David Hingtgen

Airliners are my specialty.

It was "a" flight, but an early one. And it was the 367-80, which was the 707's prototype---and prototype in the true sense of the word, in that it shared zero parts with a real 707, and was only a "technology testbed of a very similar design".

All the mods should buy one----just to eat up the supply and prevent DA from getting any.

Happens all the time for deliveries, sight-seeing, retirement flights. That's just "extra low". Airliners are far more agile and capable than most people realize--the pilots intentionally fly them "slowly and ponderously" so the old ladies on board don't complain (literally). A 757 can do a 45-degree takeoff angle for a while on a good day---but then half the passengers would be screaming. Same as being on the downwind leg at 500mph, putting the spoilers out, making a tight 180, and landing at 150mph 30 secs later... (which was quite common for the 880 to do in its heyday)

Everett's the factory. That was not a normal flight at all. I'm surprised there were even 50 people on board. Most delivery flights are almost completely empty, the only people besides the pilots being some high-up financial guys from the company to literally "sign the dotted line".

Hard for me to keep it all straight. (Especially when it's a series I so don't care about that it irks me that it's being done at all)

I don't think anyone knows the stock 'trend' for the E8400. It goes like this: Jan 23 or so---it's released, and everywhere gets it, and everywhere sells out in days. Nobody's restocked yet. Every place that ever will sell the E8400 has already gotten and sold their first shipment. And the 2nd batch hasn't come out yet. Could be next week, could be next month. I can't get my new PC until they come in... (I can buy the case at least and have that ready)

That's a waste. TWO lines that are already almost identical, doing the SAME character in the same outfit? What's next, Figma doing Chun-Li, and Revoltech doing Idol Master? C'mon, there's a ZILLION *classic* female anime and video game characters that need to be made, instead of constant repeats of "what's the top anime this month".

1/60 YF-21 1/60 VF-1 (new) Revoltech YF-19, YF-21, and VF-1J Milia Revoltech Asuka and Chun-Li TF Classics Sideswipe, Octane, Galvatron Animated Prowl, BA, Blitzwing, Dinobots, Soundwave

Soundwave's G1 voice was far more than just running it through a processor and pressing a button. After the first "round" of processing, they had a musician-engineer sound guy tweak each syllable by hand/ear to get that distinctive sound----unless you know exactly what was done and have the skill and ear to do it right for each sound, it can never be replicated. It's not simply "finding the right settings" on a sound editor and having a machine do the whole ep's dialogue for you. It's hand-crafting each word. That's why no one can take Dr Claw voice clips and easily make "new" Soundwave quotes. That "something" is always missing, and that "something" is the hand-tweaking of each syllable. PS---Sentinel Prime is The Tick. Energon-y Goodness FTW.

I was wondering that too---what was the point of the opening scene? It did nothing and had no point. But the overall episode was great. Not TOO fond of how they modulate Soundwave's voice---it's too "rough"---I can't understand half of what he says. G1 Soundwave never had that problem.

Same---very few things can take advantage of a quad nowadays. There are certainly situations where a quad is better, a lot better. (do you render 3D graphics or encode terabytes of high-def video?) But they are few and far between with current software/tech. Get a faster dual for less money, and it'll do better more often.

I'm buying the E8400. (yes, I'm planning my new PC---just found out I may be able to get it by June or maybe even earlier, quite a bit sooner than I thought) I've seen few things that can take advantage of quad core, it seems for what I want, a faster dual-core will be better. And the E8400 is an awesome performance/price value. It's just sold-out 24/7 a lot of places, and they keep increasing the price. It was 200-220 bucks when it was new, now that everyone knows about it and wants it, most places want 240-250. Supply and demand. ::long part edited since I found THIS article:: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=510&pgno=0 1600mhz won't become standard, which is good for me, as that means almost all future socket 775 CPU's will still only require 1333 FSB's. As for graphics---IMHO 8800GT still beats 9600GT in most categories. But the 9800GT may be out by the time I'm actually ready to buy. It may be a "9000", but it's still only a x600, vs an x800. A high-end 8xxx will beat a low-end 9xxx. 9600 and 8800 are VERY close though.

They keep changing things, that's part of the problem. It was built with a ski-ramp. They wanted the entire bow re-done to be a flat-top with catapults. Now they want a BIG ski-ramp for MiG-29's. And some say catapults on the ski-ramps! The ability of a catapult-less MiG-29 isn't much payload. An article I found that was dated earlier this month, says another 4-5 years of work is currently required to get the Gorshkov operational, at a cost of 2.7 billion. Buying 65 Super Hornets looks faster/cheaper/better all the time...

Taking out all the fancy ECM etc in the Kitty Hawk surely won't cost billions. Remember, the Gorshkov still needs 2 important things before it can be used at all with the MiG-29K: 1. Catapults. That's not cheap/easy to install in a ship that doesn't have them. 2. Arresting gear/wires. Also not cheap/easy to install in a ship that doesn't have them. Those 2 things are the main reason the Gorshkov still needs billions of dollars and lots of time before it's ready. Also, (BTW) it needs a completely new powerplant. They're apparently converting it from steam to diesel. Even if the MiG-29K could be made to work without a catapult, there's no way to make it land without arresting wires.

Yeah, but the Gorshkov still needs billions more to fix it up and there's no guarantee of it EVER actually being done and working right. Assuming you've already spent a TON of money and time trying to get a Russian carrier working, what would you do: Spend billions more to finish the project, and end up with a not-that-great, small Russian carrier. Maybe, if Russia ever actually gets it done. Or: Get an American supercarrier delivered in perfect working order for free, you just have to buy the planes.

