Vespaeda

Good day all, I've been sooo busy that I've not checked out MW, let alone this, one of my top favorite threads, in about 2wks. Been given a little "On-the-Job" vacation by my LPO; working at my duty station's(NAS Lemoore,CA) branch clinic(much lighter work load & more relaxed coworkers!). Driving home along the 5 mi. road btwn our Ops Side(airfield) and Admin Side(main hospital), I've got a clear view of planes coming & going on the main runway, mostly touch-n-goes for the SHornet squads. Last Tuesday I saw 2 planes coming in roughly side by side. One was small & white, w/red trim tail & wingtips. The other was a black, almost bulbous arrowhead, very pugnacious looking. Every so often, I see F-117s and F-15s coming in, but this was obviously different. By the time I was driving past them at their touchdown I could clearly see some sort of NASA/Dryden research-looking F-16 as chaser and an F-22 in all its glory! Made my day! I was meaning to post this sighting earlier but real life got in the way. It is really a mean-lookin plane in the air from some angles. I wonder who will be the first to tangle w/one in the flesh in the months & years ahead. sucks for them!

don't know if you do 'requests'...just envisioned an amusing one... Ow'about... an uber-hot, GBP Valkgirl depicted from an angle slightly from behind(almost over-the-shoulder), with all the ordnance bays depicted snapping to the "Open/Deploy" mode. [Particular visual emphasis on the "chest doors", as if the girl is flashing!] Insert 3, flabberghasted Zentran Nous-djerls, pulling up short in front of her; : One eyes popping out of his head(nasal bleed & choked gore, like Max's Regult Pilot Snuff in Z-Gee) : One who's whose suit is swelling from "2ndaries",back arched;groin armour about to pop, helmet/head visor becomes a red smear : Last one w/Kamzjin(sp) shocked death face from Roy's last gasp, gut-shot, while his over-head bazooka/cannon is "schwing"-ing" straight up! got this image stuck in my mind now, but not the skilz to pull it off Any do one like this yet?

wOW....I'm only reading this thread now, as I've been overly busy at work. I was talking w/a coworker here in the lab the day & hour the new pope was announced on the Internet world news outlets. We both "point/clicked' to take a look(coworker is 56 yr old,Catholic) and our reaction was exactly the same.... ... ... ... "The veil of the Dark Side has Fallen...., begun the Sith Wars has...." No Sh**. That guy IS Sidious. The writing on the wall"Ene, Mene, tekel, Upharsim" is clear. I stated in a post a long time back that I personally believe modern, mass entertainment media is a vehicle for modern day prophesy. To reach out to a society that refuses to have faith in miracles, healings and down-to-earth "soul searching". He that hath an ear, let him hear... {church over}

Wonderful art! Wish I had time to pick up some of these skillz. Looking at Bake's VF Kakizaki & Roy, I finally don't mind "Valks w/boobs"

Thanks for the "edju-macashun" EXO, What a LOSER!!!! Actually felt threatened by the depictions of an anime! ...and America shielded his sorry ass & his Tammy Faye Baker-turd-of-a-wife when they got ousted!?! 300 pairs of shoes! Should of let everyone in your nation try each one on just long enough to shove straight up their arses!

Hey all, A good friend in Japan(pinoy(sp)) always told me VoltesV was the PI equivalent of our love for Macross, although I cannot imagine Macross fandom on "national" scale, save but in the 'Actual' Macross universe. Could somebody give me a clue? Why not Gundam or Gigantor, etc...? I cannot access the previous link from my PC(security/admin lock-out ! ) Thanks Vesp

