Lynx7725

Heck no. The more I look at it, the more I dislike the chrome on the swords.. anyone has any idea how to strip those off? I think I'll start picking up NMM techniques to use on the Red Astray. Back to the point here.. the articulation on these kits are probably inherited from the MG kits, particularly the err.. whatyoucallthem series.. Master Gundam and all? Can't remember the series names. They are quite posable, and one other positive offshoot is that the RX-79[G] Ground Gundam benefitted from the experience Bandai gained from the earlier kits. As for the Blue Astray.. yeah, I sort of like the colour scheme, but the big-@ss shield/ sword/ weapon/ it puts me off. I know from experience that it is highly unlikely that the armature can actually hold the weapon up.

The latest Gundam Fashion is having a huge-@ss weapons which models simply do not have the armature resistance to handle. Nonetheless Bandai engineering has improved steadily over the years. While these do not have the heft and durability of die-cast models, they give die-cast a damn good run for the money. As for whether this is HG or MG, I'm not really sure.. by convention HG kits are 1/144, but 1/100 MG boxes are very clearly marked. I have both the MG and HG of the Red Astray unbuilt (so that I can have a Daisho.. ), but I can't remember the 1/100 grading.

The BSG look is exactly in the relative positioning of the engines; few other designs uses that vertically asymmetrical design and it's fairly iconic. As for the TIE bomber, it's actually a mistake on my part, because I thought there was only one engine because the other was hidden by the hull in the initial shot. As for the struts, because you went to the effort to add in the wings, I suspected a transatmospheric intent, but needed confirmation.. I feel the wings and struts detract from the looks of the craft, but that's just me. Then again, if you add solid struts, it may resemble Y-wings a little too much.. As for the point about not using Sci-Fi magic, I agree to a certain extent, but you have to bear in mind your target audience for the book.. I'll definitely appreciate the attention to technical details, but I certainly don't want to bog down into a technical discussion of the merits of high-mounted and low-mounted engines on the impact on moments around the centre of gravity. I do enough reading at work; I read at my leisure to be entertained. By all means I think you should try to go for an importable version to try out your designs.. a lot of your designs are transatmospheric, so at the very least it would be entertaining to try out your design in the air.

Uhm, we ARE talking about sci-fi here right? Those engines on the original looks massive enough to lower the CG (Centre of Gravity) to somewhere near the centerline. Basically, my opinion is that you can pretty much put in any explanation to justify a design (anything from magical technology to simply heavier engines), so it's really a matter of making it look good. Personally? I think the old one have a TIE bomber/ Battlestar Galatica look, which may be reusable as a ship-of-line.... might be worth exploring there. As for the new design, I think it looks good. 'Cept maybe the flappy wings, which may or may not stay depending on your mood.. but I think at the very minimum needs more work. Oh yeah, the other thing is maybe the struts connecting the engines to the body should be a single solid joint rather than two planes.. but that's a personal preference.

Working on purely visual impressions (and none of your background/ fluff), the older version has a more "bomber" look (reminding me of a TIE Bomber actually), whereas the new design has a more "fighter-bomber"/ "strike" craft look. Which of course is fine if that is the look you intended.

Cut him some slack, will ya? The photography's off.. but at least there's the effort into making the model looks different from "Out-of-Box". It's generally more effort that what I put into my HGUC/ MGs anyhow. Armor: You REALLY need to figure out how to get sharper pics; the out-of-focus nature detracts from what you are doing. If you are using a webcam to take the pics.. I strongly suggest getting even a low-end 2 megapixel for these work.

I know. But you can't just consider the potential human cost to yourself. The international backlash from incidents like that can be rather painful in the long run too. At any rate, that's a bit too political already. Come to think of it, even the bow wake of a USN Nimitz class would probably swamp and sink a dhow. Doesn't even need a direct hit.

Provided that it is indeed terrorist suicide bombers and not some poor slob who don't understand Engrish. Turning innocent folks into shark food always have reprucsussions.

For your information, my country's navy had one of its patrol craft mowed down by a container ship last year. We lost 4 sailors there (all female btw). In our case, we had both ships under power, and both ships were aware of the positions of each other, and it was apparently a result of bad decisions that got the tail end of the patrol craft cut off by the bow of the container ship. We got lucky. We are talking about a gross difference in tonnage by a factor of at least 10 (if not 100), and we end up losing only the tail end of a craft and 4 sailors, regrettable as it is. And yes, the careers of the OOD and the trainee who was at the helm) were shot. In this case, the dhow was outweighed by a thousand times over, and it's not surprising to hear that it sank outright. It's really hard to spot a small boat in broad daylight, nevermind at night, and depending on the sea condition radar might not work well enough. (Aside: That's the problem with technology. People are so used to it working great in the right conditions, such that when the conditions aren't right they still continue to trust it. Almost invariably ends up in tragedy.) David: Impressive pic of the carrier taking a turn. Yup, anything not secured is going flying...

