Nied

Well the baseline A350 was an A330 fuselage mated to new wings and engines. So if they decided to design a new fuselage it is a whole new design. But yeah you're right about me passing quick judgement, hell I can remember reading stories predicting Boeing's immenint doom just last year! Of course that was in Air International which tends to take a rather eurocentric view of the industry.

They do when it's the squadron's 100th anniversary.

It's not that bad. They transition out to the VF-17 in 2039 and serve as the SF squadron on a Megaroad colony ship (and get a battying 100th anniverary scheme in 2042). I just need to get around to making a good high-res VF-17 side view.

I had some down time at work so I did some digging. The current A350 concept diteches the A330 body and has a new "Xtra Wide Body" (god is that ever lame marketing). It's now supposed to compete with the larger 787s and the smaller 777s. Sounds like Airbus is grasping at straws.

Lets see: 1: 1/48 scale VF-4 2: 1/48 scale VF-4 3: Some 1/48 scale VF-1s and VF-4s in some of the semi-official schemes from TIAS: Macross Plus. 4: Instead of a blank white 1/48 VF-1 make a "Primer Grey" blank VF-1 it'll be easier to paint it with a dark scheme that way. 5: Screw this DYRL Macross stuff, I want a TV series Macross! (though I would by a DYRL version). Carrier arms all the way baby! Oh yeah and a 1/48 scale VF-4.

Actually by 2037 they'd be flying the VF below out in deep space on the SDF-3 Pioneer (and yes that's a Robotech reference). The Sundowners transitioned to the VF-4 right after the Megaroad left so they also transitioned to the VF-11 pretty early on. I have been thinking about doing another Sundowners scheme from around the 2017 period (they'd still be using the VF-4 then) and a higher vis "circus wagon" scheme for the Pukin Dogs. I should warn you I'm pretty busy myself here (I've got a wedding to plan) so it may take me a while.

I always figured hypercarbons referred to some kind of long chain carbon molecule (buckyballs, nanotubes that kind of thing). It could be very similar to carbon fiber steel but with carbon nanotubes instead of fibers. It's possible the door Hikaru and Minmay were behind was one giant carbon molecule!

You know I'm looking at the center panel more now that I'm home from work and can appreciate it more and I gotta say Vinnie you've got one hell of a mean eye for composition. The two VF-4s are offset just right, and the color contrast of their dull grey schemes and the green rolling hills of Ave Maria just looks perfect. It'd make a hell of a good wallpaper if you have the time to render it.

Actually with the exception of the VF-17 and YF-21/VF-22 none of Kawamori's VFs are very stealthy at all for one simple reason: they all have exposed engine faces. spinning turbine blades are huge radar reflectors, which is why most of the aircraft you see coming out today have them well hidden behind curved inlets, just doing that makes it several times more difficult to see an airplane on radar. It's not a problem when all VFs have a magic "active stealth system" but even the VF-19 would be incredibly easy to detect with today's radars without it.

I don't think new materials would change the aerodynamics of a design as much as you think it would, and I seriously doubt that the UN spacy would gimp its premeire defense for the human race just to keep a secret about the size of the enemy (of course I never saw a point in keeping that aspect of the enemy a secret in the first place). Frankly if you look at the VF-1's design it actually makes a lot of sense as a fighter that is designed with modern aerospace engineering principles but built with super duper alien materials technology. First of all it's a swing wing design which has been proven to be very efficient for fighter aircraft but at the same time unreliable and heavy using current design techniques (a problem solved by Overtechnology). Second it has no vertical stabilization of any kind other than thrust vectoring, which is utterly impossible to do with today's technology (current production thrust vectoring schemes just don't respond fast enough to keep a plane stable, again solvable with new light weight materials and servos). And finally it has a simple intake system that allows a maximum of airflow into the engines (something that current design theory is moving away from to improve the stealthiness of an aircraft, but that isn't an issue when you have a magic box to do that for you).

No reason to keep space weapons a secret, they were quite open about those being to repel an alien invasion. From the Compendium's chronology: 2000 June The existence of aliens officially announced (except for their size and other details which are kept top secret). Following this, framing plan for Earth U.N. Government officially announced.

I didn't even notice the lense flare until you mentioned it (I got over eager and clicked the picture first). I've got no problem with lense flare if it's nice and subtle, they only look cheesy if you overdo it (which to many people do).

Like Mr March said OTEC allowed for better manufacturing techniques and new weapons but it didn't advance human understanding of aerodynamics at all. Combine this with the retcon from M0 that all valks have some kind of active stealth system built in and you have a pretty good explanation for why the Valkyrie doesn't look like an F-22 (hell as I pointed out to Phalanx most of the F-22's contemporaries look more like a VF-1). The only real aerodynamic advancements have been the move by most designers away from swing wings and towards a close coupled delta and canard configuration. But that was done mainly because swing wings turned out to be heavy with current technology. Since overtech would make it pretty easy to make a swing wing design light weight and effective that's not too much of a problem (of course the VF-1's successor returns to the delta wing and canard config).

