David Hingtgen

No, I'm too young to be a former anything. But I've had airplane books since I was 4 (couldn't read until I was 5, but I had them--I've had basic air combat tactics books since I was 6). And since the YF-19 is my fave valk by far, I've read everything on FSW I can. (There's not much, it's pretty simple--inverse spanwise flow, that's it--and that doesn't affect much on a plane).

Top 2 are the YF-23 and F-15C. Other highly-ranked ones are the F-14, Tornado, F-16, F-4, F-8, SR-71, B-1B. For older/other stuff: FW-190A, F4U (Merlin-Mustangs be damned, the F4U is the coolest-sounding fighter ever), P-38.

FSW has nothing to do with pitch-rate in normal flight. Doesn't make it seem less stable, doesn't make it faster. Also, a rapid pitch-up leads to high AOA, the FSW's reason for being, where FSW is *more* stable. Thus a YF-19 doing a rapid pitch-up would be more stable than say an F-16 doing such a manuever.

Things to consider: YF-19's canards have a heck of a moment arm due to the long "neck" of the plane. Control effectiveness is "size X distance from axis". And it's got a LONG distance from the pitch axis. (Wouldn't be too good for rolling, or drag-induced yaw, but sure as heck has plenty of pitch authority). Also--high speed=lots of airspeed. Even a 1-foot control surface has authority with 1000kts of air. (Unless people want to get into a compressibility discussion)

NO IT DOESN'T That's twice now. FSW isn't unstable. Period. Doesn't give instability, doesn't make things more prone to be unstable, nothing. It has the same effect as painting the plane green. Nothing. As I said a page ago, it actually makes it MORE STABLE at high alpha. The exact opposite of what most people seem to think. An FSW plane can hold extreme angles of attack without rolling off to the side due to the reversed spanwise flow. Very few aircraft can hold greater than 45 alpha and have ANY manueverability, and almost nothing can hold 60 and not fall out of the sky. But FSW gives you a bit extra. (not a lot, like 5-10 degrees). Man, if the old boards weren't down I'd go copy my whole "FSW and what it does and how it works" from there... Anyways, in response to Lightning 06: Nope, YF-19 has 1D vectoring (but 2D nozzles). It's one of those things where everybody gets things confused--like centrifigual and centripedal force. (It's CENTRIPEDAL on a roller coaster--though 9/10 of text books and TV shows say centrifugal). Regardless of what compendium says, it's 1D, it's clearly shown in a close-up. (Using it to roll, ironically). Lots of people think up and down count as two. No, it's 1. It's a freedom of motion. Best analogy: trains. The engineer can make them go forward, or back. One choice, no others. Cars have 2--front/back, left/right. 2 choices, in any combo. A YF-19's engines (and F-22 for example) can only go up/down. Yes, they may be used differentially to give a left/right roll, but they themselves cannot go left/right (if they did, they'd give yaw--and you almost never see pure yaw vectoring). To do this, you have 2D nozzles. Think of a "normal" nozzle. That's considered 1D---1 dimension about an axis. A circle (which is a line). (Geometry be damned, that's how works with planes--standard nozzle is a 1D axisymmetric cone--equidistant about the thrust axis). But for your standard "flat rectangle" vectoring nozzle, it's not a cone, so you need 2D to describe it---the top/bottom, and the sides. Different dimensions/non-syemmetric (it's a lot wider than tall). Now, to get actual 2D vectoring (left/right) you need what is called the 3D nozzle. Which is really a hyped-up 1D nozzle. F-15ACTIVE or any REALLY modern Super Flanker. Basically a 1D nozzle that can fold and flex a bit at any point to subtly shift itself.

