Hasegawa VF-31

[kajnrig]

That's hot.

[arbit]

In my opinion, the 31A has better proportions than the 31. 

I have a feeling that the forward swept wings were an afterthought.

What do you guys think?

[kajnrig]

Well, the 31A certainly looks more like the 31's immediate predecessor, the YF-30 Chronos. The forward-swept wings were likely chosen simply to give the VF-31 a "W" silhouette to match up with Walkure. The 31A is the "regular" look, so I think it'd be fair to say that even in universe, your feeling that the forward-swept wings are an afterthought are more or less on the ball.

[arbit]

On 5/19/2017 at 10:12 PM, kajnrig said:

Well, the 31A certainly looks more like the 31's immediate predecessor, the YF-30 Chronos. The forward-swept wings were likely chosen simply to give the VF-31 a "W" silhouette to match up with Walkure. The 31A is the "regular" look, so I think it'd be fair to say that even in universe, your feeling that the forward-swept wings are an afterthought are more or less on the ball.

Exactly. And although I find the delta wings on the 19 and 29 to be aesthetically beautiful, something about the 31's silhouette just doesn't sit right with me. Don't know what it is...

Edited May 21, 2017 by arbit

[seti88]

As much as i love the 31A, i dont quite see the 31 FSWs as an afterthought.

Seems quite a deliberate design to fit probably the walkure shape theme, but also to continue the genelogy of the 19 to be a maneuverable 'dancing' (like when isamu drew the dragon) fighter... They flew as part of the concert...

[kajnrig]

Personally, I don't like that the 31's main body is so wide and the FSW so small. Compare it to the YF-19 and even the YF-29, where the wings sit closer to the centerline and represent much more of the plane's total width. The tail fins likewise sitting so far out from the center of the plane bothers me. I'm not sure where the wing "roots" would be considered on this design since it's sort of a blended wing design, but for my money, moving the entire section where the tailfins sit and the FSW begins in just a bit would do a lot to mitigate my problems with the design. Like so:

I would still shave off bits from the area just forward of the wings to further "slim" it down, but otherwise I have less of a problem with this than the original.

Edited May 23, 2017 by kajnrig

[arbit]

5 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Personally, I don't like that the 31's main body is so wide and the FSW so small. Compare it to the YF-19 and even the YF-29, where the wings sit closer to the centerline and represent much more of the plane's total width. The tail fins likewise sitting so far out from the center of the plane bothers me. I'm not sure where the wing "roots" would be considered on this design since it's sort of a blended wing design, but for my money, moving the entire section where the tailfins sit and the FSW begins in just a bit would do a lot to mitigate my problems with the design. Like so:

I would still shave off bits from the area just forward of the wings to further "slim" it down, but otherwise I have less of a problem with this than the original.

Awesome. Can you make the same line drawing comparisons with the 19 and 29?

[kajnrig]

I don't know how accurate this is - I sourced the top-down views from various pics. The VF-31 comes from the Bandai model kit instruction manual, the -19 and -29 from anymoon.com (Thanks much! ). I tried to scale them based on the cockpits, but this is still a very very rough comparison.

Still, as far as general silhouettes are concerned, I think this does a decent enough job depicting the problems I have with the -31. The wings are way longer on the -29 and -19 than the -31; and the -29's wing roots are located closer to the midline than the -31's. The tailfins on both are positioned closer to the legs. The modded -31 is much less wide than the -19 and -29, but better maintains their appealing size ratio of wing to midsection.

[arbit]

You nailed it! The 31 has short stubby wings! 

Try the mod with longer thicker wings like the 19; and try the same angle as either the 19 or 29, whichever looks better.

I think that will fix it.

Maybe we are used to a certain silhouette and the 31 threw us off. 

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by arbit

[seti88]

Am ok with short Stubby wing tips...looks like a wing on a downward stroke in full flight...

[kajnrig]

13 hours ago, arbit said:

Try the mod with longer thicker wings...

Maybe we are used to a certain silhouette and the 31 threw us off. 

I thought about doing that, too, but got lazy.

You're also spot on about being "used to a certain silhouette." Real-life FSW aircraft run the gamut in design, but we've never seen a compound delta wing design that terminates in a FSW tip. (At least I haven't.) We don't have any "proof," so to speak, that such a design would fly. The -31A looks more flight-worthy than the -31J/S/etc. simply because its delta wing terminates in more delta wing, and we see that type of design fly all the time. And in Macross the only FSW designs up until the -31 have had fairly large wings.

It bears mentioning though that from different angles, especially ones that emphasize the slight downward tilt of the wings, I think the design looks just fine. Great, in fact. It's such an odd thing, I can't quite put my finger on it. The position/existence of the canards? The link seti888 just shared removes them, and I think it looks great.

I used to think the X-02 Wyvern from Ace Combat looks similarly funky, but it's grown on me, too, especially with its unique almost-zero vertical surfaces supersonic mode.

