Back with an update!
Tomorrow's a big day. I'll return to the seamstress to pick up my flight suit and flak vest, and my upgraded gauntlets and knees will be arriving courtesy of Brandon at Black Tusk, who's been great to work with. In the meantime I took care of a few things:
I rigged up my cod/kidney connection with a Velcro duty belt, set it up to make the studs functional, and reinforced the joints with filament tape. I was inspired to do it this way by another member's build thread. I'm planning to do something similar with my collar/back connection once I have my flak vest back from the seamstress. I'll be drilling holes into the back armor so want to make sure the fit is exact. I also spray died and weathered the 'thong.'

I installed all the jetpack hardware and rigged up the beacon light.

I received my WF boots from Dom (F4R), who did a fantastic job. I normally wear a size 10 in sneakers. These are size 10.5 and fit great.
I received some found part shin tools that I overpaid for to save time. I will eventually redo the weathering and black tape on the squeegee and swap the adjustment tool for one that's more screen accurate. Brandon at Black Tusk is making my fourth shin tool using my MCR rods.
Brandon at Black Tusk has also been hard at work on a bunch of upgrades we planned out. He originally painted the armor and gauntlets I bought, and I'm so appreciative of his fantastic communication and collaboration.
He painted and installed my vintage Eveready Minilight and MCR gauntlet darts, painted the tips of the gauntlet switches, swapped the fake dental files with my real ones on the whipcord housing, touched up paint and installed metal knee darts on the knee armor, painted and installed my real MQ-1 keyboard, painted and installed my MCR gauntlet rocket, painted my MCR studs, and last but not least installed an XLR cable I provided into the gauntlet port. I may eventually add an XLR port to my jetpack and set this up like the Super Trooper, at which point I would use a more accurate cable, but for now this is a good start.




After tomorrow I should be ready to weather the flight suit and vest and make final adjustments to connection points (collar and back armor, knee straps, jetpack harness, etc.). It's looking like I'll be ready for Halloween...and shortly thereafter, 501st submission!
I haven't gotten an EE-3 yet because I'm still debating how much to invest there, but that'll happen soon enough.
Thanks for stopping by! And thanks as always to the members here who have been so generous and helpful in threads and PMs. You know who you are.