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David Hingtgen

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Everything posted by David Hingtgen

  1. Appreciated, thanks. (yes, I was hoping they'd have posted a nice clear pic of her in her flightsuit---what a wasted opportunity)
  2. Not so much the logo, but the paintscheme. I absolutely hate United's name on CO's paint. To the point that I won't fly on them any more. UA is dead to me. (and I have more UA models in my collection than anything else) CO already had among the oldest, most boring paint scheme in the industry---that scheme pre-dates United's PREVIOUS scheme. And United's final scheme was among the best to come out in the entire world in 20 years IMHO. Classic, with stripes and many shades of blue. CO is white with grey. The scheme was chosen purely (and they have stated this) because it was cheaper and quicker to repaint UAL's fleet white and grey, than to paint CO's fleet with multiple shades of blue. Still, they could have at least added another stripe or something, to break up the incredible blandness that is CO warm pale grey. (that *is* a color----CO actually has a special pale warm grey paint that only they use, for the belly and engines--it is not the "manufacturer" grey that is applied to the wings--close, but it is a unique color)
  3. Slipstream is awesome, too bad I'll never own it. But anyways---do I even need to say if I want to buy the big new-not-Superion, with real-life alt-modes? PS---I believe my MP-01 is for sale now, if anyone's interested. PPS--since G1/game/art-accurate colors FOC Bruticus will be a convention-exclusive I can't get/afford, that also allows me to save money for Superion. Which combiner team will you buy---a heavily-compromised neon-colored spindly Bruticus---or what is basically a team of Valkyries?
  4. I'm darn curious what was on the wall-panel for Grace. You can make out Nanase's pretty clearly.
  5. IIRC that was one of the biggest issues in the 1980's----no one had ever written a manual for the guns----it was all just "passed down from the previous guy" starting in WWII. Until there was a big gap in use. So they had to find the last few guys who knew how to work them, and train new guys to know them inside and out, and then have those new guys write a manual.
  6. Still waiting on the re-release of Alto's...
  7. That's why I specified. (specifically, the only one that counts)
  8. You could get a woman like that if you drove a teal Grand Am: http://blog.seattlep...ntiac-grand-am/ (best craigslist ad ever?)
  9. National? As in merged-with-Pan-Am-in-1979 National? Do tell. Anyways--interesting article/magazine on US carrier flightdeck ops/safety/notation: http://www.public.navy.mil/navsafecen/Documents/media/flight%20awareness/flightdeckawareness-5thEdition08.pdf
  10. That report on Hasbro reminds me of Disney--they wanted to fire Johnny Depp from POTC very early on, thinking that audiences wouldn't "get" his portrayal of Capt Sparrow, and that the movie would flop because of him. It's amazing just how badly many corporate execs "just don't get it" when it comes to what people like/want.
  11. Detroit's new terminal is very nice. (I'd never been to the old one to compare). For pure arrangement/"getting from one gate to another" regardless of how new it is/how good the restaurant choices are: Atlanta IMHO has the best layout, period. It's basically a very large multi-tiered "H" but boy does it work. Can get from anywhere to anywhere easily and quickly. I don't know why no other airport seems to copy it---it's been studied many times and declared the best IIRC, and I agree. O'Hare (and a bunch of other airports) is basically "Y's around a semi-circle" and the design sucks yet it seems everywhere copies it for no apparent reason. (Better than St Louis though, that is the epitome of long corridors that makes anywhere to anywhere a very long walk)
  12. I don't really fly often enough to comment (ironic that I love airliners, yet rarely get to truly indulge in my hobby) but I will say: Air France seemed quite nice overall the one flight I had. TWA and NW consistently had the worst food. Northwest once hand-delivered our bags at baggage claim.
  13. Airliners have Jeffries Tubes---you can crawl above the cabin, then down through the avionics bays, to get to the nosegear...
  14. I still can't figure out Takara's coloring scheme reasoning for MP-11. (and future seekers). It's like they combined the worst aspects of animated and toy. Light blue fists and feet? Animation. Black squares representing hinges? An insanely pointless and ugly homage to the toy. I mean, couldn't they NOT paint on big fake black hinges* on the fuselage? I'm surprised they didn't paint the tires silver and a few fake screws on the arms, "just like the G1 toy". Some things should NOT be emulated, especially when they only exist due to limits of technology. (hey, they could add some black rubber tubing to a MP Shockwave or something, or maybe a big fake AA battery compartment and bulbs to MP Galvatron, when modern tech would allow tiny batteries and LED's) *weren't the big black hinges on the wings a common complaint of the "US scheme" MP-03? So they fixed that by making them match the grey wings now, but then added other ones on?
  15. Sorry to say, but yes, "don't use putty for weight" is a known issue for models. Most putties intentionally dissolve styrene to some degree--it's how it "sticks" to the model.
  16. A production F-23 would have had a smaller rear fuselage around the engines, due to not needing room for thrust reversers---so it would actually have weighed less there. (the YF-23 didn't have reversers either, but the change was late enough that the rear fuselage was still designed to have room for them)
  17. A lot of the detail/sculpting seems to have been "softened" from the grey prototypes we saw earlier. Frankly, they look a lot cheaper than I expected.
  18. A production F-23A would have had a separate Sidewinder bay right in front of the AMRAAM bay---though it would have been 1 bay that held 2 missiles, rather than the F-22's "1 missile per bay" setup.
  19. Very empty AFAIK. I do wonder if production F119 engines would fit in the #1 plane. Much of the actual systems were repurposed stock McDonnell parts---F-15 cockpit, F-18 hydraulics/gear AFAIK. Wouldn't have been so for production of course, but worked well enough for a prototype.
  20. The X-32 was just plain UGLY. That's different. Plus, an intake like that actually is a serious safety concern on a carrier---the A-7 was legendary as a "sailor sucker", the F-8 a bit less so. Plus you know, the X-32 couldn't actually really hover without removing structural parts of it to reduce weight first. Finally, an actual F-24 (or F-32 if you prefer) would have had a different tail and possibly even delta wing----VERY different from the X-35, as Boeing admitted the current basic design wouldn't satisfy the requirements. The changes from X-32 to production JSF would have made the YF-22 vs F-22A changes look trivial. (and would have both cost and delayed the program a lot---and look how long it's taking to get the closer-to-production X-35 into service!)
  21. Seems the British govt had some just-delivered unassembled-in-factory-crates Spitfires buried underneath a Burmese airfield in 1945 to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands. And were then forgotten. And now found again. And the British govt is paying to dig them up and get them back----so there may soon be a lot more flyable Spitfires out there---or at the very least, one heck of a nice batch of spare parts for the existing ones. Makes you wonder if there isn't still an Fw190A in a crate somewhere in the Alps or something...
  22. You mean, same ending as otherwise, with a 1.5 sec clip added on to the end if you choose "red" for your ending color-scheme.
  23. Yup, would you expect anything less from the military-industrial-govt complex? The "look" of the Spruance-class destroyer was also highly controversial, compared to modern Soviet designs. (as in, the Spruance-class didn't LOOK very powerful, because most of the weapons/reloads were in the hull, whereas Soviet ships tended to have many single-shot non-reusable weapons all over the decks--so many people thought the Spruance class had vastly inferior firepower based on how it looked, and nearly got the thing cancelled, if not severely reduced in numbers---luckily it was pointed out in time that they were actually quite well-armed, you just couldn't see much of it) Imagine if the F-22 faced that---"I don't see very many missiles hanging off the wings, it's a waste of money!"
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