David Hingtgen

Exactly, and that's how I have some. I found out that if you "overload" blue, it changes to the green of formation lights. But I'm pretty sure the military uses inherently green. Only problem (aka expense) is getting the converter/driver, and the only one I have is inside my light-up USS Lakota.

Still interested in a -19. Would be neat to see it next to the resin 1/48 YF-23 I plan to buy some day...

They're lights. They have an on/off switch, and use electricity. I have some of the stuff myself. If they simply glowed/reflected, the military wouldn't use them, for you couldn't turn them off. Bad idea to fly over Iraq/Bosnia/Afghanistan all lit up. They're electroluminescent lights, specifically. Neat stuff.

I ran out of frame HP stuff REAL fast. Used AGWS for like 3 fights in the whole game, and that used up the entire game's worth of frame healing stuff I'd found. Of course, I had wussy AGWS because I couldn't afford to upgrade. Guard cleanser--yeah, if you had the money. I remember heading back to the sewers/forest for an hour to kill stuff to get fangs to trade for money to buy like 1 full set of armor... You know, it all comes down to money. I remember that for the last 10 hours of the game, I didn't earn 1 cent. Only RPG I know of where killing monsters for a few hours won't give you any cash. Levelling up is slow, as is learning techs. There's really no point in fighting enemies, benefits are few and far between. Add to the fact that most fights take WAY too many rounds... I liked the story, but the battles just took forever, because everything was too weak and too slow, and everything else cost too much to upgrade because you never had any money.

Oh yeah, AGWS. So utterly totally completely useless. KOS-MOS was as good as 3 of them put together. Techs--that relates to my "never have the right one" problem. You have them all set up for say, fire and lightning and maybe gravity, (which took like 10 levels to learn, and 20 mins arranging your party) then some ice/holy guys show up. You can't swap characters, your chosen magic/techs won't work, your quick techs are useless, and you MIGHT have an appropriate "slow" tech available that one character can use every other round... That always happened to me at the end, as Jr and chaos were the only ones with decent holy attacks. I used Moonlight Sonata until I was deathly sick of it. If I could just have ALL techs be quick, or be able to select ALL the "magic" ones. Having quick access to only like 25% of your techs is worthless. Especially with 4 basic elements and only 3 characters... Money--well the fact that beating enemies didn't give you any money was the main problem! Yes, it's more realistic, but it's just accepted in RPG's that killing monsters gives gold. I bought new stuff for KOS-MOS and Ziggy, and that's all I could afford. If I was lucky. Story--I actually like Cmdr Cherenkoff's (sp?) story more than anything. And my sig relates to it even.

XS 2 only adds a few new costumes, and like 1 small "extra treasure dungeon" if you have a XS 1 save. It's nothing compared to hack, or even Suikoden. And Suik 3 didn't get much from Suik 2, it's Suik 2 that REALLY got some great stuff from Suik 1. A long time ago I heard techs might be carried over, but nothing since. It'd make sense though, as it'd probably take a whole 'nother game to get all the ones from the first. My #1 complaint with XS 1 was the battle system, and the implementation of FFX-style character-switching will help quite a bit. Won't solve all my gripes, but'll help. (Biggest gripe: Techs. Techs are slow to learn, not that much better than a normal attack, the whole slow/fast version thing, and you never have the one you need) XG had perfect techs, they rocked. Quick, unlimited access, many choices. Fei's 2nd-to-last is still my all-time fave. For me, I only play the series in the hope that XS 5 actually will be Xenogears. (Of course, XS 4 should be the Solarian-Nisan war, and the Diabolos war--which'll be fine so long as I can use Alpha-Weltall)

Famitsu scores out of 40. 33 is a pretty high score, 37+ is super-exceedingly rare. Though IMHO, after reading translations of their reviews, I place absolutely no faith in them. While it seems half the gaming world (and all of Japan) treats their reviews as gospel, they seem to me like it's four 12 year olds who care about graphics, graphics, coolness, and how many big explosions there are.

AFAIK the E-2 will still be around for a LONG time. S-3 is gone along with the Tomcat, as in very few years left. F-14B/D operational speed limit is Mach 1.88 AFAIK, don't know what the A's is at the moment. Of course, that's still faster than a Bug in a dive.

Kinda depends. Most of their 1/72 sheets include all the stencil data/generic markings, including formation lights. I know their 1/48 F-14 squadron markings sheets don't have any. (you have to buy data sheets separately for the 1/48 F-14's). I think all of their F-18's include them regardless of scale. I have some 1/32 sheets coming soon, will let you know. I'm pretty sure all their separate F-14 stencil/data sheets include them. And of course, there's the "Formation Lights" sheets, which'd definitely have them. http://www.camdecals.com/main.asp?action=72 About 10 spots up from the bottom. They don't specifically say the 1/72 are glow-in-the-dark, (the 1/32 and 1/48 do), but since my 1/72 F-18 and F-14 sheets have glow-in-the-dark ones, I'd be very surprised if the separate ones didn't. I mean, why else would they sell them? Nobody's going to order non-glowing lights, since every other decal sheet on Earth already has non-glowing ones. And especially since they're known as "the guys with the glowing decals". For some reason CAM's own site can never seem to display their stencil decals (only squadron markings), so here's a pic of the 1/48 set for F-14/18's: http://greatmodels.com/cgi/display.cgi?item_num=cam48a001 PS--I've ordered decals direct from CAM's own site several times, they're very fast, and are in Cali. And if you only order a few decals, they only charge like 2 bucks to ship in the US. The order will go through Brookhurst Hobbies, their main distributor. Answer to a soon-to-be-asked FAQ: Stencils are the generic warning markings painted all over planes. Most famous being "No Step" "Rescue" and "Jet Intake". So called because they're quickly spray-painted on over the camoflage with a stencil.

