henselmonster

Perfect! Thank you!

It has been a great year! Thanks team!

I am looking for a vendor that offers accurate mortar tube vaccuformed parts. I have found a number of options that aren't super accurate. Any suggestions?

Sadly my spare frame isn't the correct style. The bottom portion would need to be modified. Its more square than the trapezoid shape of the proper frame. Its still the correct size and everything else, just the bottom part. Thats why I was probably going to use it to just build a lighter pack for trooping thats more lightweight than the screen accurate one I'm working on here.

Might be going overboard on this build hahah. I found a real gio style canteen too. And another Karrimor frame (I bought for the straps....lol). I also found the correct Brexton style lunch box to replace mine. At this point, all I need is another radio and I can build two packs! haha

Welcome to the last MEPD Newsletter of 2017! It has been quite a year and there isn't a lot I can say that isn't already said below. So I will leave you with this: Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone and their family. Now get out there and make us proud (also I hear there is a new film of some sort that may interest you in theaters now) - Henselmonster - A word form the Detachment Leader - Meet the Intelligence Staff - A Year End Wrap up of 2017 - Troop of the Year Wait, what….2017 is almost over? Already? It’s unbelievable how fast this year went by. So where to begin.. As soon as I got elected I wanted to make changes for the better for the MEPD. I felt that we needed a fresh start and that we needed to bring the MEPD to a higher level and revitalise it, together. If it wasn’t for all your input, feedback and positivity we’d still be where we started from. Therefore I’m so proud of all of you, simply due to the fact that everybody participated and came with exciting new ideas. The most important change of this year is that we added other costumes to the MEPD so we could finally broaden our horizon and welcome new members to the detachment. Writing the CRL’s was something completely else as I have found out the hard way. We have written several but we lacked good pictures. Now that the part of the pictures is solved for the Magma Trooper, I’m really hoping that it will and can go live this month. The Special Edition is a whole different story but the R1 costumes should be reasonably easy to get finished. I’m already looking forward to next year too and my aim is to keep the long train, called the MEPD, running smoothly and with a steady pass to all the next stations that lie ahead for us. Some minor changes and some big are still on my to do list but as we all have seen wealos have had some changes within the Command Staff. Smally left us reasonably fast, and I personally still miss him as he was and is a respected MEPD member. Phoenix had to say goobye too, so we were left with an opening there as well, but some time ago HappyTrooperDotCom apllied for the job and we’re happy to have him on the team. And not to forget, the last person that stepped down was Iconoclasta as Sergeant at Arms. Furthermore I would like to express my thanks and support to the whole Command Staff. Without your support and loyalty we couldn’t have done this job. We also have had some small issues this year, but all were solved in a orderly fasion. One thing that made me smile and so proud is that so many troops applied for SWAT and PO. I don’t always make a reply in each individual request topic but do understand this, I do appreciate all the hard work that each and every one of you has put into it. You guys are the best billboards the MEPD can have! I hope that you all have enjoyed this year and the new approach. It was a bit of a shock at first for some but we all have put our shoulders under it and look at where we are now..and what challenges and possibilities still lie ahead of us! Leaves me to one last and final thing or two… I want to thank everybody for an inspiring and eventful year!!! Have a great holiday season with your family, friends and loved ones, stay safe and move along to 2018!! Your Detachment Leader, dutchy For the end of the year We wanted to feature the staff that works to bring you the news from behind the scenes at the MEPD. Meet the MEPD Intelligence Staff/PR Team PUNISHA: Hello Troops, My name is Tim Allen, call sign Punisha here at the MEPD. I have been a member of the 501st since July 2014 and a Sandtrooper since October 2014. I’m a teacher at a local juvenile detention center in the real world. I joined the 501st after meeting a group at a local small con. After I sat through a panel on the group, I realized the costumes weren’t as difficult or expensive as I thought before the panel. I love the charity events and seeing the children’s faces. Right after joining, I saw the Black Series Sandtrooper figure and was reminded of how iconic the character was to me. I set my sights on that kit. In my 3 ½ years, I’ve been working as a Garrison Event Coordinator, local Squad Leader, and at the MEPD as Intelligence officer and Armorer. Even though I’ve been approved in 18 501st costumes, the TD is still my favorite. I have trooped in the Sandy over 100 times. When I achieved Police Officer level, many of the local members asked me for help on their kits. I’ve helped multiple local members build their TD’s or convert their TK’s to TD’s. When Dutchy added me to the MEPD Command Staff, I was truly honored. Sandtroopers have always been my favorite troopers in the Star Wars universe. I visit the MEPD almost daily. Our comradery is unmatched in the other detachments. We might fight dirty, but we love our brothers and sisters. I’m honored to be among the greatest detachment in the 501st. - Punisha - TD-10930 AIRBORNE TROOPER: Season’s Greetings, MEPD! You all know me as Airborne Trooper or TD-82573, but my real name is Jason and I am your friendly member liaison/Intelligence Officer/Armor. I live in upstate NY (real upstate, not 30 minutes outside NYC haha). I will be 32 in April, married, and I have 5 kids! I served in the Army from 2005 to 2014 with the 82nd Airborne Division as an IT Specialist. On paper, I have 30 airborne jumps but probably have closer to 40. After leaving the military, I moved to NY because my wife wanted to be close to her family. I now work for NY state as an IT Specialist which is why I am lucky enough to be on the forum so much during the week. I have loved sandtroopers since the first time I saw A New Hope. I knew that one day I wanted to become one for real! I started researching the 501st in 2011 but took a few years to finally pull the trigger and buy my armor. I was accepted into the legion in December 