Toothpicks! Far more useful than most people realize. I mainly use them for gluing, and stirring paint. But have hundreds of other uses (stick them in small holes to hold parts, great for holding wheels, sticking in gaps to open stuff up, gently prodding things into place, small shims, and even more uses if you carve/sand them) Oh yeah---STIR paint. Shaking is bad (air bubbles) and not even 10% as effective as stirring. I like flat toothpicks, BTW. Sand paper: 280, 320, something in between, and 600 grit are the basics. Anything rougher is too rough for most models, anything finer is only for final polishing usually for clear parts. Though 1000/1500 can be quite useful if you need a really fine finish for painting. 2000+ is "polishing clear parts till they gleam". Good cheap source for sandpaper: auto parts stores. Though I love the Testors stuff, since it's on plastic sheets, not paper sheets. Flexes easier. Emory boards. Yes, the things for nails. See if you can get a girl to buy them for you, if not just suck it up and buy a half-dozen bright pink nail files. VERY useful. Cusioned, large flat sanding surface. Buy "fine"---usually 280/320 grit. Gives nice even sanding without gouging. Airbrush: I've had great success with the Testors $18.44 set at WalMart. Certainly a good buy to "try out" before you spend $100+ on a airbrush you won't use. $18 won't be able to do 4-color German splatter camo freehand, but it'll lay down paint nice and smoothly if you just want to spray something overall Ghost Grey or something.

But my point is that it's not seamless if you have to swap discs... Swapping discs=not a seamless presentation, thus defeating the point of re-editing credits/openings.

Open 2-rail/3-rail etc railings are photoetched of course, but some ships have solid railings. Basically a thin, half-height soild wall wrapped around a curve. Notably the original bridge installation on the Iowa's. And as I often model ships as-built, and most kits are "as late as possible" I often rely on low-production/garage conversion kits. I doubt even the best company could do a flexible yet nice and thin Iowa-class bridge solid railing out of resin, or the half-platform supports connecting the bridge to the FFC's 40mm gun director platform. Etc. Very thin, very small resin bits (so small they're transparent) are more fragile/brittle than very thin, very small plastic bits.

Yeah, the VF-19F/S would suck a$$ in an atmosphere. No ventral fins, no canards, smaller wings (thus smaller moment arms).

Yeah, but all my planes are plastic. It's the SHIPS that I have problems with resin with. Ever seen 1/700 or 1/1200 scale railings? 1/350 platform supports? When made to scale, they're so thin they're transparent. That's the stuff that's brittle. If it has any thickness at all it's fine, but when you have individual rivets engraved at 1/700, it's pretty darn tiny. (Sometimes the paint ends up thicker than the piece). The thinnest 1/72 aircraft wing is nothing compared to 1/700 ship bits. (Ever seen a 1/700 20mm gun? Those things are TINY)

Big difference between folding up for high-speed, and MORPHING. XB-70's folded their wings for high-speed flight back in the 60's. (Which I'd bet good money is the inspriation for the YF-21 doing it, since the XB-70 is where Kawamori got the name Valkyrie)

Nope, just the one, Escaflowne itself.

Ehh, for small/thin pieces, resin is just plain brittle/fragile. Plastic, while weak, will bend. For big pieces, resin's like a rock.

I don't think you could fit 10 hours onto one disc to do a nice big seamless presentation. You'd have to swap discs, or at least flip them over. And it'd take quite a bit of editing. End of FOTR was Aragorn and co hiking uphill in the forest, opening of TTT was Gandalf fighting the Balrog. Not too seamless. Or even if you put it on multiple discs, it's still a lot of swapping/switching, which isn't too different from just watching all 3 in a row on separate discs. Thus defeating the point of a seamless presentation.

YF-21's a heck of a lot sleeker. The primary drag consideration for high-speed flight is wing leading-edge sweep angle. More is better. And the YF-19's got a negative number!! Anyways---the YF-21's wing beats just about anything you could imagine. The F-16 has an "automatic reflexing" wing, (basically a rapid-response hinged leading edge) and that's a big reason it's so awesome---so good they designed it into the F-22 as well. A much better discusiion would be YF-19 vs VF-22. (which doesn't have BDS, morphing wings, or other fun toys---simply compare the two planes as they are, no gimmicks)

For FOTR, there's the normal one, the extended one, and the extended one with bookends. I got the non-bookends extended one, for it was on sale for only $7 more than the regular version was, and came with a free ticket to see TTT, (which would cost about $7 otherwise) thus negating the price difference. I don't think there's any difference content-wise between extended and extended w/bookends.

