Knight26

It can't be the gun...not that it is a death ray or anything. But back in the late 80s/early 90s A-10s were in fact offered to Turkey and South Korea. Both got the F-16 instead but yeah the A-10 was export marketed. That was when the Air Force brass (fragging morons) were doing everything they could to ditcht he A-10. The export version would have had the gun removed though as the gun cooling system is still consider classified, plus even if they had been sold it with the gun they would not have been sold the DU ammo. The countries would have had to have bought it from other vendors, beside the US is one of the only countries to use DU ammo.

Congress won't allow A-10s to be sold outside the US armed forces, mostly due to the gun and becuase they are no longer in production, Fairchild-Republic, the company that made them is out of business.

Also I was thinking about it on the way home and I decided to make a number of varients for this design: 1) The standard varient, the one seen here. 2) The Gun boat varient, mirroring the right side to the left giving two A/M cannons, and the torpedoes but no missiles. 3) The missile boat varient, mirroring the left side and giving it two missile packs. 4) The ECM varient, strip off all the weapons except for a couple missile packs for defense and pack it full of ECM gear, this one would be a four seater. 5) The shuttle varient, similar to the ECM varient possibly with additional personnel carrying pods in place of the main weapons pods.

As you can see the nose gear is the standard Splicer nose gear I have been using, what can I say, I like it. The mains are all new, based on one of the concepts I rejected for the S-5000s undercarriage. The fold down and rotate the pad since they are otherwise angled. I think i might have made them a tad too big as they come close to impinging on the engine mounting pylons, so I moved the pylons a little to compensate. So, any comments?

Ok, the landing gear are in, one more feature, the boarding ladders, and I can start the detailing process. Of course with the addition of the landing gears that heralds the return of our flight test crew to start the inspection process and Graham's favorite rendering trick the mirrorplane. Sorry Graham I know you hate it but its a nice way to show off the top and bottom in one shot. Onto the pics.

Looks interesting and for once SMG doesn't look totally annorexic, she actually looks hot again.

No shin that would require some massive rengineering to accomplish, the engine replacement for one thing would be a nightmare, the F-8 IIRC uses a much longer and smaller diameter engine then the F-110, which is shorter but fatter. Remaking the wing might be possible but then again the change in mass would throw off the CG something fierce and there would have to be changes made. In order to give it AMRAAM capabilities, well that would require completely replacing the whole avionics suite including a new radar. All in all you would no longer have an F-8 when you were done, better idea would be to design up a whole new plane around the F-110 using the F-8 as a starting point, make a more modern day gun fighter.

Yeah the JRs are still out on the JFK, they should be returning soon. More then likely what you saw was one of their backup aircraft that they left behind just in case. Since they are on their way home from the gulf they likely will not recieve anymore aircraft even if they accidentally lose one.

I'll agree with that. It is refreshing when the hero is a simple grunt, like in Quake3, or how about Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. He was just a nobody. Ok any character is those stupid GTA games is not a hero, not even anti-hero in my book, you play a villian a bad guy plain and simple from what I have seen, sorry no interest there. Now Gordon Freeman I like engineer/scientist in a cool techno suit forced to become the savior of the world, my kind of guy, not some stupid musclebound tough, but someone with brains. Must be one of the reasons why in my books so many of my characters have technical degrees, even the strongest most muscular guys.

Oh yes I also added the sensor pods and ECM pods to the fins. Comments?

Hand me the key: Ok the design is just about locked in, and I am now going to start the detailing process, which will result in some modifications as I go. ANy suggestions for areas that need work are greatly appreciated. ANyway, the updates are as following, I reshaped the aft end made it no quite so flat, though there is still a big flat area. I also recontoured the front of the "Wings" extending them forward and shriking the size of that front drag magnet. I plan to add some hardware to that flat area, maybe even an array of cooling vents. Aside from that all I did was hollow out the engines and give them a new front end, makes them look a lot more like the A-10's TF-34s. I may move them a little though because the connceting pylons look like they may not match up properly now, will work on that later when I start detailing the engines. THe next step is the landing gears, once I have them figured out and intigrated I will start the detailing work.

Veyr nice but what the does Mise-en-scene mean?

Wow AgentOne actually someone other then his fantasy lover Arnold for a movie part I'm amazed.

Reeves was good as an 80's superman don't get me wrong, but I did not like his Clark Kent, portrayed him as bumbling dork, which he was not, he really was fairly competent, just a nieve especially when compared to Lois Lane. Now comes the big question, who will play Lois Lane, needs to be some raven haird beauty who is also tough as nails and smart.

Very nice, now can you limber up the knee and hip joints to give it a better gerwalk, guess we will have to wait and see.

