David Hingtgen

I never, ever, putty anymore. Not even to build up areas. I use CA. (Medium--thin is like water, thick's too thick). It does NOT shrink. And it's easy enough to layer. I use it for all my seams, gaps, etc. As a bonus, it can act as a glue if normal gluing won't work/help, and it adds strength to any seam.

That's the exact (and I mean EXACT) same set of drill bits I have. Of course over the years, only about half of them are the "originals", many replacements (especially in the 70+ ones). Never found replacements to last longer, even if they do cost a lot more per piece. From what I've heard, many hobby drill bits are actually used ones from PC-board making places--after they get too worn/short to get through a stack of chips/boards, the tip is re-pointed and the remaining bit is sold to us, since we generally only need it to go a little ways--which is why the actual bit part is so short on most of the ones you see. Anyways---while I do have pin-vise, I *much* prefer my mini spiral drill. Smaller, lighter, and you can also use it like a pin-vise, in addition to the spiral mechanism. They're worth their weight in gold. Ah yes, Evergreen styrene. .100x.020 is my fave. (Despite having HO scale trains, I have no HO scale styrene--I use it for filling, never scratchbuilding HO houses and the like) Nothing like an AMT/Ertl kit to use up your supply of gap-filling styrene strips!

Real planes are better than models or CGI. It's that simple. (This is especially a problem with airliners---they are represented by models or CGI more and more often, and usually BAD CGI) And nothing's as cool as a high-vis Jolly Rogers plane.

Dang that's huge. I have an unbuilt 1/72 under the bed. A sratch-built 1/48 is just insane. Since the pics are good (and most pics of the real thing are 40 years old) it actually looks better than the real thing! 1/48 B-1B is about the biggest jet kit I know (though I'd have to calculate it out against the vac-formed 1/72 747's) , a 1/48 XB-70..... PS---while the US was heavily investing in an SST, there was lots of work done on reducing or eliminating the effects of the sonic boom. Actually, a lot of the designs looked rather XB-70-ish! Lockheed did the most work. Of course, whenever an aircraft that large changes attitude, there's potential for a superboom. Superboom: when the sonic booms generated from different parts of the plane happen to impact the same point on the ground simultaneously. They don't cancel each other out, they add to the effect. BOOM! Most often happens to a Concorde when it enters a tight turn. Concorde's also one of the few planes long enough to have a distinctive double-boom. (XB-70 would certainly as well, if anyone ever heard it at low supersonic speeds)

The 1/72 Italeri? Never seen one, but I've heard they're not that good. The old Hasegawa would have been by far the best choice. (And I gotta wonder why 1/72, and not 1/48 or 1/32). I know there were lots of R/C ones built, but those were customs. BTW, most of the Top Gun F-14's were from VF-51, though there's rumors a few are from VF-111. (Rumor given credence since VF-111 and VF-51 are sister squadrons, and always deployed together). PS---Top Gun Tomcats are actually VERY colorful---painted in agressor markings like most other Navy "school" planes. There's just very few, and not often seen. Of course 99% of the planes you'd see at Miramar are grey, because that'd be all the in-service Tomcats come ashore to participate in Top Gun. The Top Gun F-14's are more often used to fight against Navy F-18's, since agressor F-18's are pointless for another Hornet squadron.

If you want contrast, real-life touchups/patches, or just want a good place to start looking for shades to mix, etc, the FS colors used for low-vis fighters in the real world are: F-14: A three-tone pattern of 36375, 36320, and 35237, or just two of those (usually omittiing 35237), or sometimes overall 36231 or more often overall 36440. F-15: 36375 and 36320 (1980's), or 36251 and 36176 (1990's+). F-16: Mainly 36118 with 36375 and a touch of 36320, or replace the 36375 with 36320 (more common lately). F-18: 36375 and 36320, or 36495 all over. If there's one color that defines low-vis, it's 36375. (Light Ghost Grey). (Yes, we aircraft modelers live and breathe FS numbers for paint) And the other option is 36118 all over, for the B-1, B-2, F-15E, F-111, etc.