In other news, the rumor is that SecDef Gates (with Bush's approval) will be offering the USS Kitty Hawk to India, if they agree to buy 65 Super Hornets to equip it. (since Russia is still years and billions away from finishing the Gorshkov for them).

Just waiting for Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2nd-best book IMHO, but could so easily be screwed up as a movie). I was never that big on "Prince Caspian" compared to the others.

I was just about to post/ask about the latest ep, so I'll address your question as well: Anyone else see the latest ep w/Blackarachnia? AWESOME ep IMHO. (Lockdown/Arcee was good too, but not as good as this). There does seem to be two types of eps IMHO: Introduce/deepen a character, or "generic villain/situation of the week". The former are definitely better than the latter. And--since GobotFool asked it in this thread and I replied, should I go ahead and close the dedicated TF:Animated thread, located here: http://macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?show...5&start=175 and have all future posts here in the main TF thread? Otherwise, these 2 posts should be moved to the Animated thread.

106 pgs? I'm on page 85. Must have different settings.

Heck, they could have just added a hinge in the middle of each rotor blade, then they could fold down into 3-clawed hands like Omega Supreme--which isn't unusual for TF's. But they're just too big as is to pass for ANYTHING.

Strange that I never noticed agp440 in other safe-mode starts. Ok, well, either way the new Nvidia stuff (specifically "Ntune") was what was causing the problem. The new drivers themselves are ok (simply a new version of the main .dll) but the other stuff was causing almost total screen blackouts/freezing. Long post that most people won't care about follows: Got my slot cooler. Works fine, quite quiet on medium. At low you just hear the fan rattle, at high it's a roar of air. At medium it all just kinda blends together with the background noise/PC. Took apart my AGP card while I had the PC open. I'm not sure WHAT was between the heatsink and chip. Some sort of thermal pad I'd guess. Yellow, not stringy nor greasy. Reminded me a LOT of poster-tack. Only harder. Not sticky to the fingers at all. When I pulled off the heatsink, half the GPU chip was mirror-finish smooth---the thermal whatever completely came off on much of it (or there never was any to start). I had some Arctic Silver 5, so I thought "might as well" and cleaned up the chips and sinks as best I could and used it. Found something interesting--I'm guessing it's one of those "PCI-E to AGP" converter chips or whatever they're called. It was very small, but under a big heatsink of its own. Maybe a 2mm x 8mm chip, with a heatsink the size of most southbridges'. "U2" was the only identifying mark on the board, the chip itself had nothing I could see. The slot cooler's fan is too close to the motherboard and too far forward to be at all effective when mounted DIRECTLY below the card, so I have it one slot lower. Testing today gives me about 7C lower in idle and unknown (guessing 5C) under load. (Due to the card's passive cooling and massive heatsink, it's basically always "very warm" regardless of idle vs load) Will try some overclocking over the next 48 hours, and decide if this cooling is A. enough to allow me to get a significant bump performance-wise when OC'ing, (unlikely), B. promising enough that I'll spend another 30 bucks and get a Zalman fan and REALLY overclock the thing with the (hopefully) 15C margin I'll gain, or C. realize it's so minor that nothing could help.

Turned on my PC this morning and SOMETHING was messed graphically, big time. I had just recently downloaded new graphics card drivers etc from Nvidia (I often avoid updating drivers for this very reason--if it works, don't mess with it---new drivers OFTEN cause problems where none existed). Long story short, I used a system restore point and now everything's OK I think. When I saw it loading "agp440.drv" in safe mode I knew something was up, as that was what the PC was using 2 years ago... (and 7600GS's do not like MX440 drivers)

Are there any "normal" cases with a second low-mounted fan to exhaust from the PCI slot area? I've seen some very weird/expensive setups with something like that, but I've never seen your "basic ATX case, with an extra exhaust fan in the lower section". Even looking for some venting in that area eliminates over half of all cases. Also (newb question)---what's up with intake fans? Are they more for circulation than anything else? So many cases have "optional" intake fans. And you know me--noise! Having a fan right up front is about the worst thing I can think of for me.

I've decided that upgrading my current system any more is pointless---any CPU it can take is only SLIGHTLY better, same for the graphics card. However, as my graphics card warranty expires in 2 weeks, I'm going to see about overclocking it. As it is currently a silent passively-cooled card, I have a PCI slot fan (adjustable speed) arriving tomorrow---for 8 bucks, we'll see what happens. If that doesn't allow enough headroom, I'm going to see if I can remove the massive heatsink and install an actual fan GPU cooler. Thinking Zalman VF700 all-copper. I mean, if it's used to NO fan, and I go with something like that on a low-med setting, it should run a lot cooler than it used to, with very little noise. Now for my question for my future new PC: I'll probably go with a 8800GT or GTS. I notice the GTS's usually have the dual-slot "exhaust duct through the back of the case" cooling. Are they quieter than the 8800GT's with their "just a fan blowing air to the bottom of the case"? I've seen a few comments that dual-slot cooling systems are "surprisingly quiet". Does that mean quiet overall as all graphics cards go, or just surprising considering how high-end cards like that usually are? (Since high-end cards are often very loud with screaming fans)? If the GTS's are are bit quieter (plus the higher performance) I'll gladly pay the 60 bucks or so GTS's seem to go for over a GT.