RFT

Jaguar wasn't really replaced by Tornado, thouh they do have similar roles. Jaguars are only now going out of service being replaced by Typhoons. of the list, i'd have to go with the F-111- despite my love for the Tonka. however, there's an omission from the list... and it'll be keeping the sun off a Buccanneer...

As I recall, the naming of the typhoon happened because the RAF decided to call it Typhoon first- (to the slight chagrin of the germans), and the name was adopted for export promotion of the eurofighter. I don't think the plane is going to be called Typhoon in the national service of the other partner nations. what annoys me about the JSF naming isn;t so much alling it "lightning", it's the clunky "II" they put on it. what, are they worried people'll get the planes confused?

to be honest, I wouldn;t have been that disappointed if they'd not put landing gear on MP screamer as he comes with a flying stand. I do wonder what they're going to do about paint jobs- presumably this is going to painted in a nice G1-derived scheme, but it would be cool if they did a USAF or JSDF version.

tapping a few numbers into my calculator and if the MP starscream is 320mm in fighter mode, that makes him 1/60 scale.

Early Navy Phantoms were flyable from the back seat, though the air force, and I think later navy, planes eliminated the faeture on thr grounds that having 2 pilots in the same plane sometimes leads to problems. I would imagine that the F-15E WSOs are probaly given enough training to navigate and land the plane if need be, but training them for combat would probaly be a waste of resources and lead to the same sort of crew friction that arose with the phantoms. There are Tornadoes with full control from the backseat, and they aren't a seperate "trainer" type, but fully combat capable, but it's only a few aircraft used for training. it's not the way the aircraft was designed in the way the F-15E was.

Dammit, Namco UK still haven't announced a UK release. if it's delayed much longer, I'll just end up skipping it entirely in favour of an Xbox 360 and OverG Fighters

I'd go with the F-8, unless the pilot decides to turn-fight with the scooter, then the A-4's probably going to be the better fighter.

David, When you say a diecast is copied off the hasegawa kit- do you know if this is done legitimately or not? It seems a bit dodgy to me. Anyway, an aside- what's the catalgue number of the Good dragon F-15 you got a few months back. I'd like to get one, or failing that, a newer one that should have the fixes you described on it. So far, my small collection is all-corgi (The pre-falkands Shar, Gulf War Bucc, and 27th squad Tornado), but i'd like an F-15. I'd like a tomcat as well, but reading all the posts about how no-one makes an accurate one has put me off a bit.

There was talk (possibly in this very thread) about a famous pilot (whose name I forget..snodgrass?) looking to obtain a few for airshow purposes.

I think the thing with the original "Rogue Trader" rulebook was that they intended the game to be a skirmish game with small numbers of characters per side. The suggested scenarios (I remeber one being chase through a spaceport) seem to bear this out. the "rogue traders" in question where the space-pirate/freelancer characters they saw the game being based around. However, people used it as a massed-army game, which made a lot of the rules in the RT book redundant and those that were left were really clunky- I remeber a really tedious way of dealing with vehicles that got introduced based on a cutaway grid of the vehicle you had to aim at a point on. it took minutes to resolve just one hit, and if you had a heavy weapon squad firing at an enemy tank it took bloody ages... The second edition rules (1993, I think) improved things a lot by speeding things up, but the 3rd seemed to take it too far- I never understood why they made all the races and characters have the same movement amount. Oh, memories. I gave away most of my army (a large number of Space Wolves) a few years ago, but I kept the Metal characters and Terminators. I only got anywhere near decent at painting when I was on the cusp of growing out of it. It's a shame GW stopped doing the stand-alone boxed games. they were a great introduction to the hobby. My first was dark future, a car wars rip-off that was set in the dim, far-off year of... 1995. Happy memories of staying inside during school lunchtimes of the turn of the 90s playing blood bowl, Space Hulk, and whatever that space-combat game was called.

Or the RX-8, which would have been most appropriate of all, as the original G1 toy it's a homage to was a repaint of Jazz...

There's a little bit of a mention of the naval F-16 (which would have been a GD/Vought joint venture in the same way the F-18 was Northrop/MDD), including some low-res cutaways of the design, here: Aerospaceweb article The stepped cockpit of the two-seaters is interesting, and arguably more elegant than the shape of the F-16 B and D. To be honest, though, I don't think it was ever likely to have happened. If both planes needed substantial re-engineering to work on carriers, I'm not sure even the stingiest of bean counters would have forced the navy to start from a platform they weren't happy with when there was another they were happy with available for development. Particularly in light of how recent the F-111 debacle would have been at the time.

