David Hingtgen

Anyone got the exact date of that article? NOW they're going to give the 9X lock-after-launch. Probably due to the USAF otherwise placing massive ASRAAM orders.

F-4 never did have enough downforce at the tail, even with the slotted stabs. Upforce up front couldn't have hurt. It never suffered in roll, using ailerons and spoilers simultaneously. However--F-4 doesn't have much thrust, drag is a very big concern with it. Adding stuff adds drag. Newer planes don't care much, they have so much thrust add-ons don't mean much. But it does with the F-4. As for the Kurnass Phantom--adding a strake isn't going to do much. More likely add in 1 degree or so of alpha before loss of control. F-4: utterly totally at the mercy of angle of attack. F-4 pilots watch that gauge more than all the others. (Ironically, also helps it with carrier landings, as its quite sensitive--get the AOA right, and you're set)

The F-4 was so much better than any other fighter, F-4C's for the USAF still had folding wings and tailhooks. Refuelling receptacle was about the only change, USAF wanted F-4's *now*. Then they realized they needed the gun, and we started making a lot of new F-4 variants. (Ever seen the Swing-wing or Super Phantom proposals? Neat.) F-35A w/gun: yes, but you've got a "gap" in your air-to-air weapons. After firing max-range AMRAAMs, you're supposed to close in to gun range? And not get toasted by Sidewinders etc while doing so? I believe the small-diameter bomb goes to the F-15E first. Basic idea is to have a "bunker buster" without the massive explosion and size. Sure, multi-thousand pound bombs can take out a concrete structure, but also the entire city block. They want the penetration, but with a very small explosive and carrying more than 2 or 4 per plane. After that, they'll go for all the internal-carriage planes.

Bay behind the cockpit--looks good! Just some "stuff" there, but not purely thrown in randomly. That area in the F-15 is actually that "Russian cockpit green/blue" color, but shiny metallic! Not quite chrome shiny, but still quite smooth, not "flakey" at all. Nobody makes that color, and I think it's purely an F-15 thing, not common to most jets. (maybe an MDC thing? Will have to check F-4/18 pics) The parts themselves are of course metallic grey/black.

Angel's Fury: the "sprayers" don't work at all. Trust me. However, I find this very easy: http://www.testors.com/catalog_item.asp?itemNbr=2207 Also available in a box with a can of propellant from Wal-Mart for $18. Not the 30-40 buck set, this is different (and simpler). Well worth trying out just to see how airbrushes work. Now, due to lack of precise controls it won't be doing free-hand feathered camo or narrow stripes, but if you simply want a nice smooth coat of paint over something, it'll certainly do that well. The main thing is, being "even more external than an external-mix" airbrush, it's super-easy to clean. Especially with acrylics. The brush itself usually gets nothing on it, it's all in the jars/caps. I use it basically like I would a good spray-can, but able to use ANY color paint.

Very useful for light-up parts. I think about half of all Tamiya clear blue sales go to us Star Trek modelers who light-up the warp nacelles and deflector dishes. And clear red for impulse engines and ramscoops.

I keep forgetting to mention this, though I thought of it the moment you mentioned it: The boxy area aft of the cockpit reminds me of the F-15 (single-seater) avionics bay. It's essentially hollow, everything's mounted on the sides of the "box". Lots of circuit breakers, wiring bundles, piping. But it looks quite orderly. Think of like an older car's engine bay. Lots of wires to the distributor etc, but nicely bundled and purposeful-looking, with hoses going here and there. Also, the canopy's main strut is mounted vertically at the aft end. I'll try to find on-line pics later.

It's often said that a key decision (especially on the part of "pilot imput) on YF-22 vs YF-23 was that stealth isn't really all that great. A lot of people did not like even a slight trade-off of agility for more stealth. They basically felt the YF-23 depended too much on stealth, despite still equalling the F-16 in agility. They wanted the F-22 because it had that extra little bit of agility. So what does that say for the F-35? Less stealthy than the -23 and the -22, *and* less agile than the 16/22/23? (F-35 is close to the 16's agility according to Lockheed, but certainly doesn't equal or surpass---otherwise they'd point out it being superior every five seconds--but it's not, so they say it's COMPARABLE) Also--stealth isn't just radar. It's IR as well. And a single big-a$$ exhaust like the 35 has can't have all that low of an IR signature, no matter how many serrated edges you put on it. If the -23 had a lower RCS, it had a LOT lower IR signature. And the -22's flattened vectoring nozzles sure look superior to the -35's. F-35's are slow as hell. Mach 1.5 max, or thereabouts. I don't think they can supercruise, need afterburner. (At least it did on the NOVA show). The original, very first 1986 concepts was for a supersonic Harrier replacement. Not a stealth, supercruising mini-F22.

While AIM-9X's SHOULD have lock-after-launch like ASRAAM's, especially for the F-35's use, they don't. Never expect "common sense and logic" to apply to the military!