I dunno. I'm so confused.

Edited May 24, 2017 by kajnrig

[Chronocidal]

I actually pulled the canards on my Messer clean off while trying to angle them correctly, and I almost prefer the plane without them at all.  I've left them off of my 1/72 kit so far as well.  It certainly makes them easier to pick up without knocking things out of alignment.

As far as real-world forward swept wings go, I want to say that the majority of them do have some inboard portion of wing that's swept to the rear, so it's not an uncommon feature having a compound wing with a forward swept portion.  Just having the outboard portion smaller might not have any serious effects on the overall benefits of a forward swept design.

What's interesting about the 31 is that the tails are mounted right at the mid-span.  Their position is going to be right at the conflux of airflow both outward from the fuselage, and inward from the wingtips.  I can't say for sure what real-world effects that might have, but I want to guess it might cause quite a lot of turbulence over the tails.

Granted though, these are pure science fiction designs, and the 31 is already described as having some complex active airflow control systems, so really, real world effects probably wouldn't matter anyway.

The X-02 though is an even more outlandish case really.  While the entire switchblade swing wing concept looks cool, the idea of physically opening the leading edge of your wing during flight to form a pocket for the outer portion to fold into is right up there with the YF-19's high speed mode that lets two physical objects pass directly through each other.  

 

[kajnrig]

20 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

1.) As far as real-world forward swept wings go, I want to say that the majority of them do have some inboard portion of wing that's swept to the rear, so it's not an uncommon feature having a compound wing with a forward swept portion....

2.) The X-02 though is an even more outlandish case really.  While the entire switchblade swing wing concept looks cool, the idea of physically opening the leading edge of your wing during flight to form a pocket for the outer portion to fold into is right up there with the YF-19's high speed mode that lets two physical objects pass directly through each other.  

 

1.) Yeah, but not nearly to the same degree as the VF-31. Leading edge-wise, it's nearly a 1.5:1 RSW-to-FSW ratio (eyeballing it). Others (also eyeballing) are anywhere between 0:1 and 0.5:1. If that even makes any sense. What am I even on about...

2.) The first time I saw the switchblade mechanism I nearly crashed the plane out of spite. "No! NO! You do NOT get to do that! BAD fictional airplane! BAD!"

2a.) I like to headcanon that the -19's alternate wing configuration is a low-profile storage mode for aircraft carriers and that's it. It's just super super dumb any other way. About the only way they could believably work in battle is if parts of them fold in/on top of/accordion themselves, and that's just... asldk;fja;slkdjf;aslkjfa;slkdjf

[NZEOD]

On ‎25‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 5:12 AM, seti88 said:

Am ok with short Stubby wing tips...looks like a wing on a downward stroke in full flight...

Interesting mod in that image with the vertical stabilizers moved inboard.... I like it!

[electric indigo]

Needs more negative inclination 

[seti88]

I like how a negative inclination of the tail and an upward front canard seems to create a wind tunnel down the second half of the fuselage.

if you view it from the front on perspective that is..

[Graham]

Personally, I like the VF-31 as is. It's one of my favorite looking VF designs, maybe even my new favorite.

 

 

[seti88]

i hope our brewmaster kawamori-san brews more exquiste valk sake to be our favorites!

[arbit]

5 hours ago, Graham said:

Personally, I like the VF-31 as is. It's one of my favorite looking VF designs, maybe even my new favorite.

Does that include the color schemes?

[kajnrig]

9 hours ago, NZEOD said:

Interesting mod in that image with the vertical stabilizers moved inboard.... I like it!

8 hours ago, electric indigo said:

Needs more negative inclination 

I never did ask this when I first saw the VF-31, why are the tailfins negatively-canted besides cool factor? Also, on these particular configurations (the Twitter VF-31 and the Falken), how does the position of the tailfins so close to another section of the body affect the plane's aerodynamics? I would imagine that being next to the legs/engine nacelles would render them less effective than if they were positioned at the back of the legs/top of the engine nacelles. In that case I can see why Kawamori put them so far out and at the convergence point of the compound wing, since the air moving over the wings would generally congregate on them.

But I don't know anything about aerospace engineering, so maybe I'm just assuming a whole lot of nonsense.

[derex3592]

....what is the red drone looking thing??? Looks like a cool new take on the Macross Plus red Ghost X-9!!!

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, derex3592 said:

....what is the red drone looking thing??? Looks like a cool new take on the Macross Plus red Ghost X-9!!!