There is quite clearly a massive pitch-up in Top Gun. Whether he stalls is debatable. A rapid pull up to 80 degrees and a massive slowdown, then recovery, is pretty close to a 95 degree pitch-up, slowdown, and recovery.

mikeszekely already said what I was going to---that I consider myself one heck of an airplane fan, and love the Ace Combat series. If you're that elitist, then you also probably couldn't enjoy any movie ever made with planes. Of course, one should never watch a movie with me that has an airliner, they're my true passion, and they're often far more screwed up than military planes in the movies---and I'll point out every little error. PS--isn't the "Top Gun manuever" basically the Cobra, in effect? And AC3 does suck.

Which is why I put the "of course there's exceptions" clause in there. On one of the SR-71 record runs, it got too low and close to LA before slowing down, and there were like 200 "sonic boom damage" claims that day. Ok, I think the rule is "No supersonic flights over POPULATED land". And of course populated means so many people per square mile, and ranchers always complain it spooks the cows, so animals count in the population rule... Nothing's simple when it comes to govt regs. There's also established supersonic corridors across the Atlantic. Concordes also rigidly adhere to the "accel" and "decel" points off the coasts. Usually about 100 miles off-shore, but varies due to temp, pressure, etc.

You know I just realized (embarrassingly for me) that the engine (both front and rear ends) looks quite TF-30-ish. As in, the Tomcat's original engine. (Though my FIRST impulse was J79-ish, most famously used in the F-4) "When all else fails, make a Valk use F-14 parts".

Please send me a copy of my own FSW thread if you can, any way you can. Heck, just photocopy it so I can retype it here. Anyways---here's another XB-70 pic, time frame inbetween the first two:

A few secs later, after aerodynamic forces have ripped off more parts, it's in an inverted flat spin. Left stab gone, right stab just the root is left, and you can see there's a lot less right wing than there should be (compare to the undamaged left wing). (remember the plane's upside down, so left is right, etc)

Actually, the wings WERE down. Only half-way, but still down. Even full down wouldn't have been enough, for they could only stabilize, not control. #2 lost like 99% of the right stab, and probably half of the left. No amount of wing-fold could replace 3/4 of your v.stab area being lost. Plus the fact that entire folded portion of the right wing was gone too. We're talking loss of 70% of all control surfaces. Sequence was right wingtip, right stab, left stab. Some were totally gone, others only partially. But pretty much everything was hit. ::searches hard drive:: Here, best pic of #2 in the initial pitch-up:

Supreme kaoishin--that statement's close to flamebait, IMHO, considering who's here (namely many Valkyrie/plane-lovers) How would MiG-25's shoot it down? Their real max speed is Mach 2.8, and only if lightly loaded. Of course, like most any plane they can overstress their engines and go faster for a few seconds before the turbines melt... And their altitude isn't high enough either. XB-70 is right up there with the SR-71 for the "too fast, too high" category. If the SR-71 is 99% invulnerable to SAM's and high-speed interceptors, then the XB-70 is like 90% invulnerable. If you're slower and lower than a plane, it's pretty darn hard to get off a shot. (Tonight I'll go look at my speed/alt chart for defeating SAM's, see if I can get an exact percentage for the XB-70) Anyways--the Concorde is banned from flying SUPERSONICALLY over LAND in the US, and most of the entire world. It can go supersonic San Diego-Honolulu because that's over water. It can go to Texas (as it did in service) by flying subsonically over US land. Just about every nation has banned supersonic overflights over land, regardless of type of plane. (Of course there's exceptions, like the middle of nowhere Nevada)

Yup, a recon plane's only weapon at times: use ALL the flashbombs at once, and just blind your enemy. And if you're lucky and you've got an RF-4C or maybe an RF-8U with the right load-out (a double-load of the high-power ones), you can get several billion candlepower going. According to one pilot who did just that: "I think that after all these years, there still might be VC wandering around the jungle blinking".