This pic clearly shows how an F-22 angles out Sidewinders so their IR seekers can get a good view: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...-22-000320a.jpg They can do this due to the trapeze the AIM-9's are mounted on, and presumably the YF-23 would have had something similar, having trapeze-mounted AMRAAM's. F-35's however, have no trapeze's, only rails. Couldn't mount one on the inner door, and putting a trapeze in the air-to-ground spot would certainly reduce clearance enough to preclude 2,000lb JDAM's, a key advantage the 35 has over the 22. (Since the 35 needs bulged bay doors to hold 2,000 pounders, the clearance has to be tiny)

Size isn't the problem. F-35's don't have AIM-9's (any version) because a bay-mounted one would have its seeker blocked. ASRAAM's work due to their lock-after-launch ability.

Airbrake holes--I say go for it. Though holes would fairly pointless with the VF-0's design. But as we all know, many aerodynamic features on valks are for looking cool, not being practical. Holes only show up on airbrakes, and many airbrakes have holes. (Just not airbrakes mounted behind the cockpit, like F-15/VF-0/Flanker) Flaps---no idea. Would need good drawings of the underside of the wings. I lost my scans of the VF-0 long ago. Either way, I *seriously* doubt they'd be F-14-style. F-14's are unique among all aircraft in the entire world, 1903-2004. There's split flaps, zap flaps, kruger flaps, hinged/simple flaps, fowler flaps, and F-14 Tomcat flaps. And from the pic above, they lack the eyebrow doors, a major feature of the F-14's flaps. As for being regular fowler flaps--possible, VF-0's got tiny wings, and its approach speed would be very high. But valks tend to be amazingly light for their size, reducing their stall speed. But VF-0's aren't QUITE valks, technology-wise. If someone's got a good pic of the VF-0 with its flaps down, please post!

Well, it's 25mm, so I presume the gun itself would be larger than the M61A series, thus presumably larger than the SUU-23 pod. But likely smaller than the 30mm GPU-5 (which is pretty big).

Stamen0083: based on the pics/drawings at http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0163.shtml, it looks like there's mere inches between the doors of the weapons bays. Maybe a foot. But certainly not "gunpod-wide". F-35 wasn't designed to accomodate anything there AFAIK, the original plan for a gunpod was an internal one, displacing a JDAM. Now, if they mean more like "aft of the weapons bay, with just the tip of the barrel poking between the aft ends of the doors" then that'd make sense. Could just be semantics issue of what "between" means. (I'm still amazed an F-16 can cycle its gear with a center tank attached).

Not really. YF-23 is basically superior in all aspects, whereas the YF-19/21 are 50/50, each superior in some categories, inferior in others.

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/magazi...-apr-2004-3.jpg is classic VF-31 colors. I'd say early 90's. Sigh, I think all non-canon valks are "doomed" to only wear F-14 colors. There ARE other squadrons you know... Hmmn, first good look I've had of the SV-51's lift fans. Of course, F-35-style fans SO wouldn't work in that configuration. (Unless you've got one heck of a complicated drive-shaft, universals, and engine accessory drives--IMHO it'd be much easier and practical to just make dedicated lift-jets)

I am beyond shocked that their could be a centerline pylon on an F-35, much less BETWEEN the weapons bays. If that's the case, 10 bucks says that you can't open the weapons bays while carrying that gunpod. Which'd mean you have 0 internal payload.

F-35's don't have centerline pylons. No stealth does. Price seems to be the recurring thing here. My point is, regardless of the unit cost of the F-35 (low because there's what, 3000+ on order now?) the program cost is still high. Billions to develop, plus 40 mil per plane isn't "cheap" when you could have just NOT developed it, and use the billions of development money for LOTS of F/A-22's, and develop the FB-22 and F-22N. F-117's only cost a LITTLE more than F-35's, most sites I check give dollar amounts in the 40's of millions. And we've already developed them. "Half price" planes only count if you've already spent the money to buy them. What's cheaper? A plane you've developed, and buying 10 of them for 200 million each-----or a plane you need to develop, and spend 5 billion doing so, and then buying 10 for 100 million each? (Totally fake numbers, but it illustrates my point) It's not like we have a bunch of planes lined up at the dealership, and the F-35 is almost as good for half the price. It's the "we'll have it in a few years, but you'll have to give us a few billion to design it first" model. While the F-22 is "coming next week" and the F-117 and F-16 are "here, ready to go, quite capable, and affordably priced".

I was checking out some sites, and found that the UK plans on making 4x ASRAAM the standard load on theirs. INTERESTING. Combined with the ASRAAM's BVR potential, maybe the UK wants a mid-range fighter?

Yup, F-35 has 25mm gun. (Don't know why, F-22 didn't get it, and USAF isn't going to use it for CAS) The original plan was for Navy and USMC ones to have the internal gunpod, but it seems the "stealthy" (we'll see) external pod is the new idea. At least for the Marines. Navy may still go with the internal, for the Navy wants stealth more than the other 2 forces. (Since there's no other stealthy Navy planes--the F-35 MUST be stealthy, or its pointless) Shin---F-15E's are just as good as F-15C's for fighting. CFT's are removable, I've posted pics of CFT-less F-15E's on this board in the past. They're almost always attached, but they are NOT permanent. A late-model F-15E, with CFT's and LANTIRN removed, and no back-seater, would actually out-perform an early F-15C, for though the F-15E is inherently heavier, the later ones have noticeably more powerful engines, more than making up the weight difference. F-15C's aren't being retrofitted, since the improvement is marginal and very costly. (It's effectively "free" to order new planes with that engine, but WAY too expensive to order new engines for planes already built) F-15E's do carry fewer bullets though. Like 75% of an F-15C's.