It's the ADF-01 Falken, from the Ace Combat video games. It looks funky because it uses a coffin cockpit system. All those lights are cameras that project a 360-degree view of the surroundings onto screens inside the cockpit. The funkier part is its ability to mount a tactical laser. Speaking of aerodynamics...

https://www.google.com/search?q=adf01+falken+laser&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO_Y-1uY7UAhWEj1QKHZYRC4AQsAQIMA&biw=1920&bih=901#imgrc=0ItDJBrGz5BH-M:

It has a more conventional-looking prototype in the ADFX-01 Morgan:

Edited May 26, 2017 by kajnrig

[Chronocidal]

3 hours ago, kajnrig said:

I never did ask this when I first saw the VF-31, why are the tailfins negatively-canted besides cool factor? Also, on these particular configurations (the Twitter VF-31 and the Falken), how does the position of the tailfins so close to another section of the body affect the plane's aerodynamics? I would imagine that being next to the legs/engine nacelles would render them less effective than if they were positioned at the back of the legs/top of the engine nacelles. In that case I can see why Kawamori put them so far out and at the convergence point of the compound wing, since the air moving over the wings would generally congregate on them.

But I don't know anything about aerospace engineering, so maybe I'm just assuming a whole lot of nonsense.

I think the tail angle is mostly just for cool factor, but it can also play a part in directing airflow to prevent turbulent vortex generation I would imagine.  In the 31's case, it just looks better than canted out, or vertical, and flows nicely with the design.

For the modded VF-31 with the tails moved inboard, I don't think you'd see much of a difference in terms of airflow.  They might even work better, being moved away from the potential turbulence from the wing design, but I don't have the experience with that sort of thing to guess how it would make things work or not.

The Falken though (the red one, it's the endgame superfighter design from Ace Combat 5).. see, it looks cool, but I also want to say that the way those tails are mounted is pure aerodynamic nonsense.  Placing them that close to the engine nacelles would negate a great deal of their effectiveness as a control surface, because the air flowing around the nacelles might tend to flow around the outsides of the tails, and never flow along the inner surface, meaning you may as well just mount the top half of the tails to the tops of the nacelles, and get the same effect.

In a fluid dynamic sense, I guess you could call air "sticky" to a point?  Been a while since I took those classes, but there's a thing called "interference drag" which occurs when you have sharp corners between surfaces.  Think of how ambient lighting will cast very faint shadows in the corners of a room, and that's where airflow will experience extra drag where the air has to flow around multiple surfaces that intersect.  The little crevice between the Falken's engine nacelles and tails is probably going to turn into a big draggy bucket of turbulent air.

In some cases though, you can use interference drag to your advantage.  With careful design and direction of the airflow, you can actually achieve interference thrust.  This is one reason why you see so many airliners being upgraded with winglets.  The overall impact to the airflow actually generates a negative drag coefficient, and you wind up improving fuel economy for the aircraft.

[seti88]

AUGUST release!!

Edited June 12, 2017 by seti88

[chyll2]

Don't have the space and time to do model. Is Kairos a limited or GL release?

[seti88]

Its available for pre order at hlj.

[arbit]

Now thats a beautiful birdy. I can just imagine all the schemes people are gonna come up with.

[wm cheng]

Thanks for the heads up, just pre-ordered 2!!!  Didn't know it was available for PO - love this scheme.

 

[kajnrig]

I decided not to bite on the 31J because I was waiting for this. I'm glad to see it already out for preorder. Ordered 2 myself.

[electric indigo]

Pre-ordered a Kairos (and noticed that there's an F-15 ACTIVE kit coming)! Aargh - too many cool aircraft kits around.

[KOG Water Dragon]

Glad I saw the news here about the pre-order for the Kairos. I just went and pre-ordered one for myself.

Even though I browse HLJ future releases regularly, I had missed this one because it was listed under military jet kits instead of under sci fi/Macross Delta where all the other Macross Delta kits are listed. And I normally don't browse military jet releases....

Also: I'm kinda bummed that Hasegawa never did a VF-25A release. I mean... they've covered the VF-1A, the VF-0A, and the VF-31A now.... why did they skip the VF-25A?

[ivorysniper]

Pre-ordered !. Cannot let this one pass !. Thanks for the heads up. I was totally clueless about the Kairos already being available for pre-order !.

Edited June 12, 2017 by ivorysniper

[arbit]

2 hours ago, wm cheng said:

Thanks for the heads up, just pre-ordered 2!!!  Didn't know it was available for PO - love this scheme.

 

So we can expect a step-by-step?

 

[wm cheng]

1 hour ago, arbit said:

So we can expect a step-by-step?

 

Oh those days might be past me now... so busy with work and family.  Those were the days with endless time, what did I ever do with all that free time?!  I only really get to touching up toys now a days.  Hoping to live vicariously through other members here.  I mostly just collect boxes of models to pile up in my basement for retirement

[VF-1A Grunt]

4 hours ago, wm cheng said:

I mostly just collect boxes of models to pile up in my basement for retirement

Ugh, story of my life. I think I've bought at least three dozen Hasegawa kits and four Wave Destroids in the past two years, and they're all still in the boxes. Hopefully after this current job, I'll have a little more free time.