David Hingtgen

The US has massive reserves of aircraft, all at different "readiness" levels. Some are saved in good condition to potentially fly on short notice. Some are saved "well enough" to fly with some work done, and others are only saved to serve as spare parts sources for others. And of course many are scrapped or converted to drones. They're currently doing this with the B-1 fleet---sending perfectly good B-1's to the desert to be stripped for parts. It's better to have 2 wings of B-1's consistently ready, than 4 wings barely able to fly. Half the planes means twice as much spares and maintenance support per plane. Ships are the exact same way--the USS Iowa is only kept as a potential source of spares for the Wisconsin and New Jersey.

You haven't won? You're missing out on the best planes! Though IMHO, the later the missions, the weirder they get. AC usually has at least "plausible" missions, AFDS just gets plain silly at times.

Random photo post: Ever wondered what happened to all the F-4's the US bought? No, not THAT many became AMRAAM targets. Most of them retired to Tuscon, AZ! Seriously: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/449326/L/ There's a few dozen Tomcats up top too, and some Harriers fairly low. But it's mainly several hundred (less than a thousand though, I THINK) Phantoms...

I go with very tiny amounts of regular cement. All the white-glue like stuff for canopies is too weak IMHO. And some of them like to pretty instantly dissolve when exposed to water (as in, if you need to apply a decal in the area). Still haven't tried the GS-Hypo stuff, supposed to be THE best.

If you do that, you'll end up with a .jpg or gif or whatever, but of *much* lower quality than the original. .ART is not merely a new format, it is a highly compressed format with major loss of image quality. It's not an MP3 of a CD, it's like a 11khz 4-bit mono WAV file of a CD...

ART is AOL's own extension (not your standard .art extension), auto-compression of ALL images (gif/bmp/jpg) for the cache. To get rid of it, you have to go into AOL and switch the IE preferences to "never compress". AOL compression is it's own menu-tab on IE' main preference setting. But it'll only show up if you go in via AOL's own settings, then web prefs. Won't show up if you launch IE then change prefs, even though the effect still happens.

For the Arleigh Burke class, there's PLENTY of real-life sources out there. For obvious reasons, the Cole is the most heavily photographed one. http://www.hazegray.org/features/cole/ Great detail pics in the "repair" gallery. Though, I don't remember if the Burke's in Macross are Flight I, II, or IIA. (Cole is one of the last Flight I) Good place to start: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...ship/ddg-51.htm

Checking around, it seems this is the E3 demo basically, and that it is little more than a playable beta, many features lacking. Anyways---damage seems like every other game, you're fine up until 100% damage. Other things I forgot: Accurate gun ammo amounts. No "I'll just shoot for 5 mins until I hit him" here! Gun takes a moment to "spin up" to full speed, you can hear it. Less than 2 months until the "real" version comes out, can't wait to see all the changes/additions.

It's the October issue. Just came out this week I think. "Def Jam fight for NY" is the cover game. All 40 different covers of it.

F-14A's haven't had working glove vanes since about 1986. Maybe earlier. It has been many, many years since an F-14A has deployed its glove vanes. PS--I thought the A's tail looked a bit more VF-33 like than VF-84. But the nose-stripe is definitely VF-84. PPS--if you're looking for this issue, it has 40 (forty! ) different covers. Be sure to read the listing of what's on the disc to make sure you get the right issue. PPPS---they went with a VERY pink/blue afterburner effect. Not many planes have that color, and it's usually indicative of specific engines. Would much prefer yellow/orange. (Unless they do it plane-by-plane correct, thus yellow-orange for F-15C's and orange-blue for F-15E's, etc)

