Nied

Oh yeah and of all the VFs I think the VF-17 would be most screwed if it lost an arm. It's tail surfaces are built into the tops of the arms and unlike the YF-21 and VF-22, it doesn't have 3-D thrust vectoring to compensate for the loss of control surfaces.

In the VF-4's case losing an arm would also affect it's engine performance. The bottom of the arm block forms the upper part of the intake in fighter mode, without the arm the intake takes on a completely new shape. At the very least it would be confined to subsonic speeds.

Normally I'd agree but lately the US's policy on technology transfer seems to consist of two words F*ck and Off. Japan is a close ally yes but so is the UK and we're seeing how great a deal they're getting on tech transfer. With the Eurofighter consortium working to bend over backwards on tech transfer issues, and the US essentially flipping the bird at whoever wants to buy our newest planes I'd wager that the Typhoon has a much better chance than it normally would. I hope that institutional momentum and a Japanese willingness to spend money on the best of the best in fighter planes will drag the Raptor over the finish line, but the Typhoon looks like a better deal right now so I'm not willing to rule out the idea of seeing Eurofighters with rising suns on the wings.

I don't know if that's really a valid comparison, the Cutlass was largely a failure it was withdrawn from service very quickly with only a few hundred being produced. The VF-4 on the other hand had a decade long production run with over 8,000 fighters produced, and it was successful enough to spawn an upgrade project that kept it serving until at least 2047. It did have the VF-5000 replace it in the title of main Variable Fighter sometime after 2025 when a plethora of newer specialized designs started to enter service, but the Spacy didn't start to withdraw it from front line service until 2030.

Do you think they would offer up the super bug as a replacement for the F-2? I imagine it could take on its role efficiently and possibly do a better job. 378771[/snapback] Probably but it looks like Japan is looking for one plane to fill the role of the F-2 the F-4EJ and the F-15J. While the Rhino would be a good replacement for the old Rhino and the F-2, it's not the type of performance leap over the F-15 that Japan seems to be looking for. Pretty much the only planes that fill that bill are the Typhoon and to a lesser extent the Raptor (although the indigenous avionics that the Japanese would almost assuredly pack in an F-22J would take care of that).

I imagine that Lockheed will try to push the F-35, I think that Japan would want an F-22J. Eurofighter is gearing up to offer the Typhoon and is working on making some serious concessions to get them to buy it (including indigenous production which I have trouble seeing with either the F-22 or the F-35). Dasault (Rafale) and Boeing (either some form of F-15K derivative or an F/A-18EJ/FJ) will most likely put in offers as well. My money is on either the Raptor or the Typhoon.

Dang Radd I was going to post something on the SW-XA1 when I got home from work, but you beat me to it. All right Phalanx you've got at least four re-designs of the VF-1 (five if you count the VF-2). I think part of the problem you are having here is that you are only comparing the VF-1 to one style of modern fighter design The VF-1's design may be anachronistic compared to American designs like the F-22 (or F-35 for that matter) but compared to most other country's new fighters it fits right in (the VF-4 with it's canards and delta wing even more so). Take a look at the pictures in the links below, all of these planes are as new or newer than the F-22. Eurofighter Typhoon (UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany) Dassault Rafale (France) Saab JAS 39 Gripen (Sweden) Mig-35 (Russia) Chengdu J-10 (China) Mitusbishi F-2 (Japan) IAI Lavi (Israel) ADA Tejas (India)

I've heard of people using it to glue canopies as well. Unfortunetly no one has been able to turn it into a good desert topping yet (very old SNL joke).

But seriously you can flatten future by mixing it with an acrylic flat clear coat like Testors.

How do you flatten Future??? 378314[/snapback] Duh, you step on the bottle!

Well change them then. We're all partying here on page 100 while you're still stuck on page 80!

I just realized we're almost up to 100 pages in this thread (for all I know this post will do it)! Props to Shin for starting it!

Future. It's rock hard and forgiving as hell. The best part is that when you're done you can do your kitchen floor (that's what I did).

