Knight26

Ok, I've been gone three or four days and people start talking about ships defensive weapons and not ask me, hello people that is my job. In reference to Graham's question, yes Phalanx can engage slow moving and surface targets using the block 1B upgrade. This upgrade is only now entering the fleet though. RAM Mod-3 can do the same thing too now, and the Ike is the first ship to get the new install of it, while the LHD class ships are getting the upgrades over the next two or three years followed by the Mod-1 carriers. FFGs will recieve SeaRAM which is RAM with the Phalanx 1B radar and IR suite but with an 11 cell missile guide instead of the 21 cell guide on all other models. The Nimitz is in home port right now for normal refit and repair, I'll be down there next month for some DTE exercises. SOmething else to consider, if I read the article correctly the dhow is a small wooden boat, similar to a chinese junk. And, the incident occured at night. Guess what folks, wood does not appear on radar and does not appear well on sonar either. So, if the boat was running with its lights out and there was little to no moon there is no way that anyone from the JFKs pilot house could have seen it unless they had on NVGs or IR gear. That is one of the reasons why passive IR detection is becoming such a big thing on all the ship self defense systems now, even NATO-Rearc. Well I am on vacation and my nephew just got up so I have to go. I've sure I'll read the naval message regarding this incident when I go home and exchange a few e-mails with the ram-techs onboard, though I doubt the launchers could have been damaged by any flying debris from the Dhow but you never know.

Congrats Vinnie, so what whirly bird are you in line to pilot?

Those flight suits aren't half bad, a little more work and they would be fantastic, the beef up the forearms and lower leg units and widen the shoulders. The helmets look nice too, almost as good as those Yammie Helmets.

The thing people really need to realize is the problem with the new trilogy is that Lucas is actually writing them, at least he did for Phantom Menace. For the original trilogy Lucas was really more of a creative consultant, he was the creator to be true and it was all his vision and had to be okayed by him but he did not write it, or direct any but the original. Star Wars (ANH) was ghost written by Alan Dean Foster after Lucas wrote something like 17 versions of it. When the NT came about no one wanted to touch writing it for Lucas even though at first he asked a few writers to help him. Everyone wanted it to be purely Lucas' vision, and we all saw the result, so now he has taken a bit of a step back and while still having great creative control he is not the one at the typewriter anymore, he's just standing over the writers shoulder. Now, TPM could have been easily fixed and made a far superior movie IMHO by making the following writing changes: 1) Make Anakin at least 14, make him more believable and easily too old for training as a jedi, at 9 you are still very open and your personnality is not so set 2) Make Amidala at least 16-18, 14 was too young for a queen by any standards 3) Make Jar Jar less of an idiot and maybe more of a rogue then a bumbling clutz, maybe just a little slow, in this way he can also prove himself in the final battle 4) Eliminate the Midichlorian thing entirely or in place of all but saying that Midi-Chlorians cause the force, say that they are attracted to force sensitive individuals, like how you test for HIV, you don't look for the virus directly but the anti-bodies your body produces to try and fight it. 5) Eliminate the whole virgin birth discussion, just have ANakins mom not know who the father was, she was a slave after all and could have been "party favored" 6) Make ANakin's leaving his mother more emotional, lets face it this is the only family this kid knows and even if he is a teenager it would be an emotional response. 7) I'm not a fan of the pod races but ok, keep them, just not so much emphasis on them. Keep the senate scenes, they just should have been fleshed out better. 9) Make the pilots pilots for God's sake, they did not seem like combat pilots at all, more like amateurs 10) Make Anaking a dark to begin with, as 14 yr old slave he would likely have a quite a bit of anger, making the arguement for not training him even better. Even as a 9 yr old slave he would likely not be the happy go lucky kid you see. 11) Y-wings, armored sheathed Y-wings, come on people 12) Not Tatoonie, though considering what comes later it is necessary to keep it, but that could still be easily remedied by having Shmi be sent there between movies, just don't have it be his home, less reason then for him to want to ever return. Or have him say a line like Luke's that he would never return, but more extreme, saying how he hates that world. As much as I would like to see some EU vehicles/ships/characters/locations I can understand the reasons why not to show them unless Lucas wants to. AOTC was in my opinion a far superior movie, but I think also could ahve been better with just a few changes, sorry for the rants but as SW fan and a writer these things just blare at me. 1) Make Anakin and Obi-Wan have periodic visits to Amidala over the years, to just check up on behalf of the chancelor. THis allows for a relationship to develop over time and not suddenly develop in a few weeks out of an obsession of ANakin's. 2) Make Anakin less Stalkerish, easily done if number one is used. 4) More focus on Obi-Wans hunt for Jango Fett, that was one of the best parts of the movie IMHO, but a little more detective work and tracking would have been great to see. 5) Have Obi-Wan argue against ANakin acting as Amidala's bodyguard, works even better if the secret relationship has been years in the making. 6) Have Anakin and AMidala have a couple heated arguments and passionate moments, this is the first time they've really been able to be by themselves and the secret relationship could easily be strained. Even have Anakin get angry about it, and Amidala try to calm him. 7) Anakin should have lied about the slaughter, shown no remorse about it. When Amidala asked he should have just replied simply that he destroyed the animals, no crying no mention of women or children, just refer to them all as animals. And if he cries just have it be over his mother, personnaly I've never met a woman who would fall in love with you after admitting that you slaughtered an entire encampment of people, oh its ok he's sorry about it. More Dooku, underused character that could be very charismatic show more of that, especially his playing both sides against the middle, that was great. 9) No R2, 3P0 comedy, was very out of place in the battle, broke the mood of jedi getting slaughtered in a bad way, that should have been a much harder more desperate scene. 10) Live actors for clone troops, at least those in the foreground and close up (ok not a writing thing, but come on people) 11) Y-Wings sheathed in armor and prototype X-Wings or Tie Fighters. 12) Have Yoda perfrom a much more "magical" force fight, less of the Krispy Kreme hopped up YOda, though that was cool to watch. 13) I have a hard time believing that the REpublic has no army to speak of, at least make mention of a peace keeping force, say that it is dedicated strictly to defense though, not an offensive military. True it makes the needs for clones less, but gives them an available space navy and mandates the production of larger more advanced ships instead of the smaller ships more likely for a defense based military. Well those are my two cents, I think with those changes the movies would be much better and there would be far fewer complaints about them.