I think this is more along the lines of "outline break-up" rather than disruptive/confusing. It's only disruptive at a range of like 10 yards, pointless for even the closest air-to-air. Look at it from far away----overall effect (especially considering the colors) isn't too far off from current F-15C camo. I think digital camo is supposed to be like "perfectly random" so that the eye can't really make a pattern or shape out of it. Because even the best "hand-drawn" patterns still have some sort of shape or pattern, or are identifiable as camo. I mean, if you see swoops of green/tan/brown, you think "standard jungle camo". This is so "nothing" that you can't really "see" anything. At least, I think that's how it's supposed to work. PS--people over at the jet modelling forums are collectively groaning at the masking job this'd take to do.

I can't remember--did someone already try this on a VF-1? I know I've seen Gundams like this.

You'll just have to trust me, as I absolutely cannot photograph it no matter how hard I try, but anyways: The formation-light decals from CAM actually glow bright green. They are the EXACT color of say an F-14's lights glowing at night. Very, very, very, cool. And since they're just decals, they're 1,000x easier but just as impressive as those guys who put tiny LED's in their planes to flash the navigation lights. The F-18 ones also have the missile launch rails glow. http://www.camdecals.com The effect is like this, just a bit greener and not as bright:

Coota---all F-14's (except a few) are being replaced with F-18F's. Most F-14 RIO's will become F-18 RIO's. The Navy really likes 2-seaters for their "high-end" fighters.

It's almost completely gone, but this is the only squadron left anyone really cares about. Current last Tomcat date is Fall 2006. But it keeps getting bumped up.

Devil's Advocate is fun! Maybe someday I'll just shock everybody and have a long argument FOR the F-18F.

Time to decry the Shornet! Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom: The most common Super Hornet load-out was 4 fuel tanks and a buddy refueling pod. The most common Tomcat load-out was a bunch of bombs and targeting pods. Regulars Hornet's usually carried a very mixed load, 1 of everything. (A Harm, a JDAM, an AMRAAM, a clusterbomb, etc) Super Hornets spent 90% of their time refueling Tomcats and non-Super Hornets, that's all they're good for. (Yes, they do rock at close-in air combat, but that's not what an F-14 replacement should be doing) If the Bionic Bug's so good, why were the Tomcats and Hornet-C's out doing the bombing? Finally---once the Tomcat started bombing, they quickly proved to be VERY good at it. Exactly the same as the F-15E. Not officially designed for it, but once they activated the latent bombing capability, they realized that a large, powerful fighter makes for a great bomber. Sheer size---greater payload/range, and a more stable platform.

JL: Starcrossed rocked, BTW.

Opus---I too always felt VF-103 weren't the "real" Jolly Rogers I grew up with.

Here's a straight on shot of the 60th Ann tail: http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/images/...rs60yrsdp_1.jpg

Prowlus already posted what I was going to add this morning--the accelerated retirement of the F-14. VF-143 and -31 will still be the final B and D squadrons I think. -211 should still be the final A.

http://www.almansur.com/jollyrogers/tomcattwilight.htm The Black Knight's new Bugs' colors aren't nearly as cool as the previous few F-14 schemes, let's hope the Jolly Rogers don't follow suit. Interesting note: I've got personal pics of VF-103 with JFK lettering back in July, so I think they've been "home" for quite a while.

Well I've been going through all my F-14 kits and decals lately, plotting what I'm going to make in the upcoming years. (Hey, with how long even a "simple" kit takes me, it'll be a while). I'm always annoyed when I see 5-day kits that look way better than my 5-week efforts. Anyways, I've come to the conclusion that I have too many Fujimi F-14's and parts. So I'm wondering---since Fujimi F-14D's will result in the most accurate-to-the-show model of Shin's F-14, does anyone need one? They are AFAIK utterly unavailable in the US (I shop at lots of online stores) , but I've got a few from HLJ etc, and I also (due to my large stash of Fuji F-14 parts from previous kits) have enough parts to "make" an F-14D from an F-14A or A+ kit. I can offer MISB (only 1), or plenty "open box/bags, but utterly unstarted" ones I can make from A/A+ kits and the extra D sprues I have. I also have one which has like 6 engine-area parts removed from the sprues (nicely, I was test-fitting) which of course would be cheaper. So, is there any interest from all you people who have the Hase M0 kit decals but want the RIGHT type of F-14, etc? I'm not looking to make profit or anything, just clear out closet space and make enough money to snag an F-14B or something. Also, I'm wondering how much interest there is in a Hasegawa guide for Shin's. Or maybe just F-14's in general, since VF-1 lovers tend to like F-14's too. A few parts would be more accurate than the Fuji kit for Shin's (weapons/pylons/wheels mainly) but it's generally more available and the "preferred" F-14 kit in the modeling community. I'm going to talk about it anyways, but the more interest, the more detail I'll go into, and expand into general "Hase F-14 tips" more.

I vote for right-side up in fighter mode. I mean---what if *all* the markings were right-side up in battroid mode? Fighter mode would have the markings all over the place. The gunpod is the only thing where it can look sort of right in both modes, but everything else only looks right in fighter mode.

I too spray outside. Any tips for best results? What humidity, temp, etc?

I couldn't believe he put the forward half on AFTER he decaled either! Only with a Tamiya could you even consider doing that. Anyways---Gunship grey (as a rule) is about the most opaque, even color there is. You could put it over flourescent orange primer and it wouldn't look different. I think that's what made the technique work. It's much darker than it photographs, they always look much lighter in photos than they really are. It is the color of a stealth bomber, and that's a DARK grey.