2015 and gained my Police Officer status in May of 2016. I have ambitions to reach SWAT level in 2018! I love this detachment and the people in it. If you ever have any questions and don’t want to post it on the forum, feel free to shoot me a private message. I consider my role in MEPD to have an open-door policy. Just like I was taught in the Army as a Non-Commissioned Officer, I will always place my soldiers needs above my own! -Airbone Trooper - TD-82573 LOVE MONKEY: Troops, I’m Kirk Folsom, you’ve know me around here as LoveMonkey. I’ve been a member since December 2015 and I was granted Police Officer rank in June 2016. The ironic part of all of this is that in real life, I’m a police officer with a local city department and I’ve been in law enforcement for almost 10 years. I’m currently in Eagle Mountain, Utah and I’m part of the Alpine Garrison. I’m married with 4 children, currently ages 7, 5, 2, and 1 month. I’m proud to say that before my 2 year old could talk, he could hum the Imperial March and he loves to watch Star Wars with me. All my kids do, you’ve got to start them out young. When I finally decided to pull the plug and join the 501st, I wanted my costume to be something recognizable, and nothing is as recognizable as Darth Vader or a Stormtrooper. My initial plan was to be a clean TK but the more I looked at the Sandtroopers, I just couldn’t stay away despite the extra cost I had to talk my wife into. I love the packs, the pouches, the BFGs, the dirt, just everything that makes Sandtroopers as amazing looking as they are. You know when you watch the movies that these troopers are on the ground doing the really dirty work and you know that unlike TKs, they can actually hit their targets. I’ve currently got an ANH TIE pilot, Reserve TIE pilot, and Bridge Crew as my other 501st costumes and I’m currently working on a 181st TIE pilot, that way I can really pack it small and travel to troop with other Garrisons, which was a blast the one time I’ve been able to do it. That being said, my Sandtrooper is by far my favorite costume. I just love the overall look and the small customizations you can make to really have it stand out and be your own. I always get a good reaction whenever I suit up in my kit. I’m proud to serve all of you on our detachment staff and I’m grateful to Dutchy for the chance to be on staff. I love being here, the community is great and the drama is non-existent. If there is anything I can do for any of you, please let me know! HENSELMONSTER: Hello MEPD and Happy New Year! First off I wanted to thank the PR team: Jason, Tim and Kirk, your work on this team is invaluable and I am happy to have you on board. You make my job as Chief Media Officer/PRO much much easier. A little about me! My name is John, I currently live in Orlando, FL but I am originally from St. Louis, MO. For the past 7 years I have worked in varying capacities (Intern, Temp, Freelance) for Disney Creative Group. I am a graphic designer and work primarily on Merchandise, more specifically, a lot of Star Wars merchandise. In fact my sandtrooper armor is not technically the first sandtrooper I have created. The Sandtrooper has always been my favorite trooper, so much so that I have been responsible for a few pieces of Disney/Sandtrooper merchandise. Like these guys: And…..these guys (please put your pitchforks away). It’s a super cool job and as a freelancer I get the opportunity to work on some cool stuff (alot I cannot talk about). I also work for a few other places (#freelancelife) Walt Disney Imagineering, a couple T Shirt printing companies, and most recently I have been working with a BBQ restaurant group called 4 Rivers. I help out on their marketing team and even let my Bapty star in one of their instagram posts! As you can see I love being a sandtrooper and I love the new direction the MEPD is going. The community here is so helpful and I cannot wait to watch this detachment grow! Thank you troopers for reading these newsletters every other month. It is an honor to serve you! - Henselmonster - TD-11787 Well here we are, the end of 2017. Trying to encapsulate this whole year in an entire article is quite the daunting task. Where to begin? This year has been full of changes. Well first, we elected our new detachment Leader Dutchy who took the Dewback reins after Dirtyboy’s retirement. The command staff shifted around a bit and we finally settled on the team we have today. Shortly after we had Star Wars Celebration in Orlando. It was so great to be able to have so many MEPD members in the same place! After Celebration a slew of new discoveries came pouring in about the Sandtrooper Field Pack. Thanks to Strider and Gino for their contributions. You raised the bar so high for the accuracy of these packs. Much of this new level in accuracy is thanks to the finding of not one, but TWO real Sonix Victory 75 Radios. Woodman, RS and Gino tracked down the first one and have been providing excellent casted replicas. GodofLibra provided great reference images of his found radio as well as some real definitive accurate measurements. This radio has long been a holy grail for Sandtroopers and the MEPD is lucky to have these available to us now! To top the year off, the MEPD has begun development on 3 new CRLs! The SE Sandtrooper, R1 Jedha Sandtroopers and the Battlefront Magmatrooper. We are hoping that we can get ne of these completed by years end, but if not expect these new CRLs to be live in early 2018! 2017 has been a great year for the MEPD! 2018 is going to be even better. Thank you troops for everything this year. Now, move along and have a happy new year! Henselmonster - TD-11787 Going through all the great troops that were shared in 2017 made picking the winner of the Troop of The Year very challenging. There's so many cool photos and you guys have really nailed it when it comes to giving back to your communities! I know we all don these plastic spacemen costumes because we just love them so much, but the charity part is something each and every one of you should be super proud of. This winner of 2017's Troop of the Year comes from our April newsletter. Congratulations @Zuckuss! I am a father to 5 wonderful children so anything with kids really pulls at my heart strings. I've had the privilege of trooping two children's hospitals and always bawl my eyes out. Below is the exert from April's newsletter: Keep up the good work, troopers and remember, if you would like to be featured in the next newsletter, make sure you’re updating your troop logs! Explain the purpose of the troop, who attended, and any additional details you can! Putting your pictures into context goes a long way! - Airborne Trooper • TD-82573 Instagram!