>>>But it's cheap, and we're already replacing the F-15 with the F-22. We sure as heck aren't replacing F-15E's with F-22's. Strike Eagle will be around for a LONG time. >>>If they continued to build only the F-22 we'd end up with a significantly smaller force in the air, not to mention the only branch of service benefitting from the increased F-22 production would be the Air Force. Gotta disagree there. USAF F-15's pretty much single-handedly cleared the air in Desert Storm, to allow Navy and Marine strike planes to do their job. Bunch of F-22's would do the same. It was easier just to add in my reply to the quote above.

Yes, the F-35 is mainly a BVR fighter. That's my primary argument as to why it's pointless. We've got LOTS of those, and the Raptor's coming, and will be way better at it. F-35 is supposed to be (nowadays) some sort of F-117/F-16/Harrier replacement. So how is a BVR AMRAAM-launcher a replacement for those? They don't do that, thus the F-35 isn't replacing them very well. And on day 2 and later (99% of the time) when it's not stealthy and out bombing, it's not really any better than conventional aircraft. F-15E's can carry a heck of a lot more stuff, and we've already got "bought and paid for" tons of Falcons and Hornets. Also, most F-35's are not STOVL. Our STOVL capabilities won't be increased much overall. Yes, if the USAF bought 1,000 with lift-fans things would be different, but they haven't. USAF ones aren't stovl. USN ones on a carrier are no different than a Hornet on a carrier except for the first day. USMC order is small. Finally, the military has X amount of money. Instead of using a lot of it on F-35's, we could have just tripled the F/A-22 order, and have an ungodly powerful air superiority force. Then we could send in everything we ever wanted, after the first hour. Day 2? F/A-22's inherently carry more stuff, being bigger. And stay stealthy with an almost-decent internal bombload. Or, if you lose the stealth---they can carry more than the F-35. Bigger planes carry more stuff. Why spend billions developing what is basically a mini-F22, when you could just buy more F-22's? As for the delta-winged F/A-22---the FB-22, and yes it's very similar to the X-44. But the X-44 is mainly a tailless manueverability experiment which looks like an FB-22. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...craft/fb-22.htm FB-22's lose vectoring (kinda pointless on a bomber, less stealthy and greater IR signature---better to remove it if not necessary), X-44's keep it.

Don't forget the "E"--- www.dixieart.com Lots of people buy airbrushes and supplies from there.

I myself went the "Tamiya clear yellow over silver" for my PG W0C, though that's pretty "goopy" stuff too. Thin the heck out of it IMHO, and spray thinly and evenly. It will be VERY apparent if the amount of paint over an area is uneven. Don't try brushing it unless you're felling lucky. Honestly I didn't like the final color very much (their yellow is too green and too orange, simultaneously). I'd try the foil route, or look for craft paint golds, they make some quite finely-ground ones. Finally, the cheap, generic, tiny-bottle Testor's gold actually is a quite nice paint to work with, and very finely ground. Not quite "chrome silver" smooth, but among the smoothest I know of, for any paint anywhere. Color's rather coppery, but it is about the "smoothest" non-silvery paint you can get, if you don't want to try to foil the curved shoulder pieces. I wonder why Bandai didn't do like they did with SO many of their 1/100 Wing kits---gold-plate the parts. It's exactly the look most people are going for. And they could do like their MG Hyaku-Shiki and arrange the parts so the "scars" are on the back-side of the parts. Only 3 gold parts in the whole kit, but very important, and should have been plated. (Ironically, Bandai's gold is actually clear yellow over chrome, but it looks nicer than most people can do, since they vacuum-plate the chrome)

Want a truly kick-a$$ and cheap to design multi-role plane? F-15E/ACTIVE. Hyper-agile high-speed strike fighter. No stealth, but rocks in all other categories. Or, taking advantage of their overall lower weight, F-15C/ACTIVE's fpr dedicated air-to-air. We're not getting enough F-22's to replace the -15, might as well upgrade the -15 fleet. The great thing about ACTIVE nozzles, is that you can retrofit it to any plane with F100, or F110 engines. Which is most fighters. And there's certainly no lack of F-18 stabs to convert to F-15 canards. Harrier replacement? F-35 WITH A GUN. A big one. And maybe a bubble canopy. (C'mon, it can't be that hard to retrofit--the Sea Harrier had its seat raised a few inches and a bubble canopy added, to give much improved visibility over the first attack Harriers) It was subsequently adopted for the AV-8B, too. Anything else, that delta-winged F/A-22 poposal. The F-16XL rocked, even if it wasn't chosen. Now imagine an F/A-22XL. Could even surpass a Strike Eagle.