The SR-71 has the massive advantage in that its payload is only a couple of cameras. The XB-70 was supposed to carry enough nukes to zap the USSR into the stoneage. Can't do that with a small plane. The XB-70 is the biggest fast plane, and the fastest big plane. Also the SR-71 was DESIGNED to be stealthy, the XB-70 was not. You can't hold stealthiness against a design that wasn't supposed to be. (Unlike say, YF-22 vs YF-23, when they're both supposed to be stealthy) Anyways, the XB-70 cancellation can be summed up in 4 letters: ICBM. Missile tech advanced WAAAAAAAAY faster than they thought. They thought the ONLY way to nuke would be with very fast, large bombers. Then they made nukes 1/100 as big as before, and missiles that could go much faster and farther--and thus, no need for hideously expensive bombers. It's not that the XB-70 failed in any way, it simply wasn't needed. It'd be like making a dedicated ship class just to carry Tomahawks, when most any Navy ship can be retrofitted. From the time of the XB-70's first design sketch, to its first flight, its purpose vanished. PS--yup, an SR-71 has been hit by SAM shrapnel. The SR-71 wasn't designed to be utterly invulnerable (or like 99.9999999999%) (that'd take Mach 3.5, or another 10,000ft), only to be able to evade like 99% of missile launches. So if you fire enough SAM's, one's bound to get lucky. PPS----XB-70's are HUGE. There's pics of guys having lunch inside the intakes. Nice place to hide from the boss.

Got it, haven't watched it yet. FYI, that's the best the Jolly Rogers ever looked. They only did the high-vis white-belly for 1 year, which is when they filmed. They had similar schemes for years, but for the ultra-famous often-modeled scheme you see here, that's it. (I still wonder why Top Gun had fake squadrons, and all ultra-low vis, when there's many cool squadrons to use, with better paint).

The toys. Nothing gets my attention like a cool transforming jet. ('twas Jetfire, it all comes from that).

This is a great chance to post what is probably the neatest F-16 photo taken in years:

The pilots are rubber, not plastic. They spring back to shape no matter what you do. Heat will instantly ruin them. And it's not the legs. They are simply too big in every way. Height, width, etc.

I tried everything, and the pilots just won' fit in well. If you take tweezers and REALLY smush them in, if you ever try to take them out, they'll catch and pull the instruments panels and the stickers. Best to just leave them out. (Yes, it means pilot-less planes when "in flight" on a stand, but that's better than a damaged cockpit)

I don't know off the top of my head what the Hase VF-1 spinner looks like. (I actually haven't bought any 1/72 Hase kits yet---YF-19 if anything, but they cost as much if not more than Tomcats)

Yup, first one has Sivil.

Well it looks to me from that pic that the VF-0's engine has a nice short, rather flat spinner. (AKA modern) As opposed to the kit's long, hemisphere-tipped tubular one. (There's LOTS of ways to describe that shape, only a few of which are G-rated)

Got them to work by cutting and pasting the URL. As was said, shot 1 is the turbine/burner-ring. Wrong end of the engine. But Hase got it right! Shot 2--shows the blades, but can't see the spinner at all. Spinner: the pointy-rounded part in the middle of the fan, all the blades are arranged around it. So I still don't have a pic of the 1st stage fan's spinner, which is the only part I'm concerned about. The only reason I brought it up is because it just looks so 60's-ish to me. Either Hase guessed, or Kawamori made a rather unusual choice for a modern spinner design. Of course--a head-on view (which is what 99% of engine shots will be) won't help much, since you can't see anything but a circle. I really need like a cutaway, or a schematic of just the engine itself. (The best way to see spinners is to stick your head up the intake yourself--which I do whenever I can, but that won't work in this case)