[Cylon] By your command [/Cylon] Now there's a team I would hate to have to referee a soccer game for. Seriously it looks like a sports team posing for a team picture, I half expect someone to photoshop in a soccer or football in there, maybe even uniforms, pads and helmets, lol.

I think it looks great, yeah the Bassinger comparisson is uncanny, kind of cool actually. BTW if you decide to do all the bridge bunnys like this do not use Hally Berry for Claudia, maybe Vivica A Fox, she might be a good Claudia. lol

Interesting pics, but I am not wild about that fighter design. Typical bridging design, trying to put elements of too many craft into one, just doesn't really work for me. For one thing it is way too small, all other fighters in star wars are much large with some actual bulk to them, this thing has none.

Quite funky indeed, where do you find this stuff?

Very nice, but your VF-1S has many VF-19 elements to it, helmet, shoulders, gunpod, like them all though.

I agree Radd, if my books ever get made into movies I will insist that a couple full scale mock ups off all the fighters be built, hmm maybe even take one or two home and turn them into simulators. *drools*

I have the toy, which I believe is based on the modle, it looks really nice, wonder how they look side by side though.

As much as I hate the carpy design I have to applaud the filmmakers for 1) making an actual mockup. 2) paying decent attention to details like, access hatches, and actualy mil-spec connector hardware. BUt still why not use a more realistic or plausible design, ye gods that thing looks like crap.

For those interested, just take a look at the size of this thing: http://store4.yimg.com/I/badcattoys_1803_8475651

No that's too quikc and too clean. We need to find whoever gave him a contract tie them down to a fire ant hill under a killer bee hive, cut him open and spread honey all over his internal organs.

That is great news, too bad I won't get to go down and see the YF-23 as often now, but at the same time if they are getting her flying again for possible production I am all for it. Hmm, makes me wonder how my A-10 NA/AW is doing out at Edwards, they were suppossed to be bringing it back to airworthy shape in order to use it as a test bed for furthe A-10 upgrades. Man if only the NA/AW and the YF-23 had gone into production, now there's an air force I would be proud off.