Things I forgot/corrections: You start the mission with drop tanks, but they automatically jettison like 2 secs in. Noticed that the Tomcat drops the pylons, too--I honestly don't know if that's right or not---it's very rare to see a Tomcat with drop-tank pylons only---they either have the pylons AND the tanks attached, or nothing at all. Real F-22's drop their pylons with their tanks, but I think that's kinda unique. F-14A's still have glove vanes deploy. C'mon, they've been gone for nearly 20 years now... AMRAAM has no minimum range, I must have been doing something wrong earlier. It'd have been really neat though IMHO, it's the super duper godly missile otherwise---there has to be SOMETHING to make it inferior in some way to some other missile... (like a minimum range) Sparrow and AMRAAM have identical ranges, about 3x that of a Sidewinder. Noticed that there's a counter in the plane select screen, and it counts down as you assign planes to wingmen. Perhaps you can only have so many of various types, and/or have to buy them. Thus, your squadron couldn't have all F-22's unless you could afford them . Would make it more interesting, having a mixed fleet, etc. "Yeah, all of you get 4th-hand F-5A's, I need to save up for my Super Tomcat's custom high-vis paint job..."

Well it's technically the Official *US* Playstation Mag, could be availability/compatability issues.

AFDS lets you set the throttle exactly where you want it, from idle to full burner, in like 1% increments. You don't need to hold it down. And you can "double click" from any setting to get full burner or minimum idle instantly. Wonderful setup, IMHO. AC4/5--let up on the button, and it just defaults to "moderate thrust". Full non-burner, and full burner are about the only other settings you can hold accurately, and full burner requires you to press down HARD, and hold it. It's nigh-impossible to get like 70%, 90%, min burner, half-burner, etc. Wing sweep---well the demo's calibrated in km/h, not knots, and it's really messing up my "accuracy checking". I did notice a "mach 1" condensation effect, much better than any other game. But sweep was definitely determined by speed, not throttle. Actually seemed too slow IMHO, since the F-14's wing sweep actually occurs over a rather narrow band (pretty much Mach .75 to 1.25--- Mach .5 to .75 is only like a 2 to 4 degree change, and nobody notices) F-14's don't do "inbetween" sweep very often (unless they're really dogfighting), it's usally in or out. I'm definitely going to play some more tonight. PS---the demo has the full long video that you can download from Namco's site as well.

Thread necromancy! Anyways---am I the only one who picked up the latest issue of Official Playstation Magazine? *PLAYABLE* Ace Combat 5 demo! Thoughts/notes: Demo only has F-14A and F-18E. Jolly Rogers/low-vis respectively. And wow are they paying attention to the new paint rules, the Super Bug has the tailcodes off the rudders, and moved forward. Overall combat is changed a little bit---you select the planes for all 4 people in your element (yourself and 3 wingmen). So don't give them all A-10's and then issue "cover me" while fighting Flankers... Overall, the realism is up a bit. F-14 has a definitely more "heavy" feel compared to the Hornet. Thankfully, the ailerons are gone, but still no differential stabs, which is the F-14's primary control. S. Bug was good, but there's no airbrakes, only rudder toe-in. (And I think it should be toe-out, not toe-in). S. Bug's LERX's seemed too thin/long to me, too much like a Legacy Bug's. AIM-7's now are like real ones--you must maintain a radar lock until the target is hit. But they are powerful and will take down large aircraft in a single hit, where you need like 4 AIM-9's to down a C-5. C-5's and C-130's will drop a million flares if you use Sidewinders, I had like 6 in a row miss. And 20mm doesn't do much to big planes like that. AIM-9's are still your "4 dozen of them and can hit anything, but are weak" weapon. They launch off the rail like THAT, you don't even see them. Wonder if they'll bring in AIM-9X's later. (Actually, I'd really like to see the AIM-9 be air-to-air only) AMRAAM's are far superior to the others---faster, long-range lock-on, fire-and-forget. I hope they make them not too easy to get in the real game, or it'll instantly make the S. Bug the best plane, due to sheer number of AMRAAM's it can carry. However, I did note that they added in a minimum range limiter--no 1-mile AMRAAM launches. It is medium/long-range only. Get in close, and you'll need a Sidewinder. I'll play more later and see how the Sparrow does, real Sparrows can actually get in pretty close--might be the only advantage the Sparrow has. No Phoenixes in the demo. Overall difficulty is definitely up, mainly due to a bit more realism, and I'll say smarter AI. The bad guys actually launch countermeasures! And they will gang up on you to protect what they're escorting, taking down C-130's are not a piece of cake 60-second mission. Graphics--noticed there weren't any of the neat follow enemy/target/missile views, hopefully the full game will have them. I actually thought AC4 looked a bit more polished, could also be a "demo" thing. Outside view is more like AFDS than AC4--as in, you're really close to your plane, too close IMHO. And yes, you still need to press down HARD to get afterburner, which is probably my #1 complaint about the entire AC series. Why can't they do like AFDS and let you just select your thrust level? Or at least reduce the amount of pressure needed to get afterburner.

