David Hingtgen

A Gundam marker is 99% identical to a Sakura Micron-Pigment pen, and AFAIK most people in the US actually use those instead of actual Gundam markers/pens since they're much easier and cheaper to find. But Gundam markers/pens come in a much better selection of colors---browns, greys, etc. I only have one "true" Gundam pen, a medium-light grey. For brown and black I use the Micron-Pigment.

There's always real F-14 Wolfpack decals. Though there are none in 1/60 scale as that is not a modeling scale. Currently, the only easily-acquired ones are CAM's: http://www.brookhursthobbies.com/camdecals...amaction=decals Though I think Yamato's stickers are a bit closer to 80's than 70's markings. Only source I can think of for 80's Wolfpack decals at the moment is Hasegawa's recent 1/72 kit. Far fewer good pics of 80's Wolfpack planes, despite being longer-lived and more recent, but here's a decent one: This is a mid/late-80's CAG plane. The regular squadron planes lack the nose markings. Early 80's had red ventral fins, and markings on both sides of the tailfins.

Lots of things you could do for Wolfpack markings, depending on if you want 70's, 80's, or VF-0 style camoflage. (the toy's stickers seem to be a 70's/80's hybrid) Things to consider: Black glareshield ahead of canopy. Tan radome tip. White rudders. Red ventral fins (with white trim striping) Red fin tips BTW---The Wolfpack's callsign was "Wichita". Go here and scroll to the bottom for many pics of an excellent model: http://maxi.gotadsl.co.uk/models/Hasegawa_F14A_011.htm

Easy solution: same plane wore multiple schemes. Very few planes remain with the same squadron for their entire existence. The famous Heater-Ferris splinter camo F-14? That was actually the original Wolfpack CAG plane. It went straight from high-vis red to splinter greys. And if you accept the Hasegawa decals as canon, then a Sundowners CAG plane, which was also the Black Knight's 50th Anniversary plane, later became Shin's F-14! And heck, it went from an F-14A to an F-14A+ Kai (which is no different than the many real F-14A's converted to F-14D's) So, the 2 "remaining" VF-0S's could have worn several more schemes each, until scrapped or sent to museums. Though being such rare planes, with the VF-0 being replaced by the VF-1 before it even really went into service, probably means they were all scrapped at a young age. And if we assume F-14-style conversions, it's possible some VF-0A's were converted to VF-0S's as replacements for the ones Roy destroyed.

Wiki says Air Asia currently has 14 A320's, and 19 737's. (bigger than I thought) And they have 130 A320's on order, possibly 200. Wow, I didn't expect to be proven right only 24 hours after I made that post about "smaller airlines making hyper-optimistic orders 10x their current fleet size".

Ah, that makes far better sense.

AFAIK "letters of intent" and "firm orders" are usually confused/merged in reports. I think an "order" is technically reserving a slot/time on the production line. You could sell it to someone else without penalty--so long as the slot is used, Boeing etc won't care who's using it. I know planes are built as they're paid for. 10% down to start production to pay for the parts to build it. Pay more as the plane is built. When it's 100% done, you should have paid 100% of the cost.

FYI, current USAF F-15A-D's are quite a bit darker than 80's ones. The new scheme came around after Desert Storm, but was initially only used on F-15's in the Pacific, then Europe--didn't spread to US-based ones until the mid 90's. Only planes using Gunship Grey (and pure black F-117's) are darker than current F-15C's. And I still think they intended to make Starscream Gunship Grey like F-15E's, but somebody screwed up, or is colorblind. As for the mystery holes---they're perfect for an F-15E's LANTIRN pods. Like the conformal tanks, they are not permanently mounted, but there 99% of the time. First pic: Freshly painted F-15A in current scheme Second pic: F-15E belly showing intake-mounted pods

That's my point. There are hundreds, thousands of "announced orders" that will never, ever happen. Both Boeing and Airbus. They (and the media) always talk about orders---never deliveries. 500 "orders" with 495 planes actually built and delivered, is a lot better than 600 orders with 450 deliveries. Part of the problem lately is "little start-up airlines that experience 150% growth in their first 6 months---then expect that to continue and order appropriately". I am not at all exaggerating when I say the average new airliner order press release looks like this: "Piddly Airlines, a new low-cost carrier which has surged from 4 planes to 6 over the last year, has ordered 115 A320's to fuel their expected growth, with deliveries scheduled from 2010 to 2013". Never mind that they're gone 3 months later...

Sales and orders mean nothing, nothing counts until it's actually being built. I'm still waiting for USAirway's 400-aircraft order to be delivered. And TWA's launch order for the A330, and the CO A340 order...

Back to how a fusion turbine etc works: Is Skull-1's explanation for atmospheric ops only? And are we going for "pure rocket effect" in space, basically ignoring all blades/fans/stages?