GM sold lotus in 1993. It was bought by Romano Artoli (who was owner of the revived Bugatti Company of the early 90's). it was his investment that allowed the Elise to go forward (the car is named Elise in honour of his granddaughter) Artoli sold most of the company to Proton in 1996. at the time, he retained a 20% stake.

How can they axe F136 but not JSF? Surely the cost of re-engineering the airframe to take another engine is going to be astronomical.

I actually did, but deleted it out of the post as it was getting a little out of hand. Sea Harrier FRS.1: Mark 1 of type "Sea Harrier". Role: Fighter/Recon/Strike Strike in this sense refers to nuclear anti-ship capablity, a role it ostensibly took over from the bucanneer (S.1 and S.2) Sea Harrier FA.2: Mark 2 of type "Sea Harrier". Role Fighter/Attack. This has changed with the dropping of Recon (the Shar never did it in the end) and dropping anti-shipping and nuclear duties to a more general ground and shipping attack role. there's no skipped numbers for trainers, as the Royal Navy doesn't have Sea Harriers for trainers. it used Harrier T.4N (for learning how to fly the thing) and Hawker Hunter T8Ms (for learning the Radar). the T.4Ns have been upgraded to T.8N. Still, it's riddled with inconsistecy. I guess it's not as important for the UK to have quite as rigourous a designation system as the US, as due to the smaller and less diverse nature of our armed forces, you don't need it to tell you quite as much. and you're right on abortive V interim- for some reason the right word eluded me. Edit: There's an interesting House Of Commons Defence select commitee report on the withdrawal of the Sea Harrier Here. the main reasons given by the MOD were that it's underpowered in hot climates and not that effective as an air-ground platform. The Fleet-defence role is envisioned to be taken over by the new type 45 destroyers. mention is made of both upgrading the Shar with the latest engine from the GR.9 and making a radar/amraam capable GR.9, but the MoD says either programme would be risky and very expensive seeing as the Harrier's supposed to be out of service by 2015.

That would be a great idea, but I don't think it's going to happen. The plan seems to be just making do with GR.9/9A (9A has a more powerful engine) until JSF comes into service. If we wanted to retain the fleet-defence capabilities of the FA.2, then they could just have been kept in service. lots of life left in them (about half of them were new builds in the 90s). I think our government doesn't feel there's an airborne threat to worry about. UK designations are odd, (it's taken me a long time to understand them) but it makes sense once you know them. it goes Type name, Mission Identifer, mark Number (of the type) So for Tornado it Goes: Tornado GR.1, Tornado F.2 (abortive ADV Variant), Tornado F.3, Tornado GR.4 Harrier's slightly more confusing as designations seem to keep getting skipped, but that's the trainers. so Harrier GR.1, Harrier T.2, Harrier GR.3, Harrier T.4 (it keeps alternating until uoi get to the GR.9 and T.10. If a Radar and Amraam-equipped GR.9 were built, it would likely be the Harrier FGR.11 .The Sea Harrier is Considered a different type and has it's own sequence, though there's more in common between Sea Harrier and Harrier GR.3 than GR.3 and GR.5

There isn't going to be an "FRS.9". once the FA.2s are retired, our carriers are solely going to be operating GR.9s and GR.9As as a stopgap until the new carriers and F-35 come into service. this of course means that our carriers will have to rely on allied air cover, should the need arise. If everything goes to current plan, we'll be operating the new carriers basically as a bigger version of what we've already got, launching F-35Bs off a ski jump and landing them harrier-style without wires. If F-35B (alone) collapses, then we'll very likely go to F-35Cs (and configure the new carriers with cats and wires) or possibly a further upgraded harrier (as the USMC will presumably want something with STOVL) It's only if JSF totally collapses that the possibility of navalised typhoons, or rafales, or super bugs comes in. and even then, with a fairly conventional carrier, I can;t see us operating multiple fighter/attack types. As a nation I don't think we can afford it. fortunately the Rafale and Typhoon (and the Super Bug) are both sufficiently muti-role to cover both jobs. I don't think, from a techincal standpoint, we'd have much trouble navalising the Typhoon- BAe have carrier expeience from the goshawk, and few planes have stronger gear than a Harrier. However, I still think that for cost reasons an off-the-shelf carrier plane is more likely, and between the hornet and the Rafale, I think we'd pick the Rafale, but neither would be a popular decision.

one or other of the new carriers'll be Ark Royal. when the new boats go into service we won't have the old one any more.

