1/144 Gouf Flight Type
Out of
the box, this is an excellent kit. It is
easily as good as the best 1/144 kits, excluding some of the better HGUC
kits. There are only two exposed polycaps, the elbows and the knees. In details, it is a good representation of
the bulky, clunky flight type, and comes with the full weapons load out. One neat trick in particular is that it has 2
shields: one with the large Gattling cannon mounted
on it, and 1 "clean" shield.
It also comes with the finger cannon the original Mobile Suit Gundam Gouf had.
Of
course, there is always room for improvement.
My plan for this kit:
- Replace Shield Gattling cannon barrels with brass tubes, resin &
lead foil details; replace wrist cannon barrels and add PV shield mount
- A spare resin ammo
drum for the Gattling cannon
- Cut & hinge
the kit hip skirt so the legs will have increased mobility
- Replace all power
conduits with aftermarket springs and brass pipe segments
- Cut off bottom of
feet and replace details with aftermarket rocket nozzles & scratchbuilt details
- Add shoulder ball
joint at the chest
- Encapsulate knee
and elbow PV caps in resin or styrene so they can be painted and detailed
- Add a rotation
joint to the upper arm between the "bicep" and shoulder block
- Widen thighs with
0.30" styrene
- Replace kit PV
ammo belt with resin copy. PV belt
has mold lines & defects that can't be easily corrected.
- Add a light up LED
monoeye that can be rotated.
- Replace kit
backpack rocket nozzles with aftermarket parts.
Gattling Cannon: The Gattling cannon mod was
somewhat simple. The kit end cap was
used to make a new mid-barrel disk, as the kit one was oval. Lead foil from a wine bottle was used to make
the retainer rings at the receiver end.
The retainer rings behind the muzzle and ahead of the barrel disk were
made from thin copper sheet, cut into strips and superglued
on—AFTER the barrels were already in place on the receiver! There really weren’t too many easy options
for that part considering the cannon layout.
The spare
ammo drum was a very simple RTV/resin casting.
The Wrist
cannon come with a plastic-to-plastic joint for the Gattling
shield. Since the Gattling
shield is so heavy, I wanted a PV joint there so the joint wouldn’t wear
out. I built a sheet styrene box and
used SGT to anchor a PV cylinder for the shield
mount. I replaced the kit barrels with
resin barrels and brass pipe muzzles.
Hip Skirt
and Power Conduits:
I cut the skirt piece off by tracing
along the panel lines with the back edge of an X-Acto
blade, applying gentle pressure with each pass.
Hinging the hip skirt was made easy with the waist power conduit
replacement--the conduit is the hinge axis.
The conduit has 3 parts: a solid wire core for shaping, a Wave Option
part A Spring and Max Factory Small brass pipes, both from 
. The stiff wire core is essential, since the
waist conduit has several sharp turns a spring with pipe sections wouldn't
hold. The head power conduits also used A springs and the SS sized pipe sections. The old head is shown below—cleaning up the
seam lines on the power conduits was not going to be fun. I cleaned the pipe sections by soaking them
in acetone and then drying them on a clean paper towel. The pipe sections were strung on a section of
bicycle brake cable and sprayed with the primer/color coat.
Foot
Sole: The foot sole detailing was overall a fairly simple
scratchbuild, though it looked intimidating.
The kit sole is nearly flat. It
should be 3-D, with an inset holding 3 larger detailed rocket nozzles and 4
small nozzles around the sole periphery.
First, I 
glued the foot halves together, then photocopied the kit foot. Using the photocopy and the B-Club MG Gouf Flight Type conversion as a guide, I built the
inset. After cutting out the entire
bottom of the kit foot and coating the inside with Vaseline, I mounted the
inset into the now hollow foot bottom.
Using Mori Mori polyester putty and SGT, the
sole of the foot was rebuilt around the inset.
