ewilen

I'm going to try posting a few photos, with the following general parameters: 1) Pick a Macross toy. 2) Find a different toy in the same scale (within, say, 2-3%). 3) Take some pictures of them together to get a sense of scale. Make sure to identify them. Not much point in putting Valks from the same line together, and there are already plenty of 1/60 Q-Rau/Valk pics out there... First up: Matchbox version of the Takatoku 1/144 Destroid Defender, with a Dragon CanDo Pocket Army 1/144 M1A2 Abrams (4th Infantry Division, Iraq 2003). Sitting on my monitor...

Have you tried CosEdit to fix broken PDFs? I have no experience with it but I found a few mentions of it.

The anime community's love/hate attitude to Carl Macek reminds me a bit of the RPG community's collective feelings about Gary Gygax. Both guys got credit for stuff that they couldn't possibly have done if they weren't building on the ideas of others. They both produced flawed but popular products that took a new form of entertainment from a tiny niche and introduced it to the masses, only to see the genre develop and mature in ways that didn't agree with their original vision. Consequently, both came to be seen as dinosaurs and enemies of progress.

I'm sure the Russians would sell them to us if we offered cash. BTW, what the heck is that pointy thing between the engines on the Flanker? It always bothered me. It it just for streamlining?

Wow, so much praise for those Japanese versions that I had to look twice. Nope, still don't like 'em. At least, not for Battletech. When I think of Battletech, I think of enormous, lumbering mecha that can soak up tons of damage. Without any scale context, these things look more like Southern Cross body armor (okay, somewhat more lethal) or Exosquad E-Frames. I.e., little more than powered armor or "small" vehicles (not much bigger than a modern tank). I also don't think they look very distinctive. Too much rococo detail layered over a few basic structural types. The Cheyenne Destroid is much cleaner. But Kawamori didn't design the Cheyenne--and I don't think he designed the other destroids, either.

This is the only other reference I've found on the net, aside from some very uninformative listings at Boardgamegeek. http://gundam.aeug.org/archives/2000/04/0095.html It sounds like the Macross games (and even Dougram) were quite unlike Battletech in that BT units typically take massive amounts of damage (marked off on diagrams showing subsystems if I'm not mistaken) before dying. The Tsukuda/Takara games sound like they were faster-moving.

Not from Tsukuda, from Takara (makers of the Dougram games). I've never seen a good summary of how the Tsukuda Macross games work.

Hm. I take that as a bit of a challenge. I'll bet they'll release a Kaifun sports car before they ever release a Macross-branded Fokker D. VII.

Even more info at these pages: http://dougram.battletechnology.org/Dougra...delsAndToys.htm http://www.gamepile.com/game09.html Apparently published by Takara. And in researching the Tsukuda games, I found to my surprise that they've done a LOT of scifi games, including Star Trek, Star Wars, ORGUSS, and MOSPEADA! Now I've found another reason to learn Japanese.

I'm intrigued. Can you tell me more about the Dougram games or where to look? EDIT: found info here: http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/dougram/dougram.html

As an old-school wargamer and Macross fan, I'd really like to get that one, as well as the other Macross games that Tsukuda Hobbies made. But the incidental costs of buying through Yahoo Japan have stopped me so far, and there's also the cost of also getting the things translated. Tsukuda is a pretty well-known wargame manufacturer. They're known for making historical wargames similar to the Avalon Hill/SPI/GDW variety, and several of them have been imported/distributed in the US with translated rules. Typically these games include a foldout paper map, fairly involved rules (although the rules might not be as detailed for a scifi game as for a game on WWII battleships or modern tanks), and square cardboard playing pieces. Miniatures are almost never included.

Yes, good article. I came across it before but only just now read it carefully. Note that whatever the author thinks of the JSF (and he makes some very good points), he correctly emphasizes the strike role over air superiority. He even spends as much or more time talking about the F-22 as a strike aircraft. The one flaw I noticed is that while he sees the ballistic missile threat as a problem for the F-35, he fails to turn the argument around and look at how unmanned delivery systems (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs) and highly survivable strike aircraft (F-35, F/A-22, and even B-2) armed with GPS-guided weapons are likely to severely reduce the importance of the "classic" air superiority mission. What good are opposing Sukhois going to be if they're destroyed on the ground, have their runways holed, and their command infrastructure wrecked? pfunk: The Marine variant probably won't have an internal gun; the Navy one will or won't depending on sources; the AF variant definitely will and will be by far the most common variant in the US inventory. And as we've gone over, the F-35 will definitely be able to carry AMRAAMs internally along with bombs, and may well be able to carry Sidewinders internally and well as externally (albeit with some likely loss of stealth).

I've used CA and baking powder to fill rather large gaps and David H. recommends it as well. My problem with it though is that it's much harder than the surrounding plastic, so you must be careful when sanding. Based on one of the above posts, this may not be a problem if you sand before it fully cures. David H. offered another solution, which is to mask before sanding.

Britney Spears.....no thanks, not my cup of tea. Change that to Faye Wong, Karen Mok, Bobo Chan or Nanase Aikawa and I'd definitely buy one Graham Also, at least in the Fayebot's case, having it sing would be a feature, not a bug. But where would you keep it? And how to explain it to your wife?

In Mac OS X, you can save any file as a PDF, but I think it's only an image. (I.e., you can't search the text.) If Southcross doesn't do it, I can probably help assuming the job isn't too big. Another option would be to just leave the thing in the native format (I assume Word--RTF might be a little more universal) or create a postscript file out of it and tell people to use Ghostscript.

The drawing is scanned from one of the art books, but I'm drawing a blank on exactly which book. Probably Perfect Memory.

I think what you want is an SDF-1 antfarm.

Yes, going back and reading the excerpt, I see that nothing was said about size, only RCS. My mistake. Not relevant to the overall point, though, which is that the scenario cited is highly artificial.

Sure, I'd like to see it, but it's not a high priority for me. If they never make one, then I'll probably bite the bullet eventually and get a Matchbox version. If they do make one, I'd like to see it with DYRL sculpt for the hull, but with an option (included or separate purchase) to use the aircraft carriers instead of ARMD's. Also, I would like it to be transformable.

Other criticism (as pointed out on BBS's and Usenet): the tests not only assume perfect execution on the part of the Sukhoi pilots, but also that it's a 1-1 engagement and they do not consider the effect of AWACS. With AWACS present and/or other friendly fighters who split off after contact and fly a converging intercept pattern, I doubt there's a way the "doppler defeating" maneuver would accomplish much. And--again--in any realistic scenario, the US will enjoy a huge numerical advantage--as well as having AWACS.

Doesn't seem very clear to the writer of the article that the F-22 is the answer, though no argument about pilot training. Minor correction: the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is big, but has some stealth improvements that reduce its radar cross section. The regular Hornet isn't too much bigger than the F-16. BTW, the original story is here: http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan.../m15vsu0524.xml

Or even, "I know the question you should have asked--and the answer--but I can't tell you."

Darn, beat me to it on the second one. Could give you nightmares about all of them suddenly coming to life in the middle of the night. About the Fuke--in the original Mospeada, the character known as Rook in RT is named Houquet. Look here for a full explanation, including why it's sometimes written as "Fuke".

Look like small Gundams to me.

Who's the joker who voted for the Quel-Quallie? If it were done in 1/60, it'd be almost 7 feet long!