Bart

I'd eat the ears first. Bart

FWIW I was able to put the Aker amp in my chest with plenty of room. I don't even notice it there. I also could put in the icomm right beside it. Bart

Thanks everyone! I'm still glowing from that first troop a week ago. Regarding some of the comments. It is nice to know I am not the only one who felt it was all surreal. Yes, to me I love seeing large numbers of the shinny white. I'm automatically attracted to those photos and quite jealous if I ended up having to man a booth while some of my fellow TKs were out and about without me. That opening scene in ANH always stood out in my mind. I'm hoping in future troops here we can get more of us together for those theme type photo shoots and to troop around a con as the biggest group we can muster and harass interact with some of the attendees. Regarding EIB. Well, there is a big problem with my TD so I'm hoping I can find someone who I can commission to build me a new one to Centurion requirements then I can try for EIB again. Bart

Just hurry up man! haha. I would love it if we could have 5 shinny white in Regina this fall for a theme and troop around the place! Bart

I wanted to save this for after my first troop. It didn't seem real before that. Perhaps still surreal. In 2012 at the Calgary Expo I first encountered the 501st "live" and of course I got in line for a photo. At the time I was in love with their costumes and the detail and thought that it must be so much fun for them and maybe one day I could do the same. I had a couple false starts when I was ready to pull the trigger. I was given some contact information for a local TK which was exciting as where I live there is not a lot of members and it is a very large garrison so vast distance between most of us. Well, long story short, he shut me down before I even got out the gate. I'm told he is no longer a member, but at the time he did manage to sour me on the idea. I had a hard time trying to make further contacts and life events always got in the way. I didn't know at the time that I was suffering from depression and anxiety and that was putting the brakes on a lot of things that I wanted to do but just couldn't. Once I got help with those I made advancements in my life and the 501st still was coming up in my mind. In the summer of 2022 I woke up one morning and told myself that now was the time to either do this or forget about it for good. This time it was much easier to connect with the right people and finally get the information I needed. @wook1138 must have answered a thousand questions and with each answer I got closer to the final decision which was, of course, to just do it! There were still a couple stumbling blocks along the way. I knew I didn't have the skills or resources to do the build myself so I did go for the commissioned build then just worked with the strapping and fitting adjustments to tune it for me. While that was still stressful it was still much easier to tackle those kinds of jobs over a scratch build. @revlimiter and @justjoseph63 got me through some stressful times which may have ended up in bailing if they hadn't stepped in and sorted me out. Revlimiter still puts up with me when I need to evaluate what I'm doing. I got things fitting well within acceptable parameters and submitted my final photos on January 8, 2023 (TK23108) then sweated it out for at least 3 years (well maybe 10 days) until the approval email came down the pipe and the Garrison public FB page posted this: Then there was another big event. Only a couple days after approval I had a sudden retina detachment in my left eye and emergency surgery to save the eye. That laid me up for a number of weeks and it didn't heal as well as hoped so I ended up with complications, which are ongoing, and very imbalanced vision between the eyes. I couldn't do any close up work without hours of struggling but there were things I wanted to do to advance the armor further so I worked in short stints and by feel a lot of the time and wondered the whole time if my journey was going to be over before it started. After struggling getting darker lenses in the bucket and fans I couldn't fit my head in with my glasses so trooping would have to be almost done blind. That was a stressful reality as sight lines are already bad enough without that added complication. I was finally able to get new glasses which helped correct some of the every day vision problems but I wasn't all the there yet with the sight clarity and the first opportunity to troop was getting closer and closer. I flip-flopped on the first troop a dozen times in the week leading up but forced myself to go. It was a three day event and much larger than I thought I'd want to do for the first one. Luckily @GilesWoodward saw that there might be a way I could still wear my glasses with the bucket and YES, it worked with some bucket juggling so after the first troop, basically blind, on the first night I was able to see for the remainder of the event! The nerves were going strong on night one and I almost had to be forced into the armor and by day 3 I could hardly wait to get into that armor and troop! The deep end of the pool was exactly what I needed and so was the welcome and all the fuzzy feels that negated that very negative shut-down years ago. Now I still feel like a guy with a plastic pail on my head and it amazes me that others see a Stormtrooper but damn it sure felt right and good! I think that now after a troop that I really earned my TK number and really am a 501st member. Thank you again to all those that got me here! As for the side story from that photo taken in 2012 (left above). I didn't know it at the time but the trooper in that photo was @Starscream3247and I met him last November at a 501st meet and greet but I didn't know that it was him in the photo. Turns out my trip to Calgary got me a photo with one of the troopers who I'll now regularly troop with out of Saskatoon! So at my first troop it seemed fitting to do a full circle and another picture with him but this time I'm in the armor! Bart

They are the latex variety I think. Wook1138 verified a version of the Loctite product that should work. I'm going to give it a go tomorrow. He has the same AP gloves and guards as me. If it works I'll post a link for future reference in Canada. Thanks. Bart

I need to redo the flexible hand guards on the rubber gloves. They are already falling off after 4 hours of use. I'm pulling my hair out trying to find a good glue that is actually available in Canada at a common hardware store. Loctite was suggested (681925) but stores here tell me that doesn't exist and to order it online from Amazon is over $50 and I wouldn't see it until June which is too late. I'm rather in a hurry to find a solution as I need them again in a couple weeks so if I have to order something my time is short. What are the options in Canada? Thanks. Bart

I've looked at others and they seem to use <a href> strings as the html but I cannot get it to display just the name and not the whole line. What is an example of the proper coding just to have a title to click on to take one to a specific page? Never mind. It's the link option not the HTML code option. Thanks. Bart

Just did this demo of the screech and constant static burst in case anyone has any other ideas before I decide what to do with it. May still be processing. Bart

Yes I tried both the random and set static options with no change. I just can't figure out how it basically stopped working while doing nothing but sitting in the box. Bart