I used a large drill bit to create shallow depressions in the Mori Mori putty around the inset to hold the 4 small
nozzles. The inset smaller rocket
nozzles came from some Kotobukiya sets, while the
main nozzle was scratchbuilt from a spare nozzle and
a 1/72 scale B-1B main wheel. When the
sole was rebuilt, I cut off the entire back of the foot with a razor saw—I
wanted to have a large chunk of resin in the recast for pour stubs. Cutting of the back of the foot destroyed
half of the PV pivot mount for the ankle guards, which I rebuilt with SGT. With the completed sole built, I popped it
out of the upper foot shell (that’s why I used the Vaseline) and made a 2-part
mold. By my third casting attempt, I had
2 beautifully detailed replacement parts to give the kit some sole!
Shoulder/Chest
Ball Joint: The kit, like all HG and many HGUC kits,
comes with fixed shoulder pegs sticking out of the torso. Since this was a Zeon design that actually
could use a shoulder socket, I cut out the kit supplied shoulder peg by tracing
along its outline with the back of an X-Acto. After cleaning up the opening, I used SGT to anchor the joint socket. The ball and peg part of the joint was
attached to the cut out kit peg with SGT, and then the kit peg was extended so
the shoulder could flex without the arm falling off. This is an extremely simple mod if you have
these joints (available from Kotobukiya or Wave through ). You really have to evaluate each kit, though,
to see if this is worth it. The DOM, for
example, would probably not get anything from it. The Zaku, though,
would.
Here is a
montage of what that simple mod did for the kit:
Knee and Elbow PV Covers: Follow
this link to a page detailing the process… Around the knee joints I did a lot of work to
fill in empty spaces or to cover up holes.
The backside of the black kneecap pieces and the inside of the lower leg
knee areas in particular are hollow, and require some work to fill in.
Bicep
Rotation Joint: The bicep rotation joint was needed because
the elbow PV is now one fused piece in a resin shell. The only real problem with this mod was that
the arm bicep cylinder was not round. It
actually ended up being a little flat along the seam line edge, which made
rotation tricky—if the arm rotates too much, the bicep will appear off
center. To make the pin and axis line up
as good as possible, I pre-marked the joint to be cut on all four sides. When the cut was made, I connected the marks
across the cut surfaces, creating an “X marks the spot” where to drill. It was easier to have the pin side go into
the shoulder and the hole into the bicep.
SGT was used to bond the pin in place, since it would undergo a lot of
stress, and to lock the receiver PV in the bicep.
The original kit
wrist, seen here, was not exactly pretty.
Since the hands don’t have a lot of flex at
the wrist, I made a wrist joint cover from poly putty carved and sanded to
shape.
Widen
Kit Thighs: Who doesn’t love
big thighs? Widening the kit thighs was
fairly simple—glue the snap receiver side of the thigh
to a sheet of 0.30” styrene. I trimmed the excess away from the mating edge,
and it was done. In this picture, you
can also see how the brass pipes improve the power conduits, and the SGT
extensions on the shoulder pegs.
Resin
Ammo Belt Replacement: The kit ammo belt for the big shield Gattling cannon is made for polyvinyl—the same soft garbage
the PV joints are made from. This stuff
is nearly impossible to clean up, as it shreds instead of sands. Since it is very smooth and flexible, paint
usually will not stick to it. I made a
quick RTV mold and cast a resin copy, which was very workable. Along with the resin ammo belt, I spruced up
the interior of the 
9shield by filling in the huge voids on the
back and by adding Kotobukiya option parts, like minus
molds, rings, etc.
LED
Mono Eye (Die Sticker, DIE!!): The interior of the head is a cylinder
section (visible in the picture) you can plop a sticker on. STICKER??!! 
Yeah, right. I drilled out an LED sized hole in the
cylinder and mounted a small LED, running the leads down the neck. On the torso, I ditched the PV neck and made
a new neck receiver from a block of SGT. Since the head sits very low on the
neck, the neck receiver just has to hold the head in place. The remainder of the wiring was run through
the torso and into the left leg as I made the final kit assembly. The trickiest part about this is the LED
leads. You basically have to bend them
flat against the back of the LED since the space is so tight. The images show the LED a little brighter
than it really is, but either way it looks a heck of a lot better than a
STICKER!!
Backpack Rocket Nozzles: The
kit backpack nozzles are pretty pathetic—they are just shallow disks that do
not look like much more than dinner plates.
