David Hingtgen

Yes, but what color does it light up? Canon color is green, as easily seen onscreen.

Hey Graham--how about asking Yamato to include a new forearm piece and corrected landing gear bits with the FAST packs? Straighten out the gunpod and angle the gear correctly.

Sheer lack of steps and photos, IMHO. Good transformation instructions don't need a word of text. Best example I can give: TF2000/RiD Ultra Magnus. More steps for all the modes than anything I've ever owned, and not a word of English. But the NUMEROUS diagrams showing EVERY step and movement make it crystal-clear the first time. If you can show an "inbetween" step/photo, then it wasn't complete the first time.

I think the fact that Yamato had to put up supplemental steps on their site proves my earlier comment that the YF-19 instructions were poor and incomplete. And thanks, rikiryou.

Canonically, -19 gear splays out. The Hase kit is wrong, don't know why.

If someone could translate that page, it'd help a lot.

::blink blink:: BoB posted? ::checks:: It's been over a year, I thought he'd left the forums.

Almost certainly, but how long will you wait? We're still waiting on VF-0S version 2, while they've gone ahead with two VF-0A's in the mean time. We could see two or three more releases of YF-19's in the next 18 months, and not a revised one in Isamu's colors. Or, they could introduce a running change, and in 6 weeks "fixed" one will be on the shelves.

Plus the fact that Naval ship designations constantly change, and are inconsistent from nation to nation. What the US calls a destroyer, is a cruiser to most everyone else. What we used to call a frigate changed to destroyer, but would now be a cruiser. Frigates are now basically what were corvettes. Naming ships (and designating their type) is mainly political anyways--plenty of ships had their type or mission changed (PURELY ON PAPER, the ship itself didn't alter a rivet) simply to get approval from congress. See "through-deck cruiser" for the all-time best example.

I haven't seen the whole trailer, just some of the screencaps at the 2005 boards etc. SS seemed to be chasing a CGI Hornet that also had blue afterburners. What, are they using Star Wars or Ace Combat as reference? (and the few blue afterburners out there, are not that shade of blue at all---I'm sure you've all stared at a lit match and seen the blue in it--it's that color, almost a purple-blue)

F-22---probably was a CGI'd Starscream, since real F-22's don't have blue afterburners. (Few planes do under daylight conditions)

Warped UP? Never heard of that. Resin can pretty easily warp under weight/stress (even its own, but usually reported in landing gear struts of large kits) but I've never heard of it warping up.

They did it all the time on the 1/60 VF-1's. You only got the type of missile they felt like including. VF-1's without armor, loaded up with RMS-1's look really weird---I had to buy the other missile types from other members here, as I had like a dozen RMS-1's, and not anything else.

Don't forget that our own wwwmwww recently got a D'stance: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=20048

All jets have arrestor hooks, no point in redesigning and attaching a weaker one just to replace the carrier-rated one. There's a slight change in the mounting system on non-US ones though. Australian ones originally didn't have a launch bar on the nose, but since the nosegear was designed to operate with one attached, serious vibrations resulted due to the changed natural frequency of the nosegear so they had to go design a non-functional one and add it back on! Number of landings? I think about 1,000. Hooks are designed for 100 landings. That's the basic number for most modern Navy jets AFAIK.

Re: extra weight--yup. Every non-US Hornet is carrying unnecessary weight around. But it does lead to added strength, so the airframes last a lot longer than they do in carrier service. Recently, the US Navy has actually been pulling F-18C's out of frontline service and giving them to the reserves, and taking the reserves' F-18A's and upgrading them to the F-18A+, and re-equipping that way. Why? Due to such heavy use in Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of F-18C's are starting to "run out of traps"----carrier planes are life-limited by number of carrier landings, not hours. The reserves' Hornet have "lead easy lives" comparatively--so while they may have more hours on the airframes, they have far fewer carrier landings. And the reserves get the F-18C's which don't have many carrier landings left, but have plenty of hours to use up. An F-18A+ has electronics as good as a late F-18C (which makes it better than any early/mid F-18C), weighs less, and has the late F-18C engines. It's now the best Legacy Hornet out there. Much like the F-16C, the main reason for the new model being physically different never materialized, so with some avionics/engine tweaks, you can make the old ones just as capable as newer ones. I'd guess Australia would want Super Hornets mainly for compatability (what there is) with their Legacy Hornets.