Great to meet another elec'flite enthusiaste, Juan; Sorry to tempt you with the easy and ready availability of anime & R/C stuff that is contemporary America! You sound like you are on the right track and without a doubt, E-Zone is the best place to field unusual ideas & get encouragement on how to succeed(a least w/flying models!) I see little reason why the YF-19 wouldn't fly as a model & fly well. The controlability problems often thought of w/FWSW(forward swept wings) apply more to full-size jets. Power loadings and inertial & aerodynamic effects/flying speeds introduce lots of structural stress,torsion and /or flutter and thence the need for AI controls. You just want to tool around the local sky at much slower speeds(even 65 kph is nothing like the physical forces of .5-.8 Mach). Think of the YF-19 as a big canard or delta, not even too different than an arrowhead or boomerang in some ways. These have been "flying" for 1000's yrs. Electric is a big investment if you've already got lots of glow stuff but it is becoming much cheaper for the introductory stuff and the motors & servos of the mid 90's are an outright bargain. Batteries, chargers & ESC-type stuff will be the most exspensive, but building your own airframes and even connectors saves loads of cash. To make a VF model for glow/gas power, would a depron airframe be able to take the stresses? I use regular corrugated box cardboard as a cheap replacement for balsa & sheet foam; to gain durability I soak the pieces in water-based polyacrilic resin & polyurethane glue. It comes out like a cross between balsa and phenolic circuit board material; super cheap & available and very easy to work with. People here use version of this for SPAD combat. I say search this forum for enough 3-views & blow them up on a copier. Keep the 3-D profile patterns simple and glue foam for carving to the areas you want to fill out(Can also approximate the cross sections in stages, like formers in a stick & ribs balsa model or paper card model and skin it with white paper). Use box cardboard for your initial gliders;it will vastly speed up your progress in design improvement at little cost in time & material. Save the dedicated shaping & details for the final version. How is the weather in Spain(what region?). I've had friends stationed at military facilities over there and my relatives in England enjoy vacationing there. I'm US Navy and hope to visit someday. Later Vesp

What type of propulsion JCaste? Gas or electric? If electric, then prop or ducted fan? Have you visited the E-Zone(www.ezonemag.com), "Home of electric flight"? There had been a couple of different threads spanning several months & a couple of years(2003-2004) for anime & SF/fantasy aircraft. Several people had been involved in the construction of Naussica, Porco Rossi and Macross planes(YF-21 and VF-1). I used to go there more frequently then MW(SACRILEGE!!!), but my workplace locked out "discussion/chat"-sites and I now go there ocassionally. I'm a "work-a-holic" & have next-to-no life. The simplest & most effective suggestion given over there for prototyping is build balsa sheet,cardboard/paper or foam "chuck-gliders" of the desired plane and tweak the sizes of your control surfaces & length/span proportions to achieve the basis of a good handling model. Work backwards from there to reach "scale" proportions & appearance till they satisfy your desire. If you already know this, then browse the "Power Systems" and "Jets" forums there for advice on req'd power loadings. My personal dream is to make a 52 in. span, SA-43 Hammerhead ducted fan. Don't give up and indulge your creativity! Dedicate to all pioneers!

Radd said: [..."Heck, ever been to Toronto? Billboards on the side of the road showing full commercials, giant glass buildines with video displays facing out into the street. It reminds me a lot of Macross City as depicted in Macross Plus. They just need a space fortress resting in the lake."...] According to the Macross show storyline, the last time Toronto even remotely hosted the dimensional fortress, it got nuked by a barrier shield overload and Kakizaki got "frankfurter-Over-microwaved"! Miss my home town; the space fortress would look cool in the lake, though and would give explanation to the ubiquitous dead fish. Hey, Radd, is Ontario Place still alive & functional & worth going to see? Or is it just another 70's, socio-cultural dinosaur carcass? Fond childhood memories.... Vesp

Man...wish I could watch this show, although I was among "the haters" who initially had many doubts when it first miniseries'd. This (Adama & Tigh) sounds like the backstory history between James Morrison's & Tucker Smallwood's characters in S:A&B! Long live S:A&B!!!

Ahhh, Variable Fighter Heaven= When D.C. opens a VF-History wing in the Udvar-Hazy Aerospace Museum, including fullscale aerospace mechs! If this is too far-fetched, I'd settle for a cooperative venture w/'Hollywood'; all the famous SF/fantasy aircraft in full mock-up. Each genre gets its own wing! [Quote: The sound that reminds me of the VF series acft is the sound of an F15 JFS (jet fuel starter) spinning up the motors. You hear that sound in Macross every time a VF starts up. This post has been edited by HWR MKII on Mar 19 2005, 10:56 AM ] I've always imagined a very subtle, slightly hollow version of the hydraulic press "whine & slam!" and ratcheted "chain/gear chatter" that has been used in SF movies like Terminator and then Power Loader in 'Aliens'. Mix in several 'jackscrew-drive' whines(the kind you can hear from actuating flaps/slats of an airliner wing at take-off ) at the same time, only louder and that is my impression of an inflight VF transforming! Vesp

hEAR!, hEAR!!, Senator Kin. Thank you for correcting the spin on the Council. Have you ever touched your paper Legioss again? I've only have time/resources to muddle around w/R/C planes and have been watching everyone else experiment w/mech modelling.

