David Hingtgen

Move the shoulder buttons (more on the rear than top) and the DS would be my fave of the more recent controllers. Original Saturn is still #1. I hate the GC for playing any "Non-3D exploration" game. It's perfect for Zelda and Metroid, but will wholeheartedly agree with it sucking for fighters. 360's would be nice if the D-pad wasn't the worst in 10 years, response-wise. (And still not all that fond of the shoulder button placement--actually liked the original XB pad's shoulder and black/white location best, it's only real flaw was hugeness). I still have to perform the 360 D-pad fix, may do it this week. As soon as I buy the driver bit to open the thing up...

I guess we can't convince you to sculpt one from scratch? Maybe Ryuji...

I'd buy a Cy-Girl style Milia, or the parts needed to convert an existing one. I know there's at least a few Cy-Girl heads with green(ish) hair. But it's got to be SDF style purple. PS--I really don't care about scale, I just want a Milia figure. 1/48, 1/55, whatever, so long as it's around a foot tall.

I know, but it'd LOOK COOL. Yeesh---the 1/48 toy isn't even 100% consistent anyways--part DYRL part TV. So I want my Macro-style Milia in Micro-size. PS---that was fast! And good job. Though I would like even smaller hands---that is frankly a big male vs female difference, and usually exaggerated in anime. (Anime girls have TINY hands)

As opposed to Toynami making *Macross* transforming VF-1's? Not to mention the age-old Toycom/Yamato issue.

'twas my point. Regardless of anime magic etc, there's just no way for an extra half-a-gunpod to be stored on the 1/60 shield. Officially it is supposed to carry spare magazines. Good luck finding space for 2... As for shield/fold booster: We get a pretty good idea of where it connects from the anime. The "4 corners" of the shield is about it. The rear connection points could be by the legs, but the front ones are certainly near the head/shield intersection, outboard near the shoulders.

I'm totally serious. EXO--I want both the all-purple and red/white versions.

I'd buy a more "accurate" 1/48 Milia pilot in a second if someone made one. I sure as heck can't sculpt. A zillion 1/48 plastic model jets out there, and not a one has a female pilot to even use as a starting point. Of course, even if there were they'd be in a bulky G-suit, etc, not much help for a skin-tight one like Milia has.

I freeze-framed M+ recently, and it's one heck of a magazine. More like half the entire gunpod. I'd be surprised if there's a spare.

I'm very curious/interested. The Toynami just didn't LOOK that neat to me to justify the cost. If Yamato could do a better sculpt I'd be very interested. Though not $365 interested. And I've bought from NCS for like a decade. Still, NCS's stock number is "TMY-VLTN"---Toynami Voltron? Maybe it's Yamato importing the Toynami one, and NCS is re-importing them back!

Maybe you missed it, maybe it was in MN. But anyways, my idea for Fold Booster attachment: The Fold Booster comes permanently attached to a different shield. To attach the fold booster, you simply remove the YF-19's normal shield, and attach the shield that has the Fold Booster molded on. Simple, easy, and leaves no holes in the YF-19 when it's not attached.

Exactly. 1. Nobody impulse buys things as expensive as a valk. Yes, you can impluse buy a $15 model jet or Gundam because it looks cool in the packaging, but not something that costs 10 times that. "On the shelf" appearance isn't very important to Yamato's sales. Especially since half of them get imported by people who'll never see them in a store to start with. 2. Battroid mode would allow VERY compact packaging---I've noticed that over the years, more and more of the larger Transformers come in robot mode, probably for that reason. Note that Yamato's first valks came in battroid mode, and had WAY smaller boxes. Just compare the VF-11 and YF-21, with and without FP's. 3. You don't have to go to the extreme I listed--simply sweeping the wings back alone would save a few inches, and folding down the tailfins is pretty minor, appearance-wise.

Going a little OT but: Yamato seems to have no concept of "folding/disassembling" things in the box. They want it to be 100% "opened and exposed". What, does anybody actualy go into a shop, open the flap, look inside, and impulse buy a $150 valk they didn't know existed until it was on the shelf? They could have them in sealed plain brown boxes and it wouldn't affect sales. Especially anyone who imports--we all buy them sight unseen anyways. Go look at how Hasbro sells Transformer jets. You fold the tailfins down, sweep the wings back, THEN put in in the box. And you can use a LOT smaller box. If the original seekers came with their tailfins installed, they'd need a box twice as big. But by making the purchasers spend a good 3 or 4 seconds installing them, they save a lot on box space and shipping charges. And the accessories aren't nicely arranged all around--they're in the corner. Imagine how small a box you could put a 1/48 Strike VF-1 in if you simply: 1. Fold the tailfins down. 2. Sweep the wings back. 3. Take the nosecone off. 4. Package the FP's and missiles all UNDERNEATH the valk like the instructions and micro missiles and stickers are. Just have a few clearly visible from above to show that they're there. Like a single booster and a RMS-1. Because that's how Hasbro would package it...

