l_e_m

As already stated DYRL better displayed that there were attitude thrusters on the wing tips in the VF-1. However the VF-25 uses it's wings (at least in the Armored Pack) to support the additional bolt on combat weaponry. I suspect those points at the front of the wing roots are the mounting pegs for the FAST pack equipment. They may not be DEWs as we once suspected.

All of the VFs in Macross Frontier have streamers on their wing tips.

To me, those streamers (presumably expelled reaction mass of some kind) are dual purpose thrusters used for propulsion and roll control.

They're still there.

Nice.

Thanks, Kresphy.

I don't know how accurate the fan sub is, but I have a few questions concerning the meeting at the Frontier President's office.

I wonder why the President said this: "Is the Army not following orders?"

To me, this seems to imply that the military, presumably UNS, was supposed to clear the way for their manifest destiny but either couldn't or didn't.

Who is the gentleman he is speaking to in the white uniform (I will assume that he is military)? What does everyone think his angle is in the series?

I saw him yet again in the second episode previews.

I wonder who the heck is the 1 person so far who voted boring. How any Macross fan could find that pilot episode boring is completely beyond me.

Graham

I wholeheartedly agree.

The WOW in Macross is back.

This is top-notch anime as far as I can tell. It's pure fun and a visual masterpiece.

I only wish I knew Japanese, so that I can truly enjoy it.

The cliffhanger brought on a deja vu moment with a new twist. I wonder where we've seen that before.

No one does it better than the original. It's O.K.

CODY2003 and Stratagos your work is impressive.

Who is the character at 1:21 on the Macross: Frontier trailer?

His uniform has a similar color scheme to the white-purple VF-25?

In SDF:M, the color of the character's uniform was similar to their variable fighter, at least, for the main characters.

Perhaps, it is his. ::shrugs::

So if the VF-1 produces 225.4 kN and weighs 13,250 kg you get 1.7 thrust to weight ratio or 3.4 thrust to weight ratio with afterburners.

According to the line art on your site, afterburners on a VF-1 is 125% (cannot set to over 100% in the sim version that I currently downloaded, so the figures are done at maximum or 100%) power and 200% is in over boost.

The thrust obtained from redlining your jets should not be included in the thrust to weight ratio.

Since engines are not run at their peak power for longevity's sake unless their is a war on or an emergency, there is no reason to add power that is more than likely to be unavailable to the operator (or broken feature in the sim).

I digress. Thrust to weight ratio of the VF-1 (dry) in afterburner (125% power) is 2.2:1.

I will agree that assuming all Valkyries have stealth is just speculation. However, I find it equally as unlikely that the UN Forces had a working active stealth system as early as 2008 which then sat on a shelf for 32 years before another active stealth Valkyrie was built. That just doesn't make any sense to me.

What we call an "active stealth" system could be a function of advanced models of active scanned array used in later VFs.

That's my best guess.

My point was, even though most official documentation of VFs omits mention of Active Stealth, the fact that it was on the VF-0 implies that it has probably been on every VF since. This may not be the case, as not every VF was built for UN use (A number being designed for economy (for use by colony governments). But I suspect that AS has been on every UNSpacy VF since the VF-0.

I don't have a problem with VFs having an active stealth system.

I just don't think that the active stealth is the reason why most combat occurs at short range.

Governments will downgrade or degrade sensitive systems in export fighters to their allies. It's a relatively common practice.

I think you need to re-read the earlier posts. These two questions you just asked answer themselves!

I didn't think so, which is why I asked.

Nonetheless, I'll try to help explain myself more clearly. If a Valkyrie can attack something beyond visual range without using missiles, then that would be considered a long range weapon in the context of my discussion.

That's a very liberal definition of beyond visual range.

When you say beyond visual range (BVR), I think of 20nm+ and further away, the range of an AIM-7.

Now, when the gun pod is used to strike targets beyond visual range (max vs. battle pods, hikaru vs. theatre scout, etc), the only method a pilot has for detecting and targeting an enemy he can't actually see because it's too far away is radar or optical electronic detection. Thus the capability to "shoot down missiles" does not mean a Valkyrie is without long range attack when they can use gun pod fire long range or laser/beam cannon/particle cannon fire long range. But such long range combat only rarely occurs in mecha combat in Macross. So there must be a ANOTHER reason why long range fighting in Macross is rare. A possible answer: stealth.

With the help of a laser and optical system (limited by resolution), pilots could probably snipe at targets in space with a ballistic weapon from long range if the target moves straight and does not drift.

The ability to shoot down missiles negates any effective long range capability in Macross. See Macross 0 (many times), DYRL (many times), and Macross Plus (Isamu vs. Guld), and the original Macross (Max vs. Milia). Some Variable/Conventional Fighters have the ability to use their acceleration to avoid missiles (Nora vs Shin (F-14A+), Guld vs HMM, and Guild vs Ghost).

IMHO, long range fighting does not occur in Macross because it is not consistently effective, not solely because of stealth.

There's plenty of long range weapons in Macross besides missiles. Even the gun pod is shown firing beyond visual range. So that doesn't make sense to me.

