Graham

Bought one when they first came out, but only one. I'm not a big fan of TV colors, so I won't buy multiples. It's a nice toy. No flaws on mine I'm happy with it. I keep it mostly displayed in fighter mode without FPs. When Miria's is released I'll display her in battroid, without FPs. Graham

Heh, I noticed Drifand replaced the Kaiyodo Powered Suit's "Hair Dryer" hand flamer with what I'm guessing is an MSiA GP-01 beam rifle. I love the Kaiyodo Powered Suit toy (currently own 5). I've also been looking for a better looking hand weapon for my Powered Suits. Oh well, I sold all my MSiA toys last year, so can't use their guns. Graham

you make is sound like b&w is bad? Personally, I think having the fight against the Crazy 88s in full color is far superior to the black and white version. Maybe it's just because I saw the full color part 1 first and saw it on the big screen. Or maybe it's just because I hate needless censorship. Anyway, I didn't see the neutered black and white version until last week when I watched it on DVD at home. Actually, I couldn't bear to watch it, I switched it off and the next day gave the DVD to a friend. Luckily my Japan R2 DVD of part one just arrived today, so I will once more be able to watch it in full color. Graham

Oh well, hopefully, the HK & Japan theatrical release will be 100% color like vol.1. Graham

Don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere about British pilots referring to Tornados as 'the Flying Coffin'. Graham

Argghhhhh.....still havent seen part 2 yet. It doesn't open in HK until April 29th Are there any black and white bits this time or not? Graham

Found the old Macross Zero ad that shows the 2-seat VF-0. It was on a flyer that IIRC came with the Yamato 1/48 VF-1A Hikaru. Graham

And locked as there is already and existing 12 page topic on the 20th Anniversary prime here. Graham

Belongs in 'Other Anime & Sci Fi'. If it ain't Macross, it don't belong in the Macross Toy Forum!!!!! Graham

Found a pic which I think is from the July 2002 issue of Newtype magazine showing the two seat VF-0(A/B)? with '303' markings. See: here. Graham

Personally, I think there is a high probability that Shin will die in episode # 5. Graham

The October 2002 issue of Hobby Japan magazine, featured a scratch built two seat VF-0 model, although no letter designation (A/B/C/DS etc) is given. See here, here, here & here. Also, the Macross Compendium mentions that 4 two-seater, and 2 two-seater armed reconnaissance units of the VF-0A were manufactured. Lastly, I remember an early color advert for Macross Zero in one of the Hobby magazines, which showed Shin and Edgar sitting in the cockpit of a two-seat VF-0, which was not a VF-0D, but looked more like a standard VF-0A/S. Cant find the pic now though. Graham

Very interesting. Which site are those pics from? I can't find them on either the Hasegawa site or HLJ. Graham

I've always been curious about whether with todays high-tech materials and design and manufacturing techniques, could we actually build better prop fighters and prop bombers than in the past, or were WWII designs the pinnacle of prop plane design? I just think that if we were limited to props and guns only (no jets or missiles), it would be very interesting to see how good a prop fighter we could build these days. Graham

I'd buy that if the girl came with it. Graham

Yep, this was posted and discussed already on March 11th in this thread. Graham

Nope, not a magazine, they are digital print cards which are not available yet, but will be available from vending machines in Japan. This has been covered already, and was first discussed in this thread started on March 7th. Here is the link to the company that is going to make them (no info on the Zero cards yet tho). The official release date of Macross Zero episode # 4 is May 28th. This has also been known for a while now and previously covered in several topics on MW. The release date for ep # 4 can also easily be found in the Macross Compendium. Graham

As much as I think it's a good idea to have a dedicated custom model page, I've barely enough spare time to keep the custom toy gallery & magazine pages up to date, not to mention finding time to do toy reviews, of which I'm very behind with at the moment . And the situation is not likely to improve as it's only 8 weeks until my son is born, so I expect my presence on MW is going to be greatly reduced in the near future. Anyway, I'm the toy guy and Shawn is the model guy, so a custom model page should really be Shawn's baby. Graham

