Jump to content

SchizophrenicMC

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3787

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by SchizophrenicMC

  1. SchizophrenicMC
    It's politics. Even if Iran somehow managed to get spare parts from USAF demonstrator squadron or USANG patrol squadrons, they wouldn't be able to wage any kind of meaningful combat against anyone with those planes. Otherwise, they might have actually tried at some point in the 42 years they've owned the planes.
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm not a fan of taking the easy way out. Everyone has an SR20, and they're not really all that great an engine, they're expensive, and I don't think they're very pretty. Options I had on the table included turbocharging or supercharging the KA, which would have resulted in respectable, if minimal, power gains, and the most torque of any of my options, or installing a CA18DET with bolt-ons to achieve 300 or so horsepower. A CA18DET is signfiicantly lighter than even the SR20, and its stock internals can withstand far more abuse than the SR20. A KA24DE+R/T would have had more torque than either of those engines, across a more usable band, but it weighs so very much, and adding weight to that engine in a car meant for handling performance is a tad silly. Then again, there's nowhere around me to drive a car designed for great handling performance. So why even keep the 240? Thinking about a 300ZX Turbo from the late 80s. That'd be fun too.
  3. SchizophrenicMC
    Considering Sengoku Astray got nearly all the way to the end, and that the final move of the entire tournament in the original series was Build Knuckle, I'd presume, "well". I guess at some point Bandai realized Burning Gundam sounded cooler, and more in line with Shining Gundam and Rising Gundam, and was more marketable.
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    I always thin Vallejo primer with ModelMaster Acyrlic thinner and I don't really have any problems- certainly nothing involving curdling. Actually my only consistent paint problem is that my brush is built to very loose specifications, so it gets paint in all kinds of places that the seals should keep it out of, so it clogs up a lot, even with very thin paint. I should get an Iwata.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    So much hype. So much. I'm chomping at the bit for the next episode of this even harder than I am for G-Reco.
  6. SchizophrenicMC
    I always wanted to add forced induction to the 240SX, one way or another, but the price is too steep, and the chassis isn't really capable of my demands. So, Fairlady Z here we come.
  7. SchizophrenicMC
    Mark Hamill will do great. He's passionate about his work and I can't think of a performance where he phoned it in. Harrison Ford, I'm not too sure about. He's a GREAT actor, but only when he feels like it. There are a number of half-assed Harrison Ford roles which take away from his credit. I can excuse his social anxiety and general shut-in nature, but he's done a lot of movies out of obligation or interest in movies, rather than because he really wanted to play a part. It's common knowledge that he doesn't like being cast as Han Solo, and he even wanted the script of Return of the Jedi to kill Han off halfway through so he could cut out early. I'm not expecting a ton from him. Carrie Fisher is an unknown. She did well in the original trilogy, and she obviously cares about the franchise, its characters, and its fans, but she hasn't really done a lot since the originals. I'm sure she thinks this is a great opportunity to play a part in the Star Wars again, but I'm not sure if she's actually up to the job. Nothing against her, I just don't know what all that hiatus will do to her acting prowess.
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm not convinced passive stealth is effective enough for all of the aerodynamic compromises it entails. Not for a fighter/attacker. VG wings are decidedly unnecessary because it's possible to use computers to give control surface dynamics that allow more swept-back profiles to have lower stall speeds and better manners at a wide range of speeds. That wasn't the case in 1972, so the F-14 made sense. There are still unique advantages to the VG wing, but they're often outweighed by the disadvantage of mass and maintenance. Like Chronocidal said, the wings rest on a massive bearing that has to withstand most of the lift load of the aircraft, as well as withstand the load of the wings' weight during landing, and all of the g-loading during flight. It can do that, for awhile, but it needs frequent maintenance. Non-carrier VG aircraft can sometimes get away with this- look at the Tornado and F-111. But the F-14 was a large carrier aircraft with them. With that said, the ASF-14 would have been a significant redesign of the airframe, similar to the F/A-18E over the CF-18C/D. It would have involved changes to the wing profile and variable geometry design, as well as the replacement of traditional controls with fly-by-wire systems. While these wouldn't have negated the disadvantages of the VG wing, they would have helped. Mostly I'm just sad they scrapped all of the tomcats. Shoulda left a few for aerial demonstrators.