1. Hey, whoa, hold on. FSW IS NOT INHERENTLY UNSTABLE. PERIOD. Yes, every plane that's FSW so far is inherently unstable. Because they wanted it to be, not because of FSW. F-16 is unstable, and it's got normal wings. You could very, very easily make a stable, FSW plane. You can also make unstable, normal planes. I mean--every F-15E ever has been dark grey. Just because that's the way they're painted. F-15's are not inherently grey, dark grey planes are not necessarily F-15E's. Same with FSW and instability--there's only been 2 built, both unstable *for other reasons*. Not because of FSW. PS: instability=center of gravity aft of center of lift. Nothing more than that. Put a big, huge, heavy engine in the back of the plane (like the F-16 does) and you will be unstable. Want a big heavy engine in the tail (like an L-1011) but don't want to be unstable? Move the wings (the center of lift) back. Look at most any passenger plane with rear engines--the wing will be VERY far back, to keep the center of lift so far back that the center of gravity can't be behind it. Having the wings so far back like the YF-19 actually keeps it fairly stable, since unless those engines are SUPER heavy, there's no way the center of gravity is behind the center of lift. (X-29 is such a funky plane it'd be unstable no matter what, regardless of its wings) Again--stability is determined by how far aft the center of gravity is compared to the center of lift. If it's forward, you're stable. (more forward is more stable). If it's the same, you're neutral. If it's aft, you're unstable. The YF-19's center of gravity would have to be like behind itself to be aft of the wing's center of lift. PPS--stability and all always and only refers to pitch. Roll stability is a simple function of wing dihedral/anhedral. NOBODY will ever, ever want yaw instability, it's bad and means you'll break up. Even the super-unstable F-16 has multiple ventral fins so that it's nice and stable with regards to yaw. 2. While it's usually not simply the plane's fault (as was implied with the YF-19 for simply being hard to fly) you will usually lose quite a few planes early on due to systems failures, etc. F-15 was notable for its LACK of losses. F-14 lost the first plane on the second flight. Had to wait until they built a 2nd F-14 to continue flight testing. Of course, the best early crash is the YF-22, they caught that one on tape. (Another reason the YF-23 should have won--it didn't crash! )

Ehh. Hasbro said "It is our goal" to have the stacks the same as the JP version. That's their way of saying "if they don't pass the safety test, at least we tried". It's like how stuff is advertised *may* *help* prevent gingivitis/leprosy/bankruptcy. Hasbro didn't say "it WILL have long stacks" they said they'll try. Now, why give such a roundabout answer, when a simple yes or no would suffice? If they were definitely going to be long, they'd just say "they'll be the same length". Regarding diecast content, they flat out said Prime would have it, and Alternators would not. But on the stack issue, they skirted around the question. Not a good sign. "It is our intention that the Masterpiece VF-1's will have a large amount of diecast and excellent paint jobs"

We've had this discussion before, with me writing a lot of it: FSW doesn't do sh*t, asides from making you one heck of a radar target. There. (longer answer: it delays tip-stalling at high-alpha due to inverse span-wise flow thus granting greater stability/control for low-speed moves -----that's what it does. Doesn't affect roll, pitch, yaw, or anything else) So you can do an extra-slow "slow speed pass" at an airshow. ::note to self--go find multi-page FSW thread I wrote on the old board:: Supplement: why then are so many FSW planes manueverable? Because if you look at the Su-47, X-29, etc, you'll notice they have canards. THAT is why they can move. And the Su-47 has vectoring, too. You'll notice the Su-37, with vectoring and canards, but no FSW, is about as good as it gets. Same with the F-15ACTIVE. If FSW was so great, don't you think the F-22/23/32/35/Rafale/EF-2000/Grippen might have had it? Nope, but most of them have canards and/or vectoring for their superior agility vs older planes. YF-19's my fave valk BTW, but I sure won't give it any points for manueverability based on FSW. (Yeah, it looks cool, but doesn't mean anything). It's CANARDS however.... (note that the YF-19 has canards, the Yf-21 doesn't---that's the difference, IMHO). However, YF-21's have way better vectoring. (My vote for agilty under most all conditions is the YF-21, the YF-19 would be easier to fly at high-AOA/low speeds---like a Hornet)

