F-ZeroOne

In the interests of balance - and on behalf of all of us who have, or had, jobs related to customer service, I think the following link will be enlightening: http://www.actsofgord.com/ I'm very much aware its a two way street; 99% of my customers are great but there are always those that stick in the mind (usually for the wrong reasons); while I'd be the first to admit I'm not perfect and have made, and will no doubt continue to either make mistakes or have situations which I wished I'd handled differently. I will say, though, that every so often my company sends me on a "customer service" course. There have been occasions where I've felt that its not the staff that need these courses...

What? You want to get shot at? F-ZeroOne, thanks for the additional links. Terpfen, you're welcome. And if you're as good as Milia, you won't get shot - well, unless the other guys called Max, anyway!

5th & 13th pics down on this link gives an idea of the Spitfire "blue" scheme: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.sear...inct_entry=true Edit: Oh, and if you head over to the toys section right now theres a custom Valk there done in the Blue Angels scheme!

Couple things to look for - some photo-recon Spitfires used to be painted blue. And theres also US Naval aircraft of World War II, many of which were painted a very dark blue.

A quick check of Diaclone chronology reveals that yep, Macross does indeed pre-date them (I really should have thought of checking that first!). Which makes the Valkyrie all the more remarkable; partly for being such an accomplished design, and partly for being more elegant than many Transformers designs. (I want to point out I'm not bashing all Transformers here - I loved them as a kid and some of the designs are still favourites of mine; however the Valkyrie seems to have been most able to combine good looks in all modes without looking like a car with legs... )

Huh. Well, where does that rumour come from, then? The Macross Compendium has a list of animes on which kawamori has worked in various capacities. See it here. Dorvack is not mentioned, but then again the Compendium's list may not be complete. Graham Considering Transformers and Kawamori, Transformers might be where Kawamori got the idea from...! I remember seeing a thread on Robot Japan that claimed that Kawamori worked on some of the designs for Diaclone - and we all know what Diaclone became, right? However - I have not been able to get that verified anywhere else, and have been wondering how much truth there is to the statement. I'd be very grateful if anyone else can either confirm or deny it!

Some bombing trivia thats always got me (fighters get all the attention!). During the early part of World War II, RAF Bomber Command had trouble finding targets. How much trouble? Well, it was estimated that 33% of bombs dropped were landing within 5 miles of the target. Those were considered the accurate strikes. Things, fortunately for the Allies and unfortunately for a a great many Germans, got better later. 617 Squadron - the famous "Dambusters" - eventually recorded an average bombing error of within a hundred yards of the target. Even precision guided munitions today sometimes have trouble being that accurate! Among the techniques employed was one devised by Leonard Chesire - thats Leonard Chesire, Victoria Cross, among many other things - to deal with small "point targets" like V-1 lanuncing sites. This entailed dive-bombing the sites to ensure maximum accuracy. Nothing special, you might think. Except that the dive bombing in this case was done with a Lancaster bomber!

Thanks for the bigger images!

Hmm. Kawamori getting Escaflowne pangs?

War has its fashions too - in the 50s, everyone was flying at Mach 2 plus and shooting missiles at each other 50 miles away. Then Vietnam seemed to prove that close air combat was actually a good thing, and a lot of 70s designs were built with at least some dogfighting in mind. Then came stealth, and now everyone seems to think that long range is the in thing again. But if everyone starts using stealth, won't you have to get closer to actually detect an opponent...? The same things happening with ground combat. World War I rifles were sighted to a mile or more. The someone invented the submachine gun and the assault rifle, and war got close again. Now there are reports that the US Army is looking into long range small arms again, because technology gives them an edge over shorter-ranged assault weapons... ...theres an old military maxim that the next generation often prepares to fight the last war, rather then the new one...

Can I just point out that the Tornado is not "occasionally" used for fighter bomber roles - the Tornado is a fighter bomber in its IDS variant. In fact, the Air Defence Variant - the fighter (though interceptor is perhaps more accurate) - was developed from the fighter bomber version...! Edit: I don't know how often the QF-2001 appears in Macross Zero, but perhaps its a competing design to the - 3001, under test? Or maybe its very heavily modified variant?

Any chance of a slightly larger wallpaper version so that Windows doesn't need to stretch it? Would be much appreciated - awesome picture!

Although I think as well that the character is just wearing a typical Chinese dress, Gainax have been known for their Macross love - look at Otaku no Video, or the design of Captain Nemo from Nadia for examples!

So, what have they replaced in the cockpit? The BDI system? Oops. Wrong universe. Very interesting news. Whatever the benefits of the YF-23 vs the F-22, theres no doubt it was the most futuristic looking. Heres hoping Northrop get some good news for a change; they always seem to get messed around.