Got my Woodman radio!! Its so beautiful. Incredible craftsmanship. It is currently missing switches because I will be adding them in myself with electronics. Also got some seed trays so its finally time to start on this thing!

Welcome Corey!

Welcome!!

This is beautiful! I love my Hyperfirm T-21 but it was a B-grade...a super super B grade. haha. This is incredibly detailed.

I usually go for Imgur but Flickr works well for 3rd party hosting. I am not sure what our capacity is for hosting on our own servers. However Its a good thought to bring up, especially for essential posts like pack builds and others.

Awesome! I used to love going to ambush games when I was a kid, this would have blown my mind back then

Great work!! Best of luck

Yea thats a good idea. I figure anything from mid/late 2015 to now should be updated. I will also look though some older ones for troopers that aren't commonly featured (Dewback trooper, etc)

Agreed. I would much rather that happen haha. But some of these SWAT troopers are no longer that active over here. I think the loss of these SWAT applications sucks, I just want to speed up the process.

EDIT: I have started editing some SWAT application posts that lost their photos due to the Photobucket apocalypse. If anyone else would like the help out I would be very appreciative. I will try to edit here and there when I have time. The more help we have, the quicker we can rebuild these incredibly helpful threads.

I am not sure if this has been posted yet, but there is a fix (well for now) for the photobucket issue for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg It has been working for me for now. Hopefully it isn't disabled soon. When i have time I would like to go in and try to re-save some of these images and re-embed them in the the threads that as most helpful. EDIT: I have started editing some SWAT application posts that lost their photos due to the Photobucket apocalypse. If anyone else would like the help out I would be very appreciative. I will try to edit here and there when I have time. The more help we have, the quicker we can rebuild these incredibly helpful threads.

Congrats!!

Ah I see! Hmm, We ll hopefully I can reduce my UP100 down 2cm to match the UP90's length.

Sorry this is what I was referring to. I was under the impression he modded his.

@Strider I am currently working on my mods to my Shires UP100. I am planning on shortening it by about 2CM could you show where you cut yours to shorten? Thanks man!

Thanks! I used a dab of E6000 on each end to keep them in place. But my T Tracks are hard plastic. I’m not sure what would work best on rubber, I guess it depends on the type of rubber.

ITS DONE! FNALLY! Only took me ab out a year to finish! Haha. I am very happy how it turned out. Happy I was able to find a real scope, thats my favorite part. Over time I may add new stuff but I'm calling it done right now! Now to finish my pack!

That would be so great! Thank you. We are trying to spread the word that these new packs live over here now. Hopefully we can get someone with the armor and pack to be our model.

Awesome!! Thanks Shawn! Following this