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    They're owned by the second-largest carmaker in the world. They don't have to pander. At low volume, Lamborghini is able to maintain profitability without that pandering. In fact, because they are low volume they're exempt from many regulations. Increasing that volume makes them subject to all kinds of regulations that they weren't affected by, before they came up with the Gallardo. (What a blase car the Gallardo) Next there's gonna be a Lamborghini F1 team. Friggin' Lamborgaudi. In other news, I'm thinkng about buying a late first generation 300ZX turbo. I need some meaningful turbo badging in my life.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    Lamborghini is pandering to a market, which is not something a low-volume supercar maker should have to do.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    That's pretty sexy. Though, the ASF14 was a fun concept as well.
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    The F-14, being as it weighed so very much, had a markedly low trap life. Lots of maintenance and overhauls performed on the airframes simply due to the stresses of landing that much weight on an aircraft carrier over and over. Given that Iran lacks aircraft carriers, its land-based F-14s have it a lot easier. In fact, while many land-based fighters are equipped with tail hooks for emergency landings on damaged runways, they typically are not rated for any kind of carrier landing. The landing gear and airframe just wouldn't take the stress all that well. And on top of that, there's the stresses incurred during catapult launches, which yank all that plane from 0 to flying in around 2 seconds, via the skinny stick that holds the front of the machine up. Iran's F-14s don't have to do any of this. With that said, they received something like 78 F-14As, and the number of flying Tomcats is likely nowhere near that, due to cannibalizing many units to keep what they can, flying, since the manufacture of parts in the US was banned and all US F-14s were scrapped. It doesn't hurt that Iran is very arid, while US F-14s had to spend all their time in salty air.
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    Hang on, didn't Lamborghini say around the tail end of the 90s, that they'd never use anything but naturally aspirated engines to power their cars, because it's a statement about the purity and DNA of the Lamborghini supercar? Lamborghini since the VW AG buyout just doesn't have the same soul. Just like Nissan post-Renault.
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    I dig the mecha design. It's different and feels new, without any of the lanky feeling of, say, the mecha in 00. The MS in G-Reco feel compact, but they're not skinny. Proportions are important. That's kind of the idea. This is set between UC and CC. Gundam G-Self. Like Gundam Alex or Gundam Ground Type. You can call it Gundam, you can call it G-Self, you're not wrong. I WANT MY CHICKENWALKER SEGWAY. GIVE TO ME. Anyway, I'm really digging G-Reco. The super BONES animation style, the cool new mecha design, the fast pacing, the non-angsty main character. It's ticking off my boxes something fierce. The only thing I don't like so much is that the non-angsty protagonist is a bit too flippant. Like, take something seriously for once, Bellri.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    The heavy maintenance was primarily due to the heavy chassis. The plane was big, and was made of pretty radical alloys that didn't subtract as much weight as strength. So, combined with salt corrosion and multi-g maneuvering, the airframe incurred lots of damage. Landing gear were really big and prone to rapid wear from landing a heavy cat on a rocking boat. And then there were silly problems like the harmonic frequency of one of the titanium hydraulic lines on the F-14A matching the engine frequency at military cruise, the TF-30 issues galore, the only slightly impressive thrust of the delayed early F110 (at least for such a fat bird), and we all remember the glove vane issues. I think the plane could have lasted longer if modern metallurgy was available back then. Probably would have used a lot less boron in the steel alloys the main fuselage and wing stubs were made of. Not to mention the F110-132 makes nearly 20% more thrust than the early 110-400 used in the B and D models. Even at the weight it was, those engines would have given it a >1 TWR. Was the Navy wrong to pick the Super Hornet over the Tomcat? Probably not, no, but the F-15's up to its ears in airframe revisions, whereas the F-14 only got 2, and only one of them made meaningful changes.
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    I wouldn't try a dremel- too fast, too unwieldy. A pin vise, though, would probably work out. Take a bit of time, but it would only take as much plastic as you deliberately want to. And it wouldn't get anything hot.
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    I maintain the F-14 could have been good, had it gotten another airframe revision.