In case you're wondering, we in the UK don't know how to pronounce this guys name either! When I first saw his name linked to "Reed Richards", I thought "Mmm... ". Hes best known in the UK for being the title role in Hornblower, based on the naval warfare book series of the same name. He looked about 18 years old in that! However, there was a picture of him in the newspaper today, and I have to say, he does actually look quite a bit how you'd imagine a younger Reed Richards to look - Richards in his late 20s or mid-30s. If they're planning a fresher "take" on the series, in looks at least I think he looks the role. Wait a minute... hes British. Why isn't he playing Dr. Doom? I thought only British guys could play movie villains!

The Area-88 manga actually has Mickey, in flashback, remembering being deployed to 'Nam, I believe with F-14s. I can't remember if he gets involved in dogfights for sure, but I seem to recall him getting sad over losses or something.

Also not anime, but perhaps more on-topic than most: the most inept military has got to be the Japanese Ground Self Defence Force, in every Godzilla movie ever made. I thought it was very nice of them to lend some real tanks for filming the last Godzilla X MechaGodzilla, after being shown getting generally stomped, crushed, and melted for 50 years...!

That front landing gear - F-111, maybe? Those guns are in an interesting place - just right to ruin the pilots night-vision when fired! I don't think its an overly bad design for a "movie" fighter, but its various bits just don't fit together well - the tailplanes look very out of place. It could have done with a much more "blended" look.

I think you have something there, Graham - I used to have a giant poster of the F-91 and there is something odd about that GFF version. Unfortunately I don't have the poster anymore, but what it looks like to me is that they ran out of space to get in all the head "shape"...

They've retired the Blackbird, Concorde no longer graces the stratosphere, the F-35 needs a diet, and the Typhoon thinks its on the ground when its in the sky... ...so I think its time for some good aircraft related news. Thanks to a grant from the UKs National Lottery, its going to be possible to restore the legendary Vulcan bomber to flight status! http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/j_falk/vulcan.htm (link for info on the Vulcan only) Some of you might remember the Vulcan from its appearance in the 007 film Thunderball. When I was younger, I was lucky enough to see one of these take off. Its an awesome sight; a real demonstration of delta-wing lift and raw power over gravity. The damn thing seems to hang in the air...

Its long been a tenet of air combat that superior numbers is an advantage against superior technology. It might not be much of a comfort to the eight planes that get shot down for one F-22, but one F-22 can only carry so many missiles... The RAF has practiced a tactic that, at least on exercise, worked quite well - a single Tornado or Phantom would act as a "controller" for three or four Sidewinder-armed Hawk trainers. Being smaller, the Hawks could often sneak up on an enemy which was distracted by the larger aircraft. One of the best ways to establish air superiority is the one the Israeli Air Force used in 1967 - don't let the other guy take off in the first place!

FASA, the original BattleTech publishers, somehow acquired the use of a number of Macross designs in BattleTech - these included, among others, the Tomahawk, various Valkyries, and some Zentraedi units (also some mecha from Dougram and Crusher Joe as well!). Originally, the designs used were almost identical - the Warhammer/Tomahawk/Excalibur on the cover of the early BattleTech box sets was almost exactly the same as the Macross/Robotech versions, but as time went on and FASA published its own Technical Readouts, the designs were altered in many small ways, hence the differences in the above figures from the Macross designs. Irony alert - FASA got entangled in a dispute with Harmony Gold over the use of the original Macross designs, and they were removed from later editions of BattleTech - somewhat to the annoyance of BattleTech players, as these designs were some of the best-loved in the game (I myself will always have a fondness for the Shadow Hawk... ) This wasn't the first time FASA got into legal problems with BattleTech - the original version of the game was called BattleDroids, until the Lucas Empire threatened to send a few Star Destroyers FASAs way... (I sometimes miss those days - little escaped-Japanese oddities like this were fun to find out about!)

An F-14 about to blast a F-18E? I think that one was just for you, David...!

Not just a story - the Germans thought the British Army had far more machine guns than they actually did because of the rapid rifle fire. Unfortunately, this was largely a result of pre-war training and skill like that did not long survive the terrible attrition of World War I...

You all missed my favourite part of Genesis (6:4): "There were giant robots in the Earth in those days." I am reasonably open-minded, but one should be careful. For example, those long-headed skulls; I'm pretty sure I've read that certain human peoples do this by wrapping young childrens heads in tight-fitting bandages of some kind - human skulls are softer when we are very young and more mallable (similarly, theres a tribe that uses neck-rings to produce women with extremely long necks). Humans are amazingly adaptive creatures, and we forget that sometimes. Also, there is a mis-conception that "primitive" by todays standards is the same thing as "dumb". Ancient humans might not have had mobile phones, but that doesn't mean they weren't clever. Charles Babbage came quite close to inventing the computer 100 years ahead of the electronics age; theres no telling whether someone else might have had a similar idea 2000 years ago, being frustrated only by the lack of really good MegaLith memory... [1] [1] As one may be able to tell, I'm a big fan of the humourous fantasy written by British author, Terry Pratchett. His character Leonardo da Quirm is a good example of what I'm trying to get across!