[smacks forehead] Of course! I'm surprised it took us this long to figure that out (what with all the aviation enthusiasts on this board). It matches right down to the anti-glare black going down the nosecone to the radome. I must say Graham was right it does look really good in fighter mode, that camo flows a little better in that mode. I was thinking of buying this anyway, but now I'm thinking of getting me one and modding some Hasegawa 1/48 Mk. 82 bombs to hang from the wings.

Cross posted with the wonderfest thread. SInce this is what I want my Low Vis 2 to look like.

It looks to me that only the brown is off. Check it:

Let me guess...that's the new Iraqi defense force haliburton camo VF1A! 372427[/snapback] Careful. If the NSA picks this up, the camo Valk might come to your house and shoot you in the face!

My understanding is that the AMM-1s that the Valkyrie carries are dual use, and can be fired on both air and ground targets (I believe we see Roy do this in one of the first episodes), so painting them green wouldn't be unusual. IIRC you can tell what kind of seeker head a Maverick has by what color the body is painted. EO models are white, Laser are Grey, and IIR are green (sometimes dark Grey for Navy ord).

SEA camo schemes have the underside painted light grey if at all, never white. However later SEA schemes were wrap around with no grey undersides (see here and here). As for missiles never being painted green, what do you call this? Or this?

Well for the Low Vis 2 it's not a bad attempt at the classic SEA camo scheme. It needs some work though. The brown definitely looks way to pale for a proper SEA camo scheme and while a wraparound scheme did exist more people are familiar with the scheme that featured the underside of the plane painted in light grey. Honestly if I grab this one I think I'll grab a bottle of Camouflage Grey and paint the undersides myself.

I'm assuming the F-22 is our most advanced fighter? We can't even get the thing to do a cobra maneuver? Why would one limit it's abilities? 371262[/snapback] As David points out above the F-22 could pull a cobra and maybe even it's more elaborate brother the bell maneuver (the aircraft pulls a full 360 while flying forward), it's just that it's on board computers are currently programmed not to let it. For all of it's coolness the cobra is a dubious move in a dogfight. It kills nearly all of your forward airspeed which might get an enemy on your tail to overshoot you, but would leave you a slow target for anyone else in the area. Besides technically line serving Su-27s can't pull a cobra either, they have the same Angle of attack limiters in their flight computers as the F-22. Sure they'll switch off the limiter so that an ultra experienced test pilot can pull a flashy move at the Paris air show, your average RuAF, PLAAF, or InAF pilot is just as likely to put himself in to an unrecoverable spin than actually pull a cobra in combat (ditto with your average USAF pilot in an F-22) hence the limiters. [edit] Wow! I must take too long to write my posts. Two people get in a response under me! [/edit]

I re-did the TPS scheme with the pattern from MATS so it should be a little bit more accurate. I'm really likeing this one. I also tried to make an aproximation of the last Low Vis scheme for comparison purposes.

Time to pull out this old chestnut. here's the screenshot from Admiral Hayes' display in the Grand Cannon showing the areas bombarded by the Zentradi. The Grand Cannon was fired right after this and the battle with the Macross' fleet started up there wouldn't have been much time for the Bodol fleet to do follow up bombardments. It's possible that the further battles with the remnants of the Bodol fleet further ravaged the planet, nut it's likely that the final damage was largely similar to what's seen on this map. As you can see Eurasia and Africa were the hardest hit, this includes both major population centers in India and China (which account for a sizeable portion of the Earth's population) but also sparsely populated areas like Siberia. Interestingly it apears that Japan was completely obliterated. Africa takes a pretty good hit especially in the west while the central protions and the middle East apear to have fared reletively better. Australia takes a pasting with almost half of the continent bloted out of existance. Much of the central portion of South america was blasted, but there is still enogh areas left that the rainforests seen in the reconstruction episodes could plausibly have survived. Whoever was in charge of North Americas bombardment seems to have been much more methodical, most of the heavily populated areas apear to have been struck first, leaving a good chunk of the American breadbasket, and the Yukon unscathed.

I find 12 oz mouse pretty funny if I've had a few drinks otherwise it's kind of incomprehensible. Cartoon Network actually did try to pick up Invader Zim, however Nickelodeon blocked it. Depending on who you ask it was either to keep programming out of the hands of a hated competitor, or to spite series creator Jhonen Vasquez who isn't well liked by the Nickelodeon higher ups.