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F-ZeroOne

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  1. F-ZeroOne
    Are there any flying (original) Typhoons anywhere? I've never heard of one... it was a useful aircraft, but its never been a loved one much. Obviously didn't help that its early days were plagued by bugs (of the "I say, old chap, is that your entire rear fuselage thats just detached from your aircraft? Bit of a sticky wicket, what?" kind... ).
  2. F-ZeroOne
    I guess Tim from "Spaced" finally got over "The Phastom Menance" then, huh?
  3. F-ZeroOne
    Fair points, though its also worth pointing out nearly thirty years separate the design of the two aircraft; they were both born into entirely different worlds to each other. How much would the F-16 have cost if it had to have had stealth applied from the start? (theres another argument that stealth is somehow not a requirement for modern aircraft and that they can do without it; the counter to that is that that may turn out to be the case, but if so quite a lot of nations seem to have drunk the same stealth cola as everyone else... ).
  4. F-ZeroOne
    Dale Brown came up with that one a while back... Also, as the resident F-35 contrarian I'd like to point out that the F-16 started out as a lightweight, affordable fighter with minimal avionics. Then they started hanging boxes all over it... Heres something a bit different; a Tiffy in special colours to mark the 75th Anniversary of The Battle of Britain:
  5. F-ZeroOne
    "A test pilot today has condemned the new generation of fighter planes as being too unmaneuverable to dogfight with biplanes... " I saw "The Imitation Game" the other day. Continuing the misuse of aircraft in war films, it has a single-seat Me-109 escorting German bombers over London during The Blitz. At night. Of course, not the only slight liberty taken with that films historical story. Now the second film I've seen about Bletchley Park that doesn't actually feature Bletchley Park (another country house stands in instead). As I once heard one of the tour guides remark "To movie people, the real Bletchley Park doesn't look like Bletchley Park [1]... ". [1] To be fair to Hollywood, the real building has long been noted for its... interesting approach to architecture.
  6. F-ZeroOne
    Wait, was that the Borg?!
  7. F-ZeroOne
    If one were being generous, Voyager has been on its way for quite a while, though I admit the wording there is a bit... no escape clause.
  8. F-ZeroOne
    Farewell, Sir Christopher. We won't see your like again anytime soon...
  9. F-ZeroOne
    You had a Beeb, didn't you?
  10. F-ZeroOne
    Sorry, are we talking Amstrad owners here?
  11. F-ZeroOne
    ZX Spectrum. That is all.
  12. F-ZeroOne
    I was a Sega kid, particularly the Mega Drive (European name for Genesis). I've often admired Nintendo stuff but until I got a Wii the closest I'd been to any of their stuff was a Game and Watch and then my brothers GameBoy (original model).
  13. F-ZeroOne
    No mention of "Dads Army" in that list of remakes? The show is almost like a religion over here, so you can imagine the reaction most people havewhen they hear someone actually tried to remake it...
  14. F-ZeroOne
    Yes, first time I saw "Tora! Tora! Tora!" I thought that they were the real thing, only found out later about the replicas.
  15. F-ZeroOne
    ...I should have added "before you've researched anything more potent than motion scanners"...
  16. F-ZeroOne
    Clearly never done a Terror Mission at night with Chryssalids...
  17. F-ZeroOne
    I don't recall that, but I remember seeing the poster which featured one of those bombers and thinking "Hmm, something about that plane doesn't look right." Later found out that was because it was a disguised different aircraft, authentic Japanese torpedo bombers from that era being just a touch difficult to find...
  18. F-ZeroOne
    The MiG-31 had a six-barrel 23mm gatling, which did have a very high rate of fire (up to 10,000 rounds a minute!) They also tried the Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-30 on the MiG-27, which had a reputation for shaking the aircraft to bits from the recoil force!
  19. F-ZeroOne
    I don't know what they were like on the Yamato, but theres at least one report from a Royal Navy experimental fit of other large naval guns that rivets would shear off from the force of the recoil. Incidentally, the Japanese designed an anti-aircraft round to fire from those things!