Latest news: Australia wants 2 dozen F-model Super Hornets to cover for JSF delays, USN wants 200 for the same reason. Read on another forum Australia really should have gone for some Strike Eagles---great F-111 replacement, and would have filled the gap nicely.

???? VF is the most anti-button-masher fighter I know. SC is pure button mashing. Tekken's in the middle.

http://www.hlj.com/faq/q41.html I've done it several times for F-14 and F-18 parts, never had to wait long--but again, it depends on Hasegawa's own backstock/warehouse. It's pretty easy--just email them---parts(at)hlj.com--the sprue(s) you need and wait. You can figure out about how much it'll cost by looking on the instruction sheet back page--there'll usually be a little rectangle with a list of sprues and yen prices--that's for customers in Japan to just mail in for spare parts, but you can use it to figure out the price of each individual sprue. I always get parts shipped SAL---since you never have any idea how long it'll take to get the parts in the first place, no point in paying for faster shipping--especially since the parts are so light SAL is 1/4 as much as EMS at that point.

Fit and finish is a lot better than an F-14. Which brings me to my next point---looks like we may finally have a good/accurate 1/72 diecast Tomcat. Look at this one: http://www.flyingmule.com/products/CW-586420 Yes, it's expensive, but I'd rather have 1 really good one, than a bunch of "A's with D cockpits and B nozzles". There is also a "catapult lauinch" variant of that one, kneeling with flaps and slats down: http://www.flyingmule.com/products/CW-586437 Would like other people to look/evaluate in case I missed something, but it seems correct for that block/year so far. Of course, those are sample pics, not the final product---Dragon's VF-111 F-14 went from an A to a D from sample to final. Also, someone is finally getting around to the most obvious F-16--the Thunderbirds: http://www.flyingmule.com/products/WT-WTW72010-13 I'll need plenty of pics before I buy one though, I won't buy it unless it's got a small intake. (I don't have any Witty F-16's, so I don't know if they have both types, or only big, etc---Dragon has both types, but seems to think all F-16C's have the big one)

As posted an entire page ago, a YF-19 with the wings back looks like this: http://www.un-spacy-qmtdb.com/uns/variable...bur_yf_19_4.jpg The canon overhead lineart of the YF-19 also marks both the pivot point, and the exact sweep angle: 119.4 degrees back from the "standard" position. (Or, 90 degrees straight back along the leading edge) I often wonder if that drawing/spec was done by Kawamori himself---the sweep angle is given along the quarter-chord for the forward position---which only someone very familiar with jets would know to do that.

I was going to post something similar. I thought Kawamori's explanation would be "Nora's Sv-51 is actually the exact same shade of red as Milia, as an homage--the animators just screwed up and made it pink" Anyways---yellow spray would be more opaque than yellow tampoing IMHO, for a given thickness of paint. It would also do much better across the panel lines--when you spray, the paint gets in the panel lines--when you tampo, it usually passes over them, creating gaps of color wherever a panel line is engraved. However, overspray is a big issue, with 500 different edges on the mask that could lift.

Thinking more, I doubt they'd be tampoed, rather, they would/should be sprayed. That would work and look better, especially considering they're yellow. If you want white or yellow to look good, you should spray. Yamato does spray some of the markings (usually big stripes on the wings etc)---anything with overspray is obviously sprayed--tampo can't overspray (it'll drip, pool, or leave sponge/pad marks--but bad tampoing is rare---it's usually misaligned, not poorly applied) Finally---detailed skulls are very obvious when off-kilter, but "random yellow wiggly stripes" could be off and wouldn't be noticeable.

I hadn't even thought of that (stickering the yellow parts). There's NO WAY stickers could ever work, even decaling that is a challenge. Let Yamato know I'd pay a premium for Nora's paint scheme, to have the yellow markings tampo'd on. 10 bucks more than Ivanov or CF schemes would be well worth it--especially since aftermarket decals would cost that much anyways. I think most anyone would pay a little extra to not have to deal with gigantic thick stickers ALL OVER Nora's. Tampo is the only way to go. I like Nora's scheme for the same reason I like the Sv-51--it's different! Not "yet another white valk with black stripes and a yellow or red accent". And while all black/grey Ivanov is unique canon-wise, now it's fairly common for Yamatos.

But there's much better "canon" valks to do first---like the VF-4.