IIRC the sound and music only stream on the Animego set actually separates the Music and SFX tracks out to the right and left audio channel. I vaguely remember this being mentioned here back when the Animego set first came out (I do believe it was on the old boards). I'm at work now so I can't check but once I get home I'll pull my discs and see if it's true. If it is it would be a simple matter to rip the audio stream and then separate out the music channel.

I suppose this explains why the IIAF had their F-14s (which were re-fueled almost exclusively by Boeing boom tankers fitted with baskets) delivered without the doors.

I have ridden in very few widebody aircraft in my lifetime. Considering the number of cross country flights I make that's weird. IIRC the only widebody I've flown in my entire adult life was an AAL 767-300 to JFK where my fiance and I were crammed into the middle two seats in a 2-4-2 cabin with a screaming kid in front of us. That's pure hell right there. That's part of what I loved about the 717 it had a 2-3 seating config and I always sat in the left window seat so I didn't have to try and climb over two people to get to the bathroom. The best part was that if they had any open business class seats 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave AirTran would let you upgrade for wicked cheap (I think I once did it for $15). It actually made for a smoother ride since the wings on the 717 are so far behind you.

Right now I have a soft spot for A320s, but I think that's more because I'm flying JetBlue quite often (they're the only airline to offer direct service from SF to my parent's house in DC at anything close to a reasonable price). I'd say that the most comfortable cabin I've been in was the 717, I used to fly on one of those at least twice a year when I was in college, nice comfortable seats good view out the window and surprisingly quiet for an aircraft with fuselage mounted engines.

See this is what I'm talking about. If you want to meet famous people work at RadioShack. If you want a nice job on the other hand...

Man I love the Tomcatters, it's too bad they're getting F/A-18Es instead of Fs (the E's cockpit just looks too small on that big body).

Far Technologies... I wonder if whoever put together their website realized that running both words together in their URL now makes it look like their company is Fart Technologies? I watched the in air rearming sequence. I got to ask, what stablizes the F-16 while the rearming is taking place? What pilot in his right mind would fly right about 20 feet behind a C-130 while simultaneously have a steel rail from said aircraft just floating a matter of a few feet below one of your wings? But if anyone could make it work, it would be Israel. This would probably be good for CAS missions and some long range strike scenarios. 420422[/snapback] Not just a steel rail, but a steel rail with several hundred pounds of armed high explosives at the end of it. A good bump would pretty much leave nothing left of your plane (or you). I've seen video of planes trying to keep up behind a C-130 with it's cargo door open and they never look very stable (that picture of the F-15 trailing the C-130 in a pretty nose high attitude tells on their site you why).

I love how many stencils the JASDF paints on their fighters, they practically cover up the camo work on their F-4EJs! Incidentally does any one know what those blue and red schemes are meant to commemorate? Were they for the 50th anniversary of the JASDF?

Polecat! Well now we know what the famous skunk works has been up to. Love the inscrutable photo they chose for it. Is it a flying wing? Is it big? Is it small? The DoD certainly doesn't seem willing to tell.

All right Graham you were right it does look a lot better "in person" so to speak. I'm still not convinced about that neck though, the pictures you posted do a pretty good job of hiding it but I worry that once I get the final product in my hot little hands it's going to stick out like a sore thumb. I've got to agree with everyone else that the V. Stabs and wings look too small, I don't see why they couldn't be upsized. Actually if you up-size the V Stabs you might be able to hide some slightly enlarged shoulders and improve the look of the batroid mode.

And that's in docile General Aviation plane. Stalls in military fighters are often unrecoverable and kill pilots on a regular basis. And jet engines can actually stall as well, it's called a compressor stall. The blades in a jet turbine are just wings turned sideways and spinning in a circle, and just like normal wings under the right conditions they can stop producing lift cutting off air flow through the engine and shutting it down. I don't see any reason why the same thing couldn't happen to a Valkyrie's thermonuclear turbines.

Actually once you get up to it's operating altitudes it can't go much slower than Mach 3. Pilots call it the "coffin corner" your speed is maxed out the air's too thin to go any higher and if you let your speed bleed off you stall, the U-2 actually deals with the same thing (even though it's going slow). It's part of the reason they only let the best pilots fly either plane. Or sketched a lot of vernier thruster fire, though GERWALK is definitely the preferred mode for slow-speed combat in that environment, especially given the limited flight capacity of the regults and glaugs. Like I said, DYRL claims they can hover on verniers, so full-spread wings plus some vernier fire should've kept them aloft at much slower speeds than just wings. Verniers are also going to be a major part of maneuverability in a thin atmosphere(and IMO, verniers will be the main part of GERWALK maneuverability in ANY atmosphere). ... But the show was on a tight budget and schedule. So they were pretty limited in what they could do, and you rarely see verniers firing, even in space. 417797[/snapback] I always got the impression that the verniers Hikaru used to get into GERWALK, were just momentary puffers, and really couldn't provide the type of thrust needed to keep a plane hovering (if they could there'd be no need for a GERWALK mode). I always just chalk it up to artistic license in "Bye bye Mars" and leave it at that.