Forgive me for waxing "religious", but Hollywood and pop media are just tools of the supreme intelligences for the purpose of "latter-day" prophesy. ...Conspiracy theory; like all the gritty & graphic war dramas epitomizing fraternity before, during & since "S. Pvt Ryan", to subtlely mold our minds to accept Gulf War II w/out too much introspect. Everything our eyes imbibe nowadays has a darker twist in storytelling and is amped up to the X-treme, for no other purpose but to inure our reasoning to the vanishing quality of life & art in mass consumption culture. OK...forgive the politics/religion faux paux, but I had to get it out. Just saw 'Constantine' recently... This stillborn 'creativity trend' crap & junk American-'anime' is possessing Sat. AM cartoons sooo badly, that Keanu Reeves' character will be strolling through Earth-Hell looking for unedited classic cartoon videos, dogged by marauding cranio-daemons. Vesp (old f*rt MW'der, beginning to feel his childhood erode, as well as the sandpaper d*ldo thru the 'comforting' layer of 'Texas Pete' flavor K-Y jelly!)

Wow....that's nasty. Considering how small & fiddly 1/60's are, the best option is to search out & buy a damaged/defunct 1/60 off E-Bay or some such and swap it out. As a modeller & customizer, I'd have to say a long length of thick piano or carbon steel wire(thick as & stiff like the wire used in large springs or from my experience the landing gear in R/C model retracts) carefully bent into the outline of that piece. One long, continuously bent length of this wire going around all the screw mount points at the chest corners. Then carbon fibre mat & resin build up, trimmed and shaped to the outline & thickness of the original. Would take some knowledge of bending wire properly and laminating with CF & resin but would yield a durable functional piece. Very tight tolerances though. The next strongest option might be 1/8 sheet steel, carefully Dremel cut to the outline & drilled out at the right spots. Thick aircraft aluminum cut the same fashion would do too. Much hand labour. Cheers Vesp

Wow Kurt, very impressive!! And, hell yeah...got to have big cohones to tear up a perfectly good 1/48! One thing that comes to mind with advanced energy weapons & the kind of things one would expect to see(haven't seen if anyone has mentioned already) is extreme heating effects. When I think of the combat depicted in the series & moreso in DYRL, I especially remember when energy beams hole mecha & ships and they swell/blister proximal to the breach, as titanic amounts of heat are generated and the vehicle buckles, if not explodes outright. Rdenham mentioned entry & exit damage characteristics on armour and it sounds like a good depiction to pursue. Is there any way you could depict localized surface blistering & scorching around an entry hole(like an over-cooked spot on a microwaved hotdog) and more splintering and slightly veined/ spider-webbed blowout on the exit side? As far as 'real' examples of this kind of damage...some websites are out there that have detailed,up-close photos of burned-out armour pieces & vehicles from Gulf Wars I & II. APCs & tanks that have that rusty/burned look like a soup can the day after being tossed in a campfire. Or the "..O.k.-on-one-side except for the scortched puncture" Iraqi tanks, with discolored, buckshot riddled & slagged opposite sides from M1A discarding sabot shots. {A picture from one of these archives that will always haunt my memories is of an Iraqi caught behind the wheel of his car during the 'Mile of Death' bombardment. He is not a blackened, "crispy critter" skeleton; he looks exactly the way he should look in life except with excruciating pain frozen on his face, eyes open(orbits in sockets) and lips curled back from over his teeth, as he grips his steering wheel in final agony. However,....he is charred just to ash, white & grey and bubbled up all over. Like the woman & li'l girl vampires in the well from "Intvw. w/the Vamp."} But back on topic..., I'll always remember the "Jiffy-Pop/over-microwaved hot dog" death experienced by Boldoza's fortress. One other recent cinematic depiction of air to air combat damage really comes to mind for dramatic effect. Although this movie blew chunks of cheese(and I'm not enough of a modern aviation buff to lend credence to all the SFX), "Behind Enemy Lines", w/Owen Wilson in Bosnia. Forget the cheese & landmine/shootout fiction; the ballistic penetration damage the SAM proximity warhead did the the Shornet. That type of peppering & shredding, although probably much less on an Overtech VF, would be a nice effect,non? Again...very stunning custom

