RFT

Bagged an '08 bumblebee on saturday, it's awesome- one of the best deluxe-class transformers I've ever seen.

The boxes might be 19cm high, but the figures aren't. I've got Revoltech Prime and Megatron on my desk right now and at most they're 13cm, or knee-high to a 1/48 VF-1.

Preview article some not-so-good news contained in there- only 15 real planes, and only 15 missions...

oooh, XB-70!

either that or can the F-35 already so we can get cracking on navalising the typhoon

small update- the final stage of approving the purchase of the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers went through a couple days ago, with the ships expected to enter service in 2014 and 2016.

HLJ has Megs, but not Prime.

the skull's not very good, Buf for some reason all my scratch-build skulls came out rubbish, so I took it off a car a friend sent me.

Ohm that reminds me- I made a very close-in guns kill on a Mig-25 at the weekend, and flew through the explosion, causing a flameout. got it to re-light, though.

The more I play this game, the more I love the tomcat. I've had so many missions now where it was insanely hard in the F-15, but the tocat's radar and pheonixes have saved the day...

One would have thought that perhaps the thing more likely to cause offence is that the aircraft are dropping bombs on said country, not what's painted on them... still, most recent RAF nose-art has been rubbish.

according to a gaming forum i was reading (so not a 100% reliable source) all of Namco's xbox 360 releases to date have been world-region.

I;m impressed that the toys are on UK shelves as well- I think this is the first time I can remeber reading a TF thread where I could actually got out an buy (most of) the toys at the same time as the americans. I bought Ratchet at the weekend- I think he's pretty nifty.

I got a 360 at the weekend, with a Copy of OverG (despite the salesman trying to warn me off - "it's not very good, you know". in a way it was cool he was trying to look out for me as a customer and not just trying to sell at all costs.) Anyway, I;m back in the game and despite some annoyances (missions ending the air) i'm really enjoying being back in the Energy Airforce saddle- and particularly with the long draw distance compared to Aim Strike. anyway, is it me, or is the F-15J a bit rubbish? I took it up on the first africa mission (intercept Mig-25s doing recon overflights of the base) and spent ages being singularly unable to kill any more than one of them because I just couldn;t find them on radar. Went up in the Tomcat, killed all 3 enemies within a minute... what I do miss from Aimstrike, and this is part of the "doing the full mission" thing- is the tension of not knowing when the battle's going to kick off

I haven;t got a 360 yet but this is tiop of my purchase list when I do - I got Energy Airforce Aim Strike a couple of years ago and it;s awesome. 360 visuals and a much bigger plane list (I had no idea till I read this thread it had the gripen!) - wahey!

I think the last 4 Canberras finally retired last year - I remeber seeing them beong offered for sale on an MOD website...

Quoted for truth, and in fact I remeber posting something to that effect bloody ages ago. My root feeling is that there really isn't any need for STOVL in the current climate - The RAF don't really need it now we're out of the cold war, the Royal Navy wouldn't need it if the carriers had cats and wires, which basically leaves the USMC as the remaining F-35B customer... I don't think, though, that F-35B's in much danger simply because the whole project was started off by the RN and USMC as a Harrier replacement programme and that thinking seems to be pretty deep - it;s nearly alwys reported in the UK media as such. and when you describe somethgn as a harrier replacement, you assume it;s got to be STOVL... Much as I love harriers, I think they're an evolutionary dead-end, really. What the "United Kingdom Air Force" (to coin a phrase, and it may come about., what with "joint force harrier") really needs in the next 15 years is a good multi-role carrier aircraft (navalised typhoon, imported rafales or superbugs, I'm not that fussy. Hell, Su-33 coule be considered) and a proper "bomb truck" replacement for the Tornado GR, which is already old, and the eurofighter as-is isn't really what's needed. There was the Future Offensive Air System project but I think that was cancelled without leading to anything. anything that we heard about, anyway. Good grief, I wouldn't have wanted to try a carrier landing in the republic version

I'm 90% sure those smaller aircraft are gripens, based on a: intake positioning b: tail shape and aerials c: the white colour of the nosecone and the fact it's a slanted line where it changes to the darker grey. d: LCA's got a pretty prominent spine which those planes don't. link to reference pic

I'm sure I read a while ago that the hasbro twisty ties are nothing to do with protecting the toy from damage, more protecting it from thievery... supposedly there was a bgi problem with toys being removed from the packaging on shop shelves and the box being replaced. making in so time consuming to do with the ties supposedly guards against this sort of thing.

" Fox Monter " of the Simhq forums is building a mod for Strike Fighters (aka Wings over Vietnam/ Wings over europe) and has a really nice looking VF-1J done. thread and screenshots here

double post...

The Hunter is perfectly proportioned, cleanly detailed and elegant. in automotive terms it's a jaguar D-type. I did think a lot about other post-war RAF aircraft before coming to my conclusion... for the most part, I think we've operated either good-looking "masculine" aircraft: vulcan, tornado, javelin, phantom. big, powerful, but not what you'd call elegant. I think one of the reasons the lightning has such popularity in the UK is that it was used as a great canvas for squadron markings. while most RAF planes were being painted in the same drab green/grey cammo, lightings were in the raw silver with brightly colored tails and spines, and massive high-vis roundels.

Well, had everything gone to plan from the genesis of the project in the early 80s, the typhoon would have had two tails: here's the original concept, the MBB TKF-90... and the british "P.110" concept these went together to form the trinational "ACA" project The project lost the twin fins when the EAP demonstrator was built- it was going to be a joint build by MBB and BAe with the germans doing the back and the british doing the front. when the germans pulled funding, the plane was finished by BAe using the rear end of a tornado. so when the time came to finalise the specs fo the Eurofighter, it was based around the EAP single-fin layout as that's what there was the test data for. It might be national bias, but I do think the Typhoon is a beautiful aircraft (possibly the first truly beautiful aircraft the RAF have operated since the Hunter. we've had some great planes, but none of them you'd described as beautiful) and don't really see how one could confuse it for the gripen or rafale - Totally different intakes for starters. What it isn't is forward-looking or futuristic. Going back a few pages, remebner we were talking about the Hind, and how it looks a bit assymettrical from head-on? They definitely are. I went to my local air museum (midland air museum at coventry) and they've got one, the BAE Systems show-chopper for when they were selling an upgrade program. The effect is really noticable when you're standing in front of it

I'm not denying that the colour isn't quite the right one and that better ones weren;t availabe, but the one they've chosen still looks pretty good - that's all i'm saying, really. anyway, i''ve just nticed something I can;t remeber seeing any comment on. on the outer edges of MP starscreams's shoulders are what appear to be two pivoted sockets that point either up or outwards in bot mode and are hidden or pointing down in jet mode. on this pic of the underside they're the gaps in the stripes directly behind the intakes. and you can see them in bot mode here you can see the sockets (though they appear circular) on this pre-kawamori revisions design sketch. theories: 1: orignial idea for connection to stand (doubtful - too far forward) 2: earlier desing for the megatron mount used them 3: hardpoint for some other, later deleted jet mode weapon (not that you attach anything to a real F-15 there.) whatever it is, they seem utterly uselss and it's odd to have a moving part that serves no function at all...

true. but making it an F-15E would require a 2-seat cockpit, which would have pretty much broken the transformation. (as it's longer. or is it? I'll have tyo ckeck my books, I may be talking rubbish again) the F-15 grey i was taling about was the light grey of the A's and C's..