THe underside, I would have doen this work last night, but was hunting around for a new fridge, mine went to pot, well rather it vented all of its freon in a freak accident and I was told to just scrap it by the repair shops. SO now I have to take off from work early and trek out to Northridge to get a new fridge because that is the closest strore that has one that will fit in the space in stock and a $100 less then anywhere else.

The Dragon has Teeth: OK I bit the bullet and buried the Plaser cannons in the nose, with only about 1/3 of the barrels and the main heat sump still visible. I will add doors around the cannon though for easier replacement. I then recountered the nose and ventral surface forward of the torpedo pack, still needs a little work but looks a bit better and is much cleaner. I then relocated the Narfics onto the angled area created by the recontoured ventral surface, gives them excellent field of fire and freedom of movement without impinging on other weapons, and makes them look like little arms tucked into the belly. I then added some vertical stabs onto the aft end of the wing stubs, they look great from straight on forward, but not as good from other angles, will play with them a bit. THere is still plenty of room in the nose of sensors, but the terrain following sensor array will have to be moved because of the guns, no avoiding that. I will also put sensor pods onto the fins I added. After that I will recounter the aft end and those flat surfaces at the face of the inboard "wings." Onto the pictures:

Maybe the best thing to do in this case is what some others have done in the past when finding racy content, say that if you want to see them to send a PM.

The single versus two seater prefence amongst the governments and militaries of the worlds keeps going back and forth. It is almost inevitable that any multirole aircraft will eventually go to a dual seater just becuase of the work overload forced on a single pilot. Heck even flying a little prop job it is nice to have another body in the cockpit to keep an eye out for other aircraft especially in congested airspace. My grandfather always used to say that any aircraft should have a crew equal to or greater then its number of engines, especially jets. I have always agreed with that statement. Now your pure fighters that really do not engage ground targets or pure attackers that do not go after airborne threats sure make them single seaters, but otherwise get a clue and put a WSO in there. And, if you want to to be a night time or all weather operator, better put a WSO in too, no matter what the job. *thinks dreamily of the A-10B NA/AW* ah what could have been if the air force wasn't run by a bunch of idiots.

Hmm, I just tended to forget most if not all the cartoons I did not like, I can't believe you guys remembered them. Looking at the lists I agree with many of them but also disagree with a few points. THere were some that I liked at the time but looking at them now I think they are cheesy garbage, but they were enjoyable as a kid. WHy not instead ask what cartoons did you think were good but were cut down before they could be finished because they didn't pander?

Every year the mechanical engineering department at my college would have at least one group whose senior design project involved better ways to cool laptop computers. SOme of the designs they came up with were great but the overwheming theme was not to make laptops so thin, continue to shrink the components inside yes, but give them ventilation room. One year a group decided to go all out, I don't remember the brand but they got this really thin laptop that they then overclocked and would run to the max, basically it could run for about five minutes ful tilt before getting too hot and shutting down. They then added I think they were 1/4" spacers all around it to give more air around the processors and several small high efficiency fans for blowing out the hot air, no intake fan, but you could feel a vaccuum at the intake vent when it was running full tilt. Finally they hooked up this interesting little gadget that was thermostat controlled and had one of those mini-CO2 tubes plugged into it. Whenever the laptop reached a certain preset temp the CO2 canister would fire a burst onto the processor, memory and some other parts (sorry don't remember where) cooling them down. The canisters actually lasted a long time and kept the laptop cool and running efficiently. The sponsors that year thought the design was great but said that the CO2 canister concept was not commerically viable and so what the added thickness in their opinion. Its too bad because that little LT really rocked when they were done with it and was still very compact and portable, oh well.

THis shot more clearly illustrates the problem I am having with the weapon mounts. I am now considering moving the Plaser cannon back under the wings inboard of the engines like they were originally. I would then move the Narfic Cannons (the energy weapons) under the nose in a dedicate chin turret, this would also allow for the canard to be an all fly canard, meaning that the whole thing moves. THoughts?

Getting close, but still not quite there. Ok, I redid the stub wings, I think they look much better now and moved around the guns. Something about their positioning doens't sit right with me though. I also changed the torpedo packs slightly, making them angled so that they fire away from the craft, this allows for the under nose weapons, also it should make the crew more comfortable as the upper pack torpedoes will also have more vertical seperation above the cockpit after launch.

ITs hard to tell much from your picture, but if the craft is strictly exo-atm I would chop the nose back a bit if I were you, maybe give it more of a bullet nose then beak you have on it now, unless there is a reason it sticks out so far.

When did I say that the tech level was low? I don't remember ever saying that. And what do you mean you don't know if yours is small enough, how small do you want it to be? Figure my original Splicer 5000 design started out at roughly 25-30 feet in length and span, the latest redesign is now 36x32 (length-span) this happened for a variety of reasons but mostly because I realized with all the stuff crammed into this thing it would have to grow, also aerodynamic concerns added to its length.