From the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the stovl version was dropped altogether. if we (the UK) are goign to be feilding a "proper" sized carrier we might as well save money and get the carrier variant. Post cold-war, the dispersal advantages of stovl don't seem worth the cost and complextity. I'm a huge fan of the harrier, and I'm sad to see it go, but as an air force plane its party trick is now largely irrelevant, and as a naval plane it would never even have existed if we'd kept full-size carriers. It's a classic British job of making a triumph from a bad situation, but the bad situation was of our own doing to start with. Nah, I'm sure we'll carry on in the grand british tradition of slinging an ugly radar onto a plane or helicopter not really suitable for it. maybe we'll dust off some of the Fairey Gannet AEW.3s in museums. I think most likely would be the F-35C as it's already a UK-involved project. If the whole JSF things falls through (which it might), then it'll be Rafales or maybe a navalised version of the Typhoon. I can't see the UK buying an off-the-peg US aircraft over a european one these days (though we did with the Apache, thinking of it). If poltics (and french/british pride) allows the french navy to be operating a UK-designed carrier, then I'm sure it would allow the fleet air arm to fly french planes. Just have to hope we dont; get shafted on the deal like we did on the Jaguar- another plane now on the way out of the RAF which I'll be sad to see go. of course the other thing is what are we going to do for all the other piddly things you need with proper carriers - trainers (goshawks, presumably) COD (I guess we're using helicopters for this at the moment but a fixed-wing aircraft would be a lot more efficient)

I feel I should stand up to defend the non-car chase scenes in Bullitt- of it's time, it was groundbreaking for a cop movie in terms of look and the general shades-of-grey it paints its world in. It pretty much set the template for the modern cop movie in the sense that the hero's fallible. In some ways the "realism" they were aiming for hurt it, as some of the scenes are a little aimless, and where they used real people for some of the smaller parts (particularly in the hospital scene) the performances aren't great. The dirty harry movies may be overall better films, but they're polish on the template that Bullitt set out. Without the car chase, It would still be a good cop movie. The chase overshadows the rest to the extent I don't think it gets the recognition it deserves. so many articles I've seen state the chase as the "climax" of the movie, but it's actually the half-way point. It's only after that charger explodes that the true plot begins to be revealed. Maybe I'm reading too much into a film I've watched many times, but the theme running through bullitt -particularly the second half- seems to be the difficulty of being in a situtaion where you're surrounded by awful actions and not letting it make you inhuman. You could almost see the Eastwood character as Frank Bullitt, ten years down the line, worn down. Heat (another film I really enjoyed) is a case in point, to me it feels quite similar, and not only because the final scene is very influenced by Bullitt's (a night-time chase across an airport). what I didn;t like about it was the way the ending sort of wussed out with good triumphing over evil. a stronger ending would have been for Pacino and De Niro both to die, to cancel each other out. I honestly can;t think of many "classic" movies that have disappointed me. In general I can tell when a movie's not going to be my cup of tea so I just don;t watch it. It's a Wonderful life, for example.

I hope this isn't a repeat topic, but I can't find any... http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~bu9t-sm/vf1.html

That was Strike Commander.

This is such a good point- I've still not unlocked everything in AC5 because of this- the F-16's worst because of the 3-at-once thing, and the fact the standard viper isn't actually much cop in the game, being neither a top-level air-air or air-ground machine. Getting the Tornados (another 3-at-once tree) was a pain as the BDSP is rather a specialist weapon. The other problem with the shallow, wide upgrade trees is once you've slogged through to get the planes unlocked, there's then no point flying the planes you've unlocked- I really wanted the Tornado F.3 but one you've unlocked it there's nowhere else to go. I'd liek to see at least one upgrade for every plane, as I find, at the moment at least, that if picking a plane to for a mission i'll nearly always pick one with available upgrades as otherwise it's a bit of a wasted mission. I've never so much as touched the Gripen, MiG-29, MiG-1.44, YF-23 and others... Selectable secondary weapons is another thing- it doesn't have to be every weapon in the game, but a couple of options would be nice, as at least it would allow us to upgrade planes slightly quicker because they'll be useful for more than one mission. Multirole planes could pick between an air-air or air/ground weapon, mud-movers between maybe thier specialist weapon (the tornado's BDSP for example) and iron bombs, and air/air could pick between XMAA/QAAM, or XLAA/XMAA for the big interceptors (tomcat and foxhound, really) just 2 weapons per plane would open things up much more. the number of A-G missions where I wanted to use the Tornado, but couldn't as the BDSP was unsuitable, got really frustrating.

To avoid further clogging the aircraft Vs thread, I thought it would be good to start a new one for this new Ace Combat game. there's now a trailer for it here. same planes as in the magazine scans (F-15, F-18, Draken, Eurofighter), though there's a short shot of a tanker I can;t quite identify. I first thought it was a victor, but i'm not sure now.

on of the screenshots in this image shows a SAAB Draken, which is a pretty old plane. however, there's a eurofighter on the same page... (as well as F-15 and F-18)