  20. F-ZeroOne
    Thanks! "Top Gun", from memory is a bit odd - IIRC, the same footage is used for the guns firing of both the MiG-28s and the F-14s, and neither has the gun in the right place - however, I don't have the movie to hand to check that. I recall its depicted as a gatling gun in both cases, and although the Russians did have gatling guns on some aircraft, its more likely it would have been using the twin-barrel 23mmm or single barrel 30mm... Another thing about the F-35; when its depicted, its also almost always the "B" variant - which seems to be a trend in US productions in general actually; when military stuff is going down ("military" in this context being Alien Invasion/Giant Robots Attack/GODZILLA!), the Marines always seem to be the only branch of the US armed forces in existence... One film that did get gun locations right was "Independence Day", with its heavy featuring of the F-18; but thats strange in its own right as the F-18s gun location is a bit weird (centre-mounted on the nose) so you would think if they were going to get anything wrong...
  21. F-ZeroOne
    I'd forgotten the "Iron Eagle" sequels... Speaking of Messerschmitts, some episodes of "Mazinger" feature the Me262 as a Japanese Air Self Defence Force plane! (they did actually build a similar type inspired by the German design during the war but "Mazinger" is set in Future Year 197X...!). There was also a sci-fi space combat board game whose name has slipped from my memory which tried to pass off the He162 "Volksjager" as a hyper-advanced space fighter once...
  22. F-ZeroOne
    I could write a book. However, its forgivable, at least at the time. The only real MiGs in the country at the time "Top Gun" was made were flying in a top secret U.S. adversary programme. In these days of CGI, perhaps a little less so, though you can still only CGI so much. Notable offenders over the years have included: "Airwolf", where it seemed every aircraft described as a "MiG" never, ever was. "Iron Eagle" is actually interesting - although the "MiGs" were of course Israeli Kfirs, Israel did sell Neshers, an earlier type, to Argentina, so from a British tabloid news point of view that sort of counts as a "bad guy" plane. "War Games" - "Scramble the F-16s!". Cut to footage of F-15s. Most war movies made up to the time of CGI; "The Battle of Britain" features many, many late-model Spitfires that weren't in service in 1940 (the Me109s and He111s with Merlin engines are a bit more forgivable). Pretty much any movie that features a "heads-up display"; even with plenty of real footage to play with these are almost always "sexed-up". "Pearl Harbour", not so much for typical vintage warbird problems but for the tactics - pilots that tried climbing directly in front of a Zero early in the real war would very much regret it; the correct tactic (assuming that you had the altitude) was the exact opposite - to go into a dive. Any movies that feature either a F-22 or a F-35 firing its guns (or, more correctly, gun) - the most recent offender being "Avengers: Assemble!" - they never get the location or number of fitted guns right. I've even seen a documentary where the narration describes Hurricanes in action whilst showing footage of Spitfires - the poor old Hurri never gets any credit, even seventy years later!
  23. F-ZeroOne
    Real Ospreys don't look like Ospreys on film, so they use a Tiger Moth with "USMC" painted on the side instead (which would not actually be the most blatant movie example of the "But thats not a - !" in films... ).
  24. F-ZeroOne
    I hadn't realised that many Ospreys had been made total, let alone that much just for the Marine Corps! Lend a small navy a bit down on its budget a few? We need something to hang a radar on... Wait... "Moonlight" squadron? Are they for Love and Justice?!
  25. F-ZeroOne
    Babylon 5 takes a while to get going, and when its bad its really bad, but when its good - which is quite a lot, actually - its really, really good (its also occasionally a little hamstrung by the era in which it was made; if HBO made it today T.V. critics would be falling over themselves to claim why it can't possibly be science-fiction because they like it so much, just as "Game of Thrones" can't possibly be fantasy because otherwise they wouldn't enjoy it... ). Stick with it into Season 2, you'll thank us in the end...
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