Try a lot of paints. See what you like. Every color from every brand is different. Even similar colors from the same brand can behave differently. PS--almost all gunmetal is evil. Inherently nasty color. Also, jet exhaust just plain sucks, do not use it under any circumstances.

I can get you a shot of EXACTLY how the pins go into Super Hornet gear if you want. (Crawled on the ground for those pics) As for missiles: you'll generally find them all over on the pylons/rail right above them, but not ON them very often. However, you'll find one hanging off of a protective cover on the nosecone pretty often. Here's one I saw on an F-16C:

Well, the big thing is locking on to something to the rear. Are UMM-1's heat-seeking or radar-guided? VF-1's sure don't have rear radar. (Flankers do) Anyways, if there's still any debate left, I vote for ECM stuff for any extra space. Every single F-14/F-15/F-16/F-18 upgrade ever involves more ECM stuff and antennas. (One of the primary reasons it's so hard to tell F-15A's from F-15C's nowadays is that F-15A's have been upgraded with nearly every antenna and ECM bump that the C's have)

Above all else, hang them from the pitots and probes on a plane (especially around the nose). They're there to prevent dust/dirt getting in the openings. (The vinyl type that actually covers things)/goes over them Also, be sure to put some on the gear struts. The type which is more like an actual tag, hanging from a pin. Pins are generally used to lock something open or closed.

Gerwalker: markings aren't low-vis. They're grey, but since they're light grey on dark grey (or dark grey on light grey) they still contrast highly. Low-vis markings are very hard to see against the background. Hagan--I liked the space example, I'll use it for the next example: For space, low vis probably would be black, and low-vis markings would be VERY dark blue or VERY dark grey. If you used any other shade, they'd have high contrast and show up easily. Here's some low-vis markings on an EA-6B:

re: delta wings and swept wings w/stabs Inherent difference. Wing, vs tail+wing. No matter how swept, an F-14 or Tornado's tail isn't part of the wing, and thus acts very different than a delta winged plane. Elevons alter the wing's characteristics itself. A tailplane is an external, independent source of pitch (possibly roll) control. Deltas suck, IMHO. And canards are superior to tailplanes. (The BEST is to have canards AND tailplanes--see F-15ACTIVE, F-16 CCV) Anyways--more controls are better. Cars with 4-wheel steering are rare, but they can turn better than any normal car ever will. Same with planes. A plane with canards and tailplanes will out-turn a *similar* delta. Yes, a modern Mirage will beat an F-4, but so will ANY plane that's 30 years newer. It's because it's new, not because it's a delta. A delta with canards (EF-2000, Grippen) should beat any non-canard delta there is. And to have canards and tailplanes--well that would be the F-15ACTIVE or Super Flanker, ungodly manueverable aircraft capable of moves which don't even have names yet. (Yes, vectoring's part of it, but it's mainly the canards+tailplanes--vectoring isn't amazingly wonderful, at least certainly not US-vectoring) Basically--why have just one method of control (elevons) when you could have 2 or 3? And with 2 or 3, you can use them independently. Left canard down, left stab up, right aileron up, right stab neutral, right flaperon neutral, right canard up, left aileron down, and left flaperon up. I have no idea what that would do besides a left yaw, and you'd need FBW for sure, but combos like that is why a Super Flanker can do just about anything. Delta-winged planes have a LOT fewer combos available. As for VF-1 pitch control: yes I guess that'd work in space if you used verniers, but in the air it'd be far less effective than vectoring or conventional controls.