Just some neat stuff: VFA-103 Shornets demoing. http://www.airliners.net/open.file/655545/L/ http://www.airliners.net/open.file/655546/L That's Boeing's big thing this year at all the high-end/industry demos---using "regular in-service" F-18F's, fully loaded, and doing the "Farnborough" demo, as well as including nearly all of the "Rafale-exclusive" (well, they used to be) moves. They're really trying to show that it can do this all the time, not just stripped down for an airshow like a Flanker. They keep upping the load--was 4 AMRAAM's, then 6, now 8. And always with 2 Sidewinders. Next they'll have to add drop-tanks or swap AMRAAM's for HARM's. Interview with Capt. Snodgrass, F-14 pilot GOD: http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/interview...s/index-pf.html Trust me, you have seen pics of him flying F-14's, and probably read about stuff he's done. If it was cool/incredible/impossible, and involved an F-14, he was probably the pilot.

I have several books of that series, but nothing set post-Vietnam. Annoyingly, they did the USAF F-15 book on Enduring/Iraqi Freedom?!?! "F-15C's spent many hours circling around, looking for something to do". Most everybody presumed the F-15 book (when they announced it) would be about Desert Storm, being the only US F-15 air-to-air combat. The F-18 book's a bit better, but again, Desert Storm would have had a lot more "neat combat scenarios" to write about.

VF-1's v.stabs aren't canted enough to act as h.stabs. They're rudders only. Ventral fins only affect yaw. VF-1 derives 100% of its pitch control and stability from thrust vectoring. Also, the F-117 has elevons for pitch control. While its rudders are arranged in a V, they are not ruddervators and do not control pitch. (according to some---I think a lot of places just ASSUME they're ruddervators because they're in a V, but WAPJ says they are ruddervators--WAPJ is good, but not perfect) Even if the VF-1's stabs were canted outwards enough, the rudders are far too small to act as elevators for a fighter, which leads into my next point. Every conventional fighter for decades and decades has had slab/all-moving stabilators, I doubt the VF-1 would go back to WWII-style tail surfaces.

Not really, IMHO. But there's worse airplane movies out there.

Afterburn what? Wouldn't it be more like "afternuke"?

I'll at least respond to this: If someone's going to make such a detailed analysis, it'd help to use the right plane. Nice Seven *FIVE* Seven drawings there. Of course 757 drawings don't match up to 767 impact holes...

My point was that in space it's not a jet at all, and cannot work even "similarly" to one. In space (IMHO) it really needs nothing more than the combustion chamber. And is then a pure and simple rocket. (With a rather exotic fuel source and exotic exhaust composition, but still a basic rocket)

If it's in space, it must act as a rocket. Can't have jet engines in space. Jets work because of the AIR. No air=no jet. Taking the air away from a jet is like taking the water away from a ship's propeller---you can spin it as fast as you like, but it's not going to do anything...

You could just remove a few, but upgrade the rest to triple-turrets, thus not reducing the number of barrels.

Are those laser/energy turrets or somesuch? Because conventional large turrets usually have several decks of structure below them, and if that's the case then it looks like 50% of the hull volume is occupied by turret barbettes!

I figured they might have been inspired by the all-black F-14's (both an A and a D, at different times, both called Vandy-1), or the all-black Top Gun F-18. (Which is not the SDCC one, they made a totally fake one for that). Finish used on real all-black planes: F-14A: matte black. F-14D: gloss black. Not super gloss, but glossier than "semi-gloss". F-18B: really glossy black.