What, nobody but me got this?

Bingo! Anubis has the ball.

You got one of the two. Soujirou has no compuncture against killing because of his general lack of emotion.

Alrighty, an easy one. In Rurouni Kenshin, Seda Soujirou had three qualities which makes him an incredibly potent swordsman. One is his ability to move faster than the eye can perceive. What are the other two?

Just to clarify a few things. HGUC, for all practical purposes, have replaced the HG lines. I need to check on my Red Astray 1/144 kit to see if it's a HGUC or a HG line. HG was the largest model line, but no new kit has been issued in that line for a long time. HG kits, when compared to the '80s kits, were excellent and several like the HG Mk. II had new molding technologies incorporated. However, these days I think the MG line is slowly and surely overtaking HG in terms of quantity. GFF (Gundam Fix Figuration) and its Zeonic equivalent (Zenography) are not so similar to MSiA. MSiA is, as you say, an action figure/ toy. GFF is more of a display piece with limited posability. In a sense, if MSiA is HG, then GFF is near MG.

IIRC, Detachment Of Limited Line Service or something like that. Quite liked the design for those.. tried the game? Can be rather brutal.

Come to think of it, the GBP's placement is very similar to a basic set of samurai armour. I wonder if it is possible to use or build an armour stand for it..?

Technically, a 1/60 GBP is already non-transformable.. I kind of like the overgrown golem look to the current GBP, so it doesn't really bothers me. It is probably close to what a RL GBP would look -- anime magic is good, ain't it? From a technical POV, having the GBP as a one-piece toy is probably more secure in the long run, but the flexibility of being able to use the GBP across multiple Valks is really attractive to me. Also, with a one-piece, unless the alternative heads are included, I won't get more than one -- but with this setup, I currently have 2. I think I like it the way it is; the flexibility is a big sell point for me, really. With what I have, I can choose to display my Valks as any of the 3 basic modes, with Strike parts, and as a GBP, so it's a good thing. (Besides, I got the K&M GBP toy. )

Just got mine yesterday -- 2 set. Pictures forthcoming. Just a quick opinion post. Overall feels quite solid, dislike a few things: 1. Very tight shoulder covers. It's also oversized, which makes the limited arm mobility even worse. On my modified CF, it's acceptable though. 2. The hinge pin for the pectoral missile launcher is visible. 3. Cod piece. This is a strange one. It fits well on my Strike-1S, but poorly on my CF; indicative that there had been slight modifications for post-Hikaru-1J 1/60s. On my Strike 1S, it fits well and only occassionally falls out. I would just need to lengthen the top pins to make it fit better. On my CF, it fits poorly and is prone to popping loose. It is going to take some extensive rework to make it stay, and I'm not really in the mood for it. 4. Hip armour. The design of the Hip Armour forces the pegs to disconnect quite often, but I suspect the cod piece to be the main culprit. My Strike 1S disconnect quite infrequently, whereas my CF pops loose very easily. Moreover, when I leave the cod piece off the CF, the legs stay on fine. 5. The backpack mount is very strange. I have concerns of its viability over the long term, but for now it works fine. Overall, the GBP turns the sleek VF into a golem. It's very visually impressive, and I don't really have much regrets paying for the two sets. The limited posability is a given due to the original animation design, so I'm not too emotional about that.

From a strictly aviation fan POV, I just wish the flyby could have been conducted by '14s...

Tamiya has a set of flexible clear pla-rods that might just be ideal for this purpose.. of course, still going to be obvious.. The other way is by magnetic repulsion, but that's very tricky to set up.

Possibly; I'm not up to scratch on the ST-21. But if it is a re-manufactured Tomcat, there is a possible window of opportunity to redesign the interior to be more user-friendly, and retool the manufacturing lines to come out with the new interiors. Yes, it is possible to get cost-overruns with these kind of projects. But it's less likely so, because the scope of this project is with known airframe, technology and concepts. You don't need to worry about crazy thing such as RAM, stealth, swing doors, etc. etc..