They don’t exactly imply massive thrust and lifting power. These were replaced with Kotobukiya
nozzles that look like they actually could do something. On the backpack itself, there are some draft
angle problems on the sides. I fixed
this by using a drill to turn a shallow depression into a circular hole and by
using aftermarket minus molds to replace other detail.
Painting and Finishing: Most
of the seam work was done with SGT—I didn’t want any filler shrinking over time
or because of the primer. Especially on
the leg seams, going over the jet engines, SGT made the filling and resculpting as straightforward as that sort of mess could
get. After priming with Krylon No. 1318 sandable primer,
I went on to the color coats. This guy is on screen for all of about 25 seconds
in the 08th MST, so color matching is a trick—especially since you
NEVER see the back of the mecha. My
primary painting guide was using the 08th Hobby Japan Weapons book
article on the MG Gouf Flight Type conversion
kit. To my eye, the dark portions are a
green or a brown. I went with green,
using Krylon Camouflage Paint System
Olive Drab (OD) on the torso,
leg trim and shield. This was
dry-brushed with Model Master RAF Dark Slate Grey, which out of the bottle is
perfect for drybrushing the OD paint. The black parts
(knee caps, backpack and chest plate were painted in Model Master Aircraft Int.
Black, and drybrushed with GunShip
Gray. The lighter gray parts were
painted with a darker mix of Mr. Color #13 Neutral Gray and #156 Super White IV
for pre-shading, and then highlighted with a lighter mix of the same. One thing I wanted to avoid was heavy-handed
pre-shading. As a 1/144 kit, it is
supposed to be a big thing. Big things
tend to have washed out colors, so really strong preshading
or tight demarcations wouldn’t look realistic.
The red thruster liners were painted with Mr. Color #68, Red Madder
(madder than what?). Finally, the metal
parts, like the cannons, the sword, the back of the legs, etc. was painted with
Mr. Color #28 Steel (which is a very dark metallic). The highlighting metallic shade was #61 Burnt
Iron, which is also a great thruster color. For a little wear and tear, I drybrushed the high points with Model Master non-buffing
steel metalizer.
The cockpit windows were orange mixed from Mr. Color Red and Yellow,
with some interference red
For further
weathering, I applied a black wash to the OD parts and a lighter gray wash to
the gray parts. A black wash on
something that is supposed to be huge just has too much contrast and looks cartoonish; thy gray wash blends well and is subtle yet noticeable. The wash was Winsor & 
The final
weathering was applied with a Dremel tool and a small
round bit. I have never tried simulating
battle damage on a mech before, so hopefully it looks
OK. The way I see it, this mech is defending the last
Remember the
stickers? The kit comes with more than
just a mono eye sticker—it includes a small dry transfer for the chest Zeon
crest. I realized after going crazy with
the Dremel tool, I had put a blast mark right smack
dab in the middle of where the yellow Zeon crest was supposed to go. Fortunately, I didn't want to put a Zeon
crest their anyways. Instead I wanted to
put one on the shield, similar to how the MG version of this kit is
marked. For the Zeon crest on the
shield, I used one of my Zeon decals. This is literally the first time I had used
one, and I was very interested to see how they would work out. I prepped the shield by applying a few coats
of Future over the flat Olive drab paint so the detail would have a smooth
surface to adhere to. After I applied
the decal, I sprayed the area with Dullcoat to seal
the decal. The results are awesome!
Roundup: This is a great kit. In spite of all the modifications I made, you
can still make a fantastic model with this guy straight out of box. My main motivation for these modifications
was to try out the techniques. When you
look at what the kit comes with, including the extra cannon hand and an extra
shield if you do not want to have the shield mounted Gattling
cannon displayed, it really is an amazing kit for 1000
Yen. As far as I am concerned, the 08th
Mobile Suit Team HG kits are the best of the HG series. I seriously swore I would never build a 1/144
scale kit--before I found this particular series of kits. Along with the RGM-79(G) Sniper, this kit
is another winner.
Gallery
Wrist Cannon Sword Gattling
Shield Side Cannon Shading Complete Gattling Shield Back Detail
Leg Back Leg Side Front 1 Front
Right Left Side Front Left Finished Shield Foot Detail Back
The last thing you’ll ever see… The last thing
you’ll ever see, part 2… That’s my parking spot…
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with you comments!