Hmmnphh! Best SW ever?!? Flashy visuals & glimpses of battle! Jedi parlor tricks for the weak minded ... [gestures subtley w/hand]..."This is NoT tHe filM you are lOOkinG FORward too..",..."Move AloNg to the nEXt theater for 'War oftheWorlds'... Easily deceived mortals. They cannot fathom the POWER of the dark side of Lucas' 'creative' activities! Any director can SLAY younglings...MUST SLAY JAR JAR BINKS!!!!!!

Well put,MSW(As much as I'd enjoy a well-done rendition of a Macross universe story, doesn't negate the fact that it would suck donkey b#lls in execution by Hollywood) Give indy studios another 4-6 yrs to create such a world "in house", via digital film & CGI, and I believe someone can pull it off, like "Sky Captain..." at the very least. Would NEED a dedicated enthusiaste (a` la P. Jackson) to write and pull it off. We WILL see a hi action, slick visuals mecha combat film appear w/in 5yrs, I predict. I agree: HG would try & produce RT first in America and in a stroke of cinematic "genius" give us "Space Gandam V meets Robot Jox". Hopefully, they'll file Chpt. 11 beforehand.

Bet you the "uneducated" consumer was 'mentally fixated' on the thought it was the same as a Yamato 1/48 . Despite anything revealed in the auction, they were probably just like over- focused attack pilots, diving into enemy fire to get that last SAM emplacement & smacking the ground too late.

Got the first one for ~$3.00 just south of Hiro about 3yrs ago and have always been satisfied!! Excellent sketch work.

I haven't worked with resin kits before and based on the things I have always heard about them(deform under weight or room temp. heat, ooze unstable oils/films, excessive weight), I'm not in a hurry to try. I have done my own scratch building with more conventional/stable materials and 2-part EPOXY adhesive resin(R/C modelling). One thing I've learned is that I can sculpt or fabricate loadbearing or drillable components for landing gear and motor mounts. If you feel you don't have the skills to scratch one up from polystyrene scrap & may have a bit of a wait before you get customer svc. involved(if any), why not try and salvage what you can of your head piece? Suggestion; you will need: 1 Can of Great Stuff foam, black/red/yellow can(Home Depot): ~$3 1 or 2 pkgs 2-part 60min epoxy adhesive: $2.65 ea Talc, baking soda or crystal clothing starch: <=$1./bx 1 heat gun or hair dryer disposable plastic cups or bowls and stir sticks Try this: Test Great Stuff Expanding Poly-U on a piece of scrap resin from the kit sprues or flash. If they stick to it and won't slide off when set, forget it. Get plaster of Paris Otherwise you can fashion a quick, cheap female mold that can hold your defective parts shape well enough to copy. Spray the foam in a disposable cup or bowl big enough to impress the part in. You will want to smear a little baby oil on your defective piece & immerse it a little more than half-deep in the foam. Let sit near a dry, warm place and when cured in 2 hrs, gently pull the piece free and repeat process w/more spray foam and the opposite side of the head piece. 2 rough impressions of the head should exist. The foam can be sanded or carved easily and you can approximate where a join line should be for 2 parts cast from it. You can mix up the epoxy adhesive evenly in a medicine cup or 35mm film can, according to pkg directions, in an amount that you know will provide enough to top off one mold at a time. As soon as the 2 parts are ~80% evenly blended, mix in the talc(powder)thoroughly,@ ratio 2 to 3 w/any epoxy present. You will have ~10-15mins before the mixture begins to set up. Turn on your heat gun and while directing it on the liquid epoxy to turn it honey consistency, pour this into 1 mold half(heat speeds up epoxy curing, so don't 'dilly-dally'. Set aside. Repeat for opposite mold. Given 8-12hrs to set, you will have 2 rough textured but accurate copies of the defective piece. If you know how to sand & detail, I'm sure you could take it from there. Great Stuff leaves a lot of voids and bubbles, but use it in an arid, moisture free environment, it can minimize foaming. Probond Poly-U glue works better for these female molds, but takes longer to set. I've done this for hard to replace plane parts and custom linkages but if I was to need a replacement Valk head, I'd probably just build it from less messy solid plastics & carved sub pieces. Its only a 'McGyver'd' suggestion. Wish you good luck. Vesp