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    I definitely didn't like the all-ABS construction of some kits. It's like you said, it's got better shear strength and rigidity, but the surface is softer than polystyrene. With that said, Bandai have changed their PS blend to something that's probably cheaper, and definitely less dense than the old formula. That's not so bad on new kits that are designed around this blend, but they are casting older kits in the stuff, and it's made for noticeable differences. All that said, I really am enjoying the newer kits, even with the reduced level of inner frame of late, because they're getting more and more articulation out of more and more detailed kits. My Gundam X is one of my favorite kits ever. But even that doesn't have any undergating, which makes cleanup a pain on the clear purple parts. Bandai really should adopt it on more kits moving forward. It does affect certain packing constraints, but there are a number of parts where it wouldn't add all that much to undergate it, and it would save the surface. Especially with kits where extra finish is planned. You can tell, some kits they make with the intent to release extra finish versions later, and of course wherever the gate meets the surface, there is no extra finish, which can quickly ruin the effect.
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    Ultimately they picked the X-35. That big old chin intake was giving them problems with hot air ingestion, which the cheek-intake X-35 avoided, like the Harrier, as I recall. Of course the general VL system of the F-35 is more convoluted than the X-32, and the plane in general has been hit with more and more delays, setbacks, and budget overages. And to be fair, a lot of why it was picked probably had to do with the fact that it does look like the F-22 mini. Of course, I'm also in the party that isn't convinced the F-22 was a better plane than the YF-23. They probably imagined it'd be cheaper and quicker to bring to production. If that was true, then I'd hate to see where in development hell the F-23 would be today. All in all, I'm just not sure about the fifth-generation jet fighter. The whole program seems like a waste, when billions upon billions have been spent over decades, with nothing to show, all while fourth-generation fighters have had more and more added to them to make up. The F/A-18 Super Hornet keeps getting revisions that put its technological capability on par with the F-35's promises, and it's more maneuverable, with greater payload, range, and maximum speed, at lower overall and operating costs. And I hate the F-18, as the plane that killed the F-14 through lower cost. And it's not just the Super Hornet that's had its share of upgrades. The F-15 and F-16 have been constantly improved and remain above and beyond what is available to adversarial forces. We don't need a plane to compete with the Typhoon- I doubt France plans on going to war with us. And if we did want a hyper-maneuverability fighter that can't fly without its computers running, F-15S/MTD. And at this point, I'm starting to have my doubts about all-aspect stealth. Considering that whatever stealth you had is compromised when you fire missiles, or even carry them on external hardpoints, I'm not convinced of the combat viability of the claims. All in all, if I was a prospective military customer for the fifth-generation fighter, I'd buy the latest competitor, in greater numbers, for less money. Which is ultimately what the RAAF did.
  20. SchizophrenicMC
    Hooray for rotational casting.
  21. SchizophrenicMC
    The X32 is ugly because it looks like a sea bird with a swollen gullet. It's not sleek like we imagine a next-generation fighter should be. The A-10 is ugly because it was designed for function over form, where function dictates a very large gun and a slow-flying plane built around the gun. Other aircraft are also designed for function over form, but most aircraft have a function that creates striking, swooping design. That's why the F-14 is so pretty: its function was to be a muscle car that carried a bunch of this big, crazy missile.
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    I recently finished watching Attack on Titan. I can see why it's popular, but I do think there's been a lot of hype, especially for an anime that ends on such a complete cliffhanger. But that's old news. I'm looking forward to G-Reco, Gundam Build Fighters Try, and the Initial D compilation movies, and an HD release of Final Stage.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    I've noticed these runner quality issues more and more since Bandai switched back to Polystyrene from the ABS they were using for awhile. They're definitely using a different blend of PS than they were 5 years ago, though. It's a lot less dense. The light weight is good for joints, but it is a lot more brittle and it makes it hard to get a clean cut on a lot of parts, which is mostly a problem on parts where the gate is on a large surface. You know, of all of the things Bandai has done for injection molding, it is completely beyond me why they refuse to adopt undergating, especially on kits where extra-finish versions are planned. The lack of undergating completely ruins the Phenex.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    Thank you, Shukenzero, for taking the pictures, and thanks to JVMacross for actually posting them. That's all we needed. With that said, I'm beginning to feel like those pictures only look different in color due to printing differences. It'd be a shame if that were true, I do prefer that shade of blue.
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    I keep my Angel Birds 1/48 VF-1A in Gerwalk. I'd put the 25th Anniversary VF-1S in Gerwalk too, except it really shines in Fighter, and the head fell off thanks to the low quality of Yamato's 1/48s.
×
×
  • Create New...