One of the things I love about Macrossworld is that we frequently have deeper and more intelligent aviation discussions than on many dedicated aviation forums A bit OT, but I've always thought it would be cool if all the world's militaries could agree on arms limitations for military aircraft. Basically, planes could only be armed with machineguns, cannons or unguided rockets and bombs (no guided missiles allowed) and no jet engines either, propeller driven only. It would be interesting to see with today's technology how good a prop-driven fighter plane/ground attack plane/bomber we could make compared with WWII planes. Going back to the days of big dog fights and fleets of bombers would be fun. Graham

Arghhh.....just wasted money on the Hong Kong DVD release of Kill Bill. Not only does it feature the crappy black and white fight scene, which sucks as here in Hong Kong we were originally treated to the glorious full color uncensored theatrical release, but also it has no English subtitles, which really sucks as a lot of the film is in Japanese. This is pretty unusual for a HK DVD release as being a so-called 'international city', with a large expat population, most DVDs here come with both English and Chinese subs. Oh well, that'll teach me for not doing any research before I buy. Anyway, after doing a bit of research, it seems like the only DVD release which features the full color fight and has English subs is the Japanese R2 version, which is due for release on April 16th. I've already pre-ordered my copy from Amazon.co.jp. If you want to see the film how it is supposed to be seen now you know which version to order. As I've watched both color and black and white versions of the fight scene with the Bride against the Crazy 88s my opinion is that once you have seen the color version, you will never want to see it in black and white again and after all, color is originally the way Tarantino filmed it. Lastly.....censorship sucks! Graham

It'll never happen, but as a fan of the EF-2000, I gotta say it would be really great (and funny as hell) if the US ended up buying several hundred Typhoons to replace the F/A-22, F-16, F-15 & JSF Graham

The wing-tip pods on that MSiA Skygrasper are definitely sagging. Sure case of gashapon disease there Graham

I'd say give the JSF the chop first (although I know that wont happen). As I've argued elsewhere, that plane is too much of a 'Jack-of-all-trades', does lot's of things reasonably well, but nothing spectacularly. And IMO it's not really much of an improvement on what we have already. In same cases, it actually offers less capability. And as much as I like the idea of the F-22, in this day and age of mostly low intensity guerilla type conflicts, it really is a plane in search of a mission. Unless that is the US ends up going to war with either China, Europe or North Korea, then an F-22 might be useful in achiving air superiority. If it was up to me, I'd say the USAF should scrap both the JSF and F-22 and instead engage in extensive upgrade or even new-build program on the F-15, F-16 and A-10. For the F-16, you could add things like RAM & thrust vectoring or even consider the enhanced performance variants such as the F-16XL and F-16 CCV. The F-15 could also be improved by going to the F-15 ACTIVE, and perhaps adding RAM and doing some subtle reshaping of some parts to (hopefully) reduce the RCS and make the plane at least a bit more stealthy. Other improvements such as off-boresight targetting and helmet mounted sights should also be added (same goes for the F-16). The A-10 could definitely benefit from a more modern cockpit layout and improved avionics and sensor package. Graham

I'll echo with what others have said in that I'd love to see this new HCM-PRO line include non-Gundam mecha. Personally, I can think of nothing more boring than yet another line of One Year War toys. Graham

Even taking into account using advanced technology lighter, stronger & thinner metals for the gun and using alternate ammo systems such as caseless ammo or liquid propellant instead of conventional shell cases, there is still a limit as to how much smaller you can make a gun which fires a 60mm shell. 60mm is 60mm no matter which way you look at it and the feed and breech mechanisms and barrels need to be sized accordingly. Not to mention that in order to assure that enough of the propellant powder is burnt within the barrel and to achieve a meaningful velocity, certain minimum barrel lengths are required. The Gundam's head Vulcans seem to have very short barrels, meaning low velocity. To quote from a passage from the Warbird Tech A-10 book by Dennis R. Jenkins: "It should be remembered that the overall size of a gun increases rapidly with greater calibre. The mass of each round rises with the cube of the calibre, and the loads on the breech, barrel and feed systems follow suit. Barrel length increases with the calibre and the velocity." Although I'm sure most of you have seen it before, here's the famous picture of the A-10's GAU-8 30mm gun shown dwarfing a VW Beetle, to give you an idea of it's size. BTW, fully loaded, the GAU-8 weighs about 3,900 pounds! Now just imagine how large a 60mm Vulcan would be. And by the way, going from 6 or 7 barrels down to 3 barrels doesn't reduce the size that much. Graham