cOOL(drooooooool)! This made my weekend. To know that the gov't & industrial corporations have attempted to do this for warfare or industry over the past 30 yrs in one form or the other is captivating & novel... To know that various individuals & entrepreneur groups have attempted to do this for the last 20 yrs after growing up on Gundam, Macross and assorted other anime, is inspiring and entertaining.... To kNoW that gov't, industrial co.s, entrepreneurs and small town individuals are still trying, but with the last 30 yrs mistakes to learn from & last 10yrs tech innovations to back 'em...thats friggin AWESOME! We learned to fly because we just kept dreaming it could be done. We WILL have mechs because we just HAVE to see ourselves stomping/thrust-vectoring around, blowing s%*t up that we just built in zero gee, 5 mi. long and 3 million tonnes!

As Yoda said of Ben Kenobi not finding Kamino...."How embarrassing!" I have to admit I am MANY years removed from reading any of these works, and unfortunately, the joy I received from these author's work has really gotten quite muddled in my memory. I have succumbed to that state causing such fearful speculation in so many children through the ages..."Will I become a dottering, old fool like my parents?!?" Please forgive my errors all, I was actually just caught up in the thought of how great that Mr. Clarke is still alive and fairly well, and frequently issuing commentary on contemporary human society. Even when I typed the bit about "Fahrenheit 451"="...9/11", my brain was giving the alarm that I was getting something very wrong, although I'll admit my brain was telling me it was authored by Kurt Vonnegut [in the voice of Teddy from movie "A.I."]: "I.. AM NOT A TROLL!"

Wow! Hearing this about Mac0, I especially would like to see the series now, as i am a big A.C. Clarke fan myself. Great exposition, JELEINEN. I noticed in another thread on the Indian Ocean tsunami(that got locked), someone mentioned that they believed the legendary author, Mr. Clarke, had passed away several years ago. He is actually alive and well, living in Sri Lanka, and had given a commentary on the disaster from his perspective and the well being of his household and estate crew(read it on MSN'S Cosmic Blog). Arthur Clarke also had been dealing w/Michael Moore over the use of the title "Fahrenheit 9/11" in court. Hope I haven't strayed off topic. I envison Arthur C. Clarke to look very much like his aged character Harry Seldon from the "Foundation"

wHAT THE HECK IS THA? People in America poo-poo Iran, based on 25+ yrs of televised images of jeering political students, the US hostages and all the fundamentalist cleric rhetoric that followed, not to mention there long war w/Iraq. That is an nation, along with a handful of others(India, Pakistan, Brazil) will wield quite a bit of techno-intellectual infrastructure and innovation in the next 15 yrs. I think they will be the nations that might show the west how to incorporate fuel cells and other revolutionary items into daily life.

If this comes down to :"...is Disney a better or even competent studio, than Pixar", I say give Pixar a chance to gather even a limited studio staff & production facilies for 'retro'( ) 2D work and see if their movie blows "Home on the Range" and "Treasure Planet" out of the water My .02 CDN, Disney has been the traditional 'clearinghouse' for family value/morals, G-rated US-anime media. In this tradition-chucking, 21st century America, the sizable EO/all-inclusive policy & PC/socio-business of Disney is struggling to produce cohesive product w/depth of heart and lasting interest. Most likely because they are fighting amongst themselves at many levels w/in, for the biggest hunk of potential cheese from the Mouse fortune & name. A house divided against itself cannot stand; they cannot please all of the people, all of the time. At first, within, and thus, without. Of course, as a business, they are in it for the money. However, virtually any of the greatest & loveds art that has been produced in any media through time, was done for the love of the art, the embodiment of vision & dream. Crass, calculated marketing, even w/the best tools at hand cannot deliver content,...to content. Look at any franchise, pioneering quality is eventually replaced by rote mediocrity and eventually downright $h!t garnished w/flashy trash(McDonalds, Star Wars, Sat. AM cartoons(not sure about this one ), etc..)