What long range weapons do Variable Fighters typically carry that are not missiles?

I don't understand why mentioning that "the gun pod is shown firing beyond visual range" should mean anything in the context of your original statement.

And yes, I've already thought of all the reasons why the VF-1 might not have an active stealth system (cost, difficulty, etc), but when all is said and done, the pervasive use of active stealth in Macross effectively explains why nearly every fight is short range.

I believe that every fight ends up at short range because Valkyries have the ability to shoot attacking missiles down.

The YF-21 was able to do so.

I thought that Guild used the same trick that he used against the new maneuver missiles at the beginning of the OVA series.

He accelerated before the missiles could arm or something to that effect.

He did out-G the "Ghost" missile though. Is that what you are referring to?

A pre-production sample fired from a YF-12 would get mach 4 ON TOP OF the YF-12's mach 3 cruise speed, resulting in a fighter-fired missile travelling at mach 7.

That's not accurate in the atmosphere.

Even if you fire a missile at high mach, you don't get all of the added speed of the fighter that fired it. Once that missile is released, it no longer gets the propulsion from the aircraft, and it must rely on the thrust of its rocket motor/gravity for its acceleration.

A missile will only sustain a "Mach 7" number if it has the thrust to do so, but it will get some benefit from a higher launch speed.

The GAU-8, for comparison, fires at 990 m/s. Not even a kilometer per second.

Three and a half days per light second.

If you are one light second away from a target, it will take DAYS to hit the target. A laser will do it in one second.

Your enemy will also see your muzzle flash one second after you send your bullet on it's half-week journey. Evasive action is inevitable. You will miss.

Conclusion: Guns are PATHETIC in space.

The firing speed for a GAU-8 was probably tested on Earth, not in space where there is no air resistance and little gravity acting upon it. Like before, it all depends on the force that will propel the bullet.

You can see FAR farther in space than an atmosphere. You can, and WILL, have engagements where targets are separated by light-seconds. Good luck leading an enemy target with your bullets.

Let's explore this situation a bit.

The Voyager 2, the fastest object mankind has ever made, travels a mere 16 km/s. Light travels 299,792.458 km/s. Light is 18, 737 times faster than the fastest object ever made by man.

The distance between the Earth and the moon is a little over a light second, and engagements will never occur at that distance.

We are not even talking about those speeds here. To be basic, it's all about v = v0 +at, and a Valkyrie can only go a little over 3G in space in a clean configuration. If force is constant, then the Valkyrie will pick up a little more acceleration as its reaction mass depletes, but it won't be much if the mass of the reaction mass itself is relatively small. It's really not that fast.

And missiles can be shot down on the way in, especially when you have so much time to find and target them.

Also tangental: if I were designing a space fighter, my missiles would be 2-stage weapons. There'd be a booster stage to get it moving towards the target(or launch it from a large gun). Once that first shot was used, the missile would float towards the target area quietly. The second-stage main engine would activate when the missile was much closer to the target, guiding it in for the kill.

I'd rather have a large warhead that can cause damage over a wider area (unfriendly to friendlies though) so I am guaranteed a better probability of a hit.

Having a missile that has vectored thrust and maneuvering thrusters that can actually change its position as fast as the target (which has more reaction mass to expend) would be another plus.

No. We've seen ECM units confuse missiles enough for the pilot to shake them. And almost invariably shoot them down before they reacquire him.

More often, we've seen them just plain shoot down incoming missiles before they get close enough to detonate.

Lacking soft squishy crushable innards, the huge mass associated with a life-support system, or the potential for blacking out, a missile can out-accelerate any manned vehicle fighter you can field.

To actually just plain out-accelerate a missile would result in something similar to Macross Plus: Movie Edition's Ghost fight.

You may win, but you're still dead.

I've seen countermeasures deployed in Macross, but I haven't seen any ECM systems at work against missiles though.

A manned fighter can't out-G a missile in the atmosphere, but you can in space. If a Valkyrie is fired upon by a missile with 3G acceleration and it has more reaction mass than the missile, it can out run it.

A YF-21 has three times the thrust to weight ratio of a Valkyrie, so that is a distinct possibility. All VFs don't have the thrust output of a YF-21.

I disagree. Kinetic weapons and missiles are more economical and as effective (if not more) as energy based weapons, so why fix what isn't broken?

The problem with missiles is this: They can be avoided by mecha with higher acceleration and fuel capacity than the missile.

We've seen this in SDFM, Macross Plus, and the Macross Frontier Trailer.

They are also finite.

I'd rather have an energy based weapon propagating near the speed of light with no ammo constraints, which should be more difficult to dodge and detect.

Can you make one with SV-51 style thrusters (shins in battroid mode) but with the VF-25 feet? That is probably the only design missing for it to by my dream Valk in fighter mode.

Is the nose really that long? Are the wings set that far back? Or is it the angle?

If so, that design is very, very unstable (CoG would have to be placed far back). With the right FCS, it would be a very, very slick ride in an atmosphere.

BTW, does anyone have any guesstimates on the dimensions? I might want to model it someday.