Y'know, I think the whole crux of the matter lies in the fact that the F-14 just looks like a flamin' honkin' killer of a fighter plane, and the F-18 looks like a pencil with wings stuck on as an afterthought. Frankly, the F-18 is probably more than qualified to do certain missions. It's a decent plane -- it flies, what more can I ask from it? -- it bombs (itsy-bitsy, but then again nowadays we don't really need carpet bombing anyway.. a couple of "smart" munitions should do the trick.), it refuels, it does everything. It's main fault is that it does nothing terribly well. And that the procurement of the USN seems determined to push so many roles into the F-18, we may as rename the darn thing F/A/B/C/D/..../Z-18. Faster that way. Seems to me, the F-18 was never designed to do all these things anyway. No point debating the pros-and-cons of the plane.. and discussing the people who makes the decisions is akin to politics (and the usual MW disclaimer about political threads). In my opinion.. multi-role aircraft tends to suck. Okay, let me qualify that. Certain roles should not be assigned to the same airframe. For example, long range interception and ground CAS should not be mixed into the same airframe, because of the difference in operating conditions. Point Defense and Tanker should not mix, etc. etc. C'mon, I'm all for maximizing the tax dollars as the other guy, but there is a price to take it to the extremes. If a particular role requires a particular type of aircraft, then please BUY a different aircraft.. Can you EVER imagine an A-10 performing a Point Defense? Or an Apache serving as a tanker? Because the way things are going, that's what's going to happen! If you give the wrong tool to the people to use in a critical condition such as a shooting war, you will pay the price, not in dollars, but in blood. The F-22 and F-35 seems to be fairly clear of this so far -- but I bet some silly git would suggest slinging bombs on the F-22 soon, as a primary role. C'mon, a bomb-Raptor is nice and good, but it's first and most important role is to take down enemy fighters.

You're right to say that the old casing cannot be refitted with the new technologies efficiently. It's better in this case to toss or recycle the old casing and buy a new one. But in our case here, as far as I know for the Super Tomcat, it's supposed to be a re-designed and built-from-scratch airframe, so your concern here is misplaced. If they intend to upgrade from say, D to E, and is claiming all these things.. I would say the same things you did. But if indeed the ST-14 is a total redesign (based F-14's proven design, but totally reworked), then your concerns would be addressed.

I can draw an analogy for you here. In the early days of PC computing, components are standardized (PCI, etc. etc.) and it's often fashionable to scratchbuild your own system. This was before the era of Dell and other big computer manufacturers stepping in, okay? The casing for PCs then were horrible. They are often a single metal frame with attachment points for hardware, but designed with little thought of maintenance or accessibility. Customizers often end up with nicks and scratches due to the (sharp) frame designed to secure components.. but not for users to reach them. Nowadys, PC casing are much more user friendly. My current system casing can strip out entire cages for easy installation of harddrives and other peripherials, the entire PC power supply can be detached and replaced (previously power supply are as good as welded to the frame...). This makes maintenance MUCH easier, and replacement of parts much easier too. But structurally-wise, externally my PC is still a darn box. In a similar fashion, in theory, ergonomic design of the interior of the airframe, with special emphasis on accessibility, replacability and maintenance, can easily cut maintenance cost down significantly on the ST-14.

I think, at this point, let's segregate a few points that appeared to be mixed in. 1. There is no denying the F-14 is a maintenance hog. This is well documented. 2. There is no denying that new technologies that the F-22 and F-35 represent must be introduced in a controlled fashion to the military. This has been extensively dealt with in another thread. 3. That the F-22 and F-35 may not be SOTA enough is really a relevant issue here. Moreover, you need to have gradual introduction of new technologies in order to maintain combat effectiveness of the whole armed forces, so introducing a less-than-SOTA machine makes sense in a way. 4. There is no denying that the F-18 can't do all the missions that the F-14 is currently doing. The question is whether the F-14's original mission is still valid, which IMO it is.. which means a US Task Force may have serious holes in its defenses in the near future. 5. The F-18 isn't a bad plane. It flies. Better than the F-35 now, better than the Eurofighter now, better than the Brit's uncertified Chinooks. So it's not a bad plane. It just looks like a bad plane... :D These are all separate issues and shouldn't be mixed up too much. What really irritates me is the destruction of the F-14's toolings. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason to do that. It is a burning of a bridge that I suspect in the near future will become a regrettable decision. It is utterly insane to destroy the toolings because it means if and when you need to reintroduce the F-14 due to pressing situational needs (like when they discover in practice that F-18's can't do all of F-14's jobs..).. you can't. It's an insane, stupid, and utterly senseless thing to do, especially when there are other ways of achieving the same result.