by Michael McGuire

from the Macross movie: Do You remember Love

The VE-1"Elint" Valkyrie was created by the SDF-01's engineers when the Glamor ES-11D Cat's Eye was found to be too deficient in combat survivability to fully fulfill its role as an Elint/AEW craft in the more hostile environments. Derived from the Super VT-1, the VE-1 sports a major avionics upgrade including a rotary radome dish, side mountedsurvillance radar, and an advanced communications detection and jamming suite.

The Elint Valkyrie first saw service in the battle against Badolza's armada. The VE-1 performed its mission flawlessly in space, but was not well suited for atmospheric conditions do to increased drag. Wind shear limits the Elint to a top speed of Mach 1.

The VE-1 gave good service in all branches of the service until retired in the late 2020s. It is still used by some planetary defense units as well as UN Spacy Reserve units.

Construction

I had seen this hard to find model a couple times and had heard both that it was an excellent model to build, and an unusually complex one. When I saw the kit in a hobby store on sale recently, I had to have it. Building it was actually pretty easy, except for a mold line in the middle of the canopy. The kit is out of the box, except for the flying mount and some stock plastic to hide the interior when the wings are open. Yes, that is the Star Ship Modeler plaque as a base.

Image: Right side

Image: Rear view

Image: Top view

Image: Closeup, engines