Hmm, not sure how I'm supposed to ignore the fuselage when it's the forward half and a good portion of the VF-5000 wing surface. Perhaps the actual wing itself looks somewhat similar, but overall I'm not seeing much in common with the X-32.

I thought you were looking for similarities in the wing and tail.

The VF-5000 has similar wing strakes, short, small tails, and a short-span notched, cropped wing just like the X-32. The other designs cited do not have all of those elements. Out of all the planes cited, the Drakken is the closest, except for the tail and the wing inlets.

I suppose we're looking at different things.

Disregard the fuselage, and look at the planform of the proposed production model for the X-32.

Oddly enough, the X-32B is the exactly same length of 14.03m.

I believe this arrangement resembles the VF-5000 IMHO.

I seriously doubt that this is a human size powered suit.

My bet is also on a battroid training simulator, or a new method of controlling the arms in battroid and Gerwalk modes.

Perhaps, there is another possibility.

I've seen some deep diving suits (ADS) require "joystick like controls" in order to manipulate the system while under water.

I would surmise that Zentraedi powered armored suits worked on a similar principle, which might account for their uncanny mobility during the series.

This is not new, but it's an interesting application to variable fighters. Starting with the YF-21, future variable fighters have begun to take on a lot of Zentraedi design.

This is interesting.

WOW.

WOW.

That's a really, really nice animated model.

Hooray!

The VF-1A, at least, is finished.

You can grab it here.

(If you don't want to join the forums, which is required for download, I can send you the file via e-mail.)

You can grab X-Plane 8.6 (1 GB, 6 min limit) demo here.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for the compliment.

But I digress,... the point is that once a VF-1 goes past mach 2.x(someone correct me on the most likely speed the intake on a VF-1 could feed up to), she's a rocket with 150 seconds at max delta V(Macross compendium). So first we have to ask, at what altitude would the air get to thin for the engine to sufficiently compress to use a reaction mass, then what is the maximum speed the fighter can be going whilst doing that. From there it's 150 seconds at max burn with maybe a bit of climb, wait till burn out and presto you have your answer.

That's eye opening.

I did not know that the reaction mass setting was used in level flight in the atmosphere in its fighter configuration.

I thought the engines were air breathers until you reached a vacuum, water, or mode conversion.

I'll have to rework some settings then. Is this the consensus?

IIRC the Valkyrie doesn't have ailerons just full span flaps. Roll control is provided by differential spoilers and TVC, similar to the F-14 actually.

Yes, I realize this. Technically, my model has the same control surfaces. They are optimized by airspeed for the most effective maneuverability and control. This is like most all of the current FBW aircraft. For example, when the wings are at full span or moderately swept back--I forget the exact airspeed--spoilers, outer flaperon, and TVC are used for roll control to get the highest, controllable rate possible. If I were to use only the spoilers and TVC, the roll rate would be like a Tomcat, which is not as good.

Roll control in a F-14 is controlled by spoilers is a function of its wing size. I have read that a low chord narrow wing is subject to twisting moments at high speed, and a spoiler system is a better alternative. The Valkyrie has a different wing than a Tomcat, so I thought it would be alright.

Roll control in the F-14 is controlled by its large horizontal tailerons at high speed, and its spoilers at lower speeds.

Yep, the control surfaces are nearly identical.. flap system is a little different, and no stabilators, but the wings are very similar.

I'd say for a rough estimate, the wings might sweep back between 0.5 and 1.2 mach (F-14 I think is between 0.5 and 0.85 or so, but the VF-1's wings go further back), and they shouldn't sweep ALL the way back... at full sweep, there's almost no wing surface. Maybe just stop them once the leading edge matches the angle of the wing glove area like the F-14. Any more would be like the oversweep storage setting on the F-14. Spoilers, maybe cut them out at half sweep (you don't use them with the wings swept since they cause too much yawing force at those angles).

With the thrust vectoring, and power this thing has (dunno thrust ratings, but sheesh they're nuclear engines after all), it would probably maneuver like an F-16, with a top speed of maybe mach 3, more likely mach 2.5 or so.

If you really want it to maneuver well, and possibly in space, you could also give it thrusters, or "puffers" in PlaneMaker, sort of a beefed up version of the hovering directional system in the Harrier.

I worked with X-Plane for a while, and while interesting in the area of design flexibility, I really was never impressed by the graphics (texture mapping blows chunks), or the lousy interface. If they've gotten much better, I may have to rethink that, but I don't need another game to work on.

The wing sweeps back from 20deg to 60 deg from .6 Mach to 1.0 Mach linearly. It's a simple function.

The spoilers are cut out at the higher knot ratings where all control is performed exclusively by the TVC, which replaces the tailerons on the F-14.

It maneuvers better than an F-16. The Valkyrie meets all the speed ratings in Macross source material within a few percentage points except a high altitudes. We don't know whether the Valkyrie is limited in speed rating due to it's inlets or the composition of its materials.

It maneuvers well enough in space for the Valkyrie to make quicker drag free flights in LEO at higher speeds.

As for X-Plane, it works for me. I wanted more fidelity.