Not AFAIK. Maybe it switched, but I sure don't know which was first. PS--going by that googled definition, US destroyers are the exact opposite. It says "fast, but long-endurance". Well, the Burke class is quite slow with a very short range--but it's our main destroyer! Now, Spruance class fit the bill, but a lot of them are gone now, and going, with more and more Burkes coming. "Destroyer" REALLY doesn't have a good definition, much less one that is consistent.

AFAIK it wasn't anything like a dogfight--they flew at separate times. They basically put on airshow demos. F-14 had the better show. From what I've read from F-15 pilots, they have no challenge from an F-14 in a knife fight. (Of course, they're pretty biased and may embellish a bit--or a lot)

Not to mention the back one's just a screw hole, and I think both are completely inaccessible in fighter mode. You can only see the back one when it's mis-transformed with the shield too low. I still like my "new shield" theory.

YF-23 #2 is still "missing"--nobody's seen it since they took it away from the museum where it'd been for years. News/rumor was always the FB-23 bomber program, but basically--someone should have heard SOMETHING by now. Which makes me think it's more likely being used for tests at Area 51 or something... (which does not imply aliens or anything, it's just a fact that Area 51 does do a lot of secret testing, even if it's rather "benign") F-22: 2 operational squadrons at Langley currently I think. There's more in the test squadrons than operational at the moment I'd guess.

They were destroyers until the political climate made it sound better to build "larger" ships, and cruisers are bigger than destroyers. A billion dollars is a LOT for a "mere destroyer"---but to get a big cruiser for that kind of money? Deal! It's all about what you can convince congress to fund... It was originally DDG 47 Ticonderoga, DDG 48 Yorktown, 49 Vincennes, 50 Valley Forge. Then they decided to call them CG's, so they were "renumbered" or whatever. And then the Burke class picked right back up at DDG 51, right after "DDG 50" Valley Forge. If you ever wondered why the Ticos start at 47 instead of 42 (the last Virginia class is CGN 41) that's why---they were originally DDG's, and the last one was DDG 46. And of course, the majority of CG's were actually built as Destroyer Leaders (DLG, DLGN)...

Ironically, the JSF should be the F-24, if not for a few secretaries and generals having no clue for how planes are nor should be named... http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav...s.html#_MDS_F35 X-35 does NOT lead to F-35. X-15 isn't the F-15, X-20 isn't F-20, X-29 sure isn't going to be the F-29... (Of course, the X-35 shouldn't even really have been the X-35 anyways, the X-32 and -35 should have been the YF-24 and YF-25, thus the JSF should really, actually, truly be the F-25)

If you want to get into the etymology of the name: The full name is SUBMARINE destroyer. As in, they are designed to destroy submarines. That is still a defining capability of theirs, but the name is shortened to simply "destroyer" as sub-hunting is just one of their many roles now. It also goes along with their escort duties---frankly, what is the point of assigning a smaller, weaker ship to escort a heavily armed, heavily armored ship that's going off to fight similar heavily armed and armored ships? Because it can't take care of itself? No. Because ANY ship is vulnerable to submarines, but not many can fight subs. So they need dedicated anti-sub escorts---thus, submarine destroyers. It doesn't help that what the US calls a destroyer generally disagrees with the rest of the world, and that frigate has changed from "the largest ship after a battleship" to "about as small as it gets yet still considered a warship and not a patrol boat". See the 1970's for ships being changed from destroyers to frigates, frigates to destroyers, destroyers to cruisers, etc. It's pure politics what stuff is called---most of it came because of various perceived "gaps" with the Soviet navy--none of which existed, it simply looked that way depending on how you name and classify ships. It's still purely political what ships are called. Ask the British about their "through-deck cruisers". And compound that with the problem that "submarine destroyer" is named for what it destroys, but "missile destroyer" is named for what it destroys with...

Thrust/weight isn't everything. Otherwise the F-4 would have easily beaten every MiG in Vietnam. And the F-8 wouldn't have whipped the F-4 in every mock combat that took place. From what I've read about the infamous F-14 vs F-15 fight to get the Iranian order (which really wasn't, they wanted exactly what the F-14 excelled at and had researched the decision for years---watching the F-15 fly was more of a formality to not tick off the USAF), it was mainly "who was willing to push the envelope harder".

As in the "$10 at Wal-Mart" one? Then yes.

That setup would still cost less than any currently available 1080p TV, much less two.

Nobody's talking about the latest from Kutaragi----what the $600 PS3 can do with its 2 HDMI ports? You can connect *two* 1080p HDTV's side-by-side and get a super-widescreen image. Yeah. For the one guy who has two identical 1080p TV's to devote to the one or two games that might support that. Sony---pushing the limits of technology that nobody cares about.

What about wings angling down? Hmmn, you knew about this before the CAD was published, and that was June. Just how far in advance do you get stuff?