The F-15 has a "beyond normal limits" button, but it's so piddly it's not really worth mentioning--thought pilots sure like to brag about using it. It's like 2% more N2 and a 4% higher EGT limit. Of course, F-15 normal engine trim is like 98% of rated thrust (a little less thrust gives a LOT more reliability and engine life), so it's not really "beyond", but more like "back up to full spec". Airliners (except RR-powered) have take-off thrust set at over 100%, with a 5 minute limit (10 in an emergency), usually in the 103-107% range. Skull-1 could certainly expand on that. The MD-11 is the only one I can think of that has something really notable: If you push the throttles beyond their normal stop, and break past the stop, they'll go up to 117% rated thrust through sheer increased fuel flow/temps. Good for about 20-30 secs before they'll overheat. Never heard of it being used, but it's there. As for noise: jet engines have 2 main, distinct sounds: The "whine" of the machinery, which is part fan noise but mostly turbine noise (though a "buzzsaw" noise usually means the fan is louder than the turbine--exclusive to high-bypass AFAIK), and the "roar" noise which is literally jet noise---rapidly moving air. Thunder is the ultimate expression of jet noise---super-heated air moving super-fast. As opposed to "quite hot" air moving "quite" fast. Lightning gets the air hot and moving far better than any engine. Best way to quiet an engine is to slow down the air---and colder air has less energy. But that'll decrease thrust, so you need more air. 777 engines are the best example--they are QUIET, despite being the most powerful jets of all. Sheer quantity of air, moving quite slowly by jet standards.

I'm saying that we have little to no evidence at all how "overboost" works. Perhaps it's an entirely different system somewhere in the engine nacelle, akin to JATO or something. Maybe it's super-heated liquid quartz sprayed onto the stator vanes, which reacts with some exotic OT metal to create glowing blue thrust... My point is, it shouldn't be called an afterburner because we don't have the slightest clue how it works. Since it's obviously based on a real-life afterburner, it was *probably* intended to work roughly the same. But we don't have any indication that it is in fact at all similar, AFAIK. If it's to be called an afterburner, then we need evidence that: 1. It occurs in the exhaust, after any of the engine's own stages. If it's in the turbine/reaction chamber, it's not "after", it's "core". 2. It involves heat/burning. Maybe the blue glow is electical in nature, or visible magnetic field effects. It could actually be ice-cold for all we know. The only thing we know is that it's blueish----maybe it's actually a micro-warp-engine, stolen from Starfleet.

At a certain point, EMS is actually cheaper than SAL (very heavy items)---which is why they won't ship SAL for heavy things, as EMS is faster AND cheaper then. I usually get SAL stuff in 10-14 days from HLJ. But I usually ship EMS, SAL I usually just use for small items, so I don't know how long something larger like a valk would take for SAL.

Real F-15E grey is quite dark, and often called "sinister" by pilots etc. Much better for an evil character than green, IMHO.

It has "overboost". How do you expect a conventional afterburner to work in space? Sure you may get a big blue glow, but it's not "raw kerosene-based fuel being burned with oxygen". The visual effect/comparison is obvious, but IMHO it can't actually be an afterburner.

Plus the fact that HLJ doesn't seem to use the 'first come, first served' rule at all. You can sit there clicking on refresh until pre-orders are open, be the first person to pre-order, and then not get one until the second or third shipment.

Since it seems the gunpod is an issue with EVERY YF-19 out there, that's not a QC problem, that's a design problem, and there's no way they could have missed it if they'd actually played with a final production example for 30 secs. Probably would have noticed the gear didn't angle out right either. A QC problem is random mis-aligned tampos or missing parts. The gunpod and gear issue is inherent to the YF-19, chance has nothing to do with how yours will be. My guess is they only tested the gear and gunpod on near-final samples or something, and didn't check it again for the final ones, assuming they were the same.

Graham's probably already playing with the next valk prototype... I was going to cancel my BBTS order and order from Los, but he sold out between me deciding to do it, and actually doing it. At this point I might as well wait.

Prime had sad music for his death. And no one cried on-screen for SS.

The issue is, they paint 100x better than they panel line. Also, even the least-skilled of us can Gundam-marker a valk in 5 mins as well as (if not better) than Yamato can------but it's darn near impossible to UN-panel-line something.

I posted this over at TFW2005, but here's a nice belly shot of an F-22 for comparison, etc: It's also wallpaper size and quality, so if you want a neat fighter jet desktop, there you go. It also shows how similar it is to an F-15 underneath---compare to either the real thing, or even MP-03. Could transform exactly the same. IDW certainly figured out how. (And as I and others said at TFW--if you want the bot modes to be in scale, then don't pick the largest-by-far jet the US has)

"Hell no". It'll end up looking like this: (yes, that is factory-applied) (secondary rant--99% of all panel lining even by modelers is overdone)

I didn't feel any need to talk about Movie SS bot mode or jet kibble, we can all see/agree. But the fact that jet mode is fictional is a interesting point. Every other movie toy vehicle mode has been as accurate to the real thing as an Alternator. But SS is a jumble of parts---why? It wouldn't affect the transformation or robot mode appearance to have been either 100% YF-22 or F/A-22. It'd be like if the toy Bumblebee had a '97 Camaro RS's spoiler tacked on, or the toy Prime had an '88 Kenworth T600 grill.

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=119001 Movie SS's toy seems to be some weird YF-22, F/A-22 hybrid. With the v.stabs from the XFA-27. What happened there? The original design sketch was a YF-22, but I think the movie final design is a proper F/A-22. (Still waiting on my broadband connection, so I haven't seen the trailer yet)