Ok I normally don't start threads like this but today my ears were assualted with one of the worst musical perversions I have ever heard. Here is the situation, I am doing some editting on my most recent book rewrite listening to my yahoo launchcast station when it happens. Anyway this cover of one of my favorite songs come on, Hotel California, in the first few bars I can tell it is a cover, then vocals start. My ears immediatetly start to scream at me for the horror I am subjecting them too. So I check the player and see it is that American Idol loser Will Hung (great porno name btw) and that he was given a record contract. What fool thought that was a good idea, the guy is tone deaf can't sing worth garbage and now is raping songs worse then modern directors are of classic sci-fi literature. Man, it was so terrible, and Hotel California is one of my favorite songs, out of morbid curiousity I wonder what other songs he has destroyed.

Now that face on the first body would be golden.

They're both super cool planes, and while the F-4 Vandy-1 looks great I have to say that the Vandy-1 is just one of the dead sexyist planes in the sky.

yeah but what I am saying is that the whole picture looks almost exactly like an Adam Hughes picture I have seen before, except for the outfit.

I've worked under the assumption for quite a while the Macross cannon was actually a sort of high powered particle cannon utilizing gravitational forces, or a gravity cannon. WHat I mean is this, and please pardon any miss-spellings or wierd logic right now as I have been painting all day. Anyway, the Macross cannon as I see it is mostly a gravity based weapon, that is why the impact effects are the way they are, causing the targeted ship to collapse in on itself momentarily before it explodes. This would also explain why near misses also result in catastrophic damage to the targetted ship, the gravitational force of the beam tears the ship apart. The core of the beam however would be a massive particle beam, that is one of the reasons why the cannon has to take time to charge up, it is drawing in particles from surrounding space, remember space is only a near vacuum so there is plenty of floating particles, just in very low quantities. When used closer to a planet the charge time would not be as much and if we assume that it can use shipboard air supplies to charge itself as well then charge time can be further reduced, but at the cost of ship's life supporting ability. This massive compressed particle charge would also give the blast a strong impact force and concentrate the gravitational effect making it stronger, almost like firing a miniature black hole. Well I need to rest and get cleaned up now, paint fumes are still wafting off my clothes making me dizzy.

Now that looks much more like Misa's face. The whole composition looks very familiar I assume that you were looking at an Adam Hughes or Varga girl painting/sketch when you did this. I just hope that you actually did draw this and didn't trace it and add the Macross details like certain people have done on the boards before.

No Schwarzenegger = not good movie Well, in a way every superhero movie is about Arnold. I mean Arnold is the closes thing we have to God, Jesus, or Superman, so the movie doesn't really need to have Arnold in it to have the Schwarzenegger influence. You have Arnold Schwarzenegger bed sheets and pillows don't you? I wonder how often he watches "Pumping Iron" especially this week since Jim GOld died, the founder of Gold's Gym, where Pumping Iron was filmed.

No Schwarzenegger = not good movie Well, in a way every superhero movie is about Arnold. I mean Arnold is the closes thing we have to God, Jesus, or Superman, so the movie doesn't really need to have Arnold in it to have the Schwarzenegger influence. AGent one you are a sick sick man.

This movie will likely suck, Jack Black is only good in supporting roles IMHO, he really can't carry a movie, he's just not funny.

I'll have a pciture for you all later that will make all true blooded Tomcat lovers sad, the last flight of the Vandy-1 Tomcat out of Point Mugu with its probable successor, an F/A-18F Super Hornet. What makes the picture especially sad is not so much that Vandy-1 will become a hornet, and not that Vandy-1 may be phased out entirely, but that they got the freaking paint scheme wrong on the hornet. THe hornet is the standard haze gray with a Black Bunny. Vandy-1 has always, except when the bunny was removed, had a black tail with a white bunny, if not an entirely black body, this is a crime and a travesty I say. ANyway check the skies over the next couple weeks as Vandy-1 heads to NAS Oceana where it will be put on permanent display never to fly again.