F-ZeroOne

3 hours ago, Dobber said:

The race is on to recover a British F-35B before the Russians.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43204/britain-wants-americas-help-in-the-race-to-retrieve-its-crashed-f-35-off-the-seafloor

Chris

It’s okay, we’ll get James May to make a couple dozen 1/1 scale Airfix kits and drop them around the sea floor to throw them off.

I think the two-parter starting with the episode “Army of Ghosts” (?), one of the season concluders to David Tennants run, will probably satisfy you in that regard. 

"Theres no way this would ever work on a carrier" is virtually what they said about the right way round Corsair at first... 😄

I've heard of "tail-sitters" but I think thats the first time I've seen what could be described as a "nose-sitter"...!

Boy, and I thought the full scale B-17s belly gunner position was cramped!

21 hours ago, Thom said:

Wherever you sit on the divide, commentators have been the true death of actual news. 

I would be happy if the 24 hour news cycle died as quickly as it had formed.

I should perhaps clarify, this report was in a British newspaper, one that even at the time had a reputation for... exaggeration. 🙂

Well, thats interesting, I always considered The Lady to be a really dark blue colour.

On 10/17/2021 at 3:46 PM, sqidd said:

It's nice to know the media being fear mongering and untrustworthy is nothing new.

I wouldn't call it "fear mongering", really. "Sensationalism" would be more accurate. Its worth remembering back then, given the political and domestic situation in the UK, the US was in the minds of many occupying a place in popular culture here somewhat akin to the way Japan does now - a place of exotic wonder and unobtainable cool. I mean, you had Stringfellow Hawke and we had "Last of the Summer Wine", it wasn't much of a comparison. 😄

The Blue Thunder helicopter also makes a very brief appearance in the "Doctor Who" episode "Dalek", under the call sign "Bad Wolf", as the helicopter that transports the episodes antagonist (well, the other antagonist, not that installments titular famous one) to their underground storage base.

The British media at the time of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics also ran stories of how the skies would be patrolled by Blue Thunder "style" "gunships", using images of the helicopter to illustrate the stories. 

The Harrier didn't use aerodynamics or thrust, it just used noise to overwhelm gravity. 😄

What I find slightly alarming is apparently its the Double-Zeta version. 😁

slide,  I think the shape is ambiguous enough that its orientation could be interpreted a number of ways.

Theres some speculation that the... um... "shape" is "upside down" on the trailer.

Edit: oops, I see the linked-to article does mention that possibility. I posted before reading the article.

I wanted to post this earlier, but had problems doing so - Sir Clive Sinclair, driving force behind the ZX Spectrum, has passed:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-09-19-in-memory-of-sir-clive-sinclair

I realise this is probably bigger news on my side of the pond than it will be for most MWers, but its very difficult to overstate the impact his little rubber keyed black box had on the UK games industry.

Is there a special section on dealing with computers, like how to make them explode by showing them this... human... EMOTION... called LOVE? 🙂

Its reasonably likely that the "C4" designation is carrying on from the existing JASDF C-1 jet transport rather than a C-130 variant; it wouldn't have existed at the time "Patlabor: The Movie" was made (though it may have been on the drawing board) but there is now a C-2 as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_C-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_C-2

Oh, I know that. And I know beam "spray" guns are a thing in-universe and I know why they depicted it the way they did (the HORROR of WAR etc). But... particles is in the name! 😃

Hmm, we have a couple Jollibees in the UK. I did not know that. I have to wonder if this means that if they ever do a Gundam set in the UK if there will be a Wimpy in the background… [1]

Trying to get back on topic, the “beam sprays” were an interesting touch but I do have to wonder about the physics of that; it sort of implies Gundam beam weapons are more like plasma weapons than particle beams…

[1] Virtually extinct but fondly remembered UK rival to MacDonalds et al.

I still don't know exactly what the mobile SUITs looked like, but good grief, do I know every single detail of the various restaurants and cafeterias that appear. 😁

Something I've just been reminded about today - changing the gender of characters between adaptations is not a new development. Its a minor one, but the original 1971 film version of "The Andromeda Strain" changed a character who was male in the book to female and probably for similar reasons to whats claimed today - to add diversity to the cast.

I’ve watched the whole of “Unicorn”, and while it is indeed incredibly pretty, I still have little idea what it was actually about.

I think the Char-as-pedophile thing is mostly from his underlings comments in “CCA” (I forget the characters name), I can’t recall much other in-universe reference and his interest in Lalah was a combination of her being a useful tool but also a meeting of minds, at least to me.

Something else thats sprung to mind for me, when reading this thread, is that my first contact with "Gundam" wasn't through the anime, or manga, or model kits. It was through a series of articles in "Anime UK" magazine, which although it had illustrations of some of the Mobile SUITs and occasionally the odd character portrait, by and large only had descriptions of the characters and for a long time this was my only source of information about the Gundam universe. This meant that my what would now be termed "head canon" characterisations were rather different to the actual anime ones. Char, for example, is much more of a bas - dastardly type in the actual series than he ever was in my head, for example, until I saw more of the various series.  

You know, I'd never really thought about it before, but a female Char would be kind of interesting.

Quote is from no less a personage than Sydney Camm, who knew a thing or two about aircraft design. In some ways, I guess you could say the TSR-2 was our XB-70. I've been fortunate enough to see one of the prototypes at the Imperial War Musuem at Duxford, and its one of those designs thats nearly timeless, like Concorde or the SR-71. Quite how capable it would have been in actuality is of course never going to be known, though I remember reading someone saying it would have been like a decade-early strike Tornado in terms of ability.

The RAF Museum at Hendon several years ago had a big box full of unused titanium bolts (or some similar small parts) that were labelled as being from the TSR-2. Always regret not buying one when I had the chance, though probably not as much regret as we had when we opted for the F-111 over the TSR-2. That worked out well.

Edit: should perhaps clarify, bolts from the TSR-2 programme, not necessarily an actual TSR-2.

The F-23 would probably have fallen victim to the same outside pressures the F-22 did. As was once said of a very famous potential British military aircraft that came this close to being reality:

"All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR2 simply got the first three right."