F-ZeroOne

Actually... some kind of spiders do have hive mentality. Though, they don't build hives like ants, they simply mark their territory. Some thing size of your fist? Heh... in Amazon forest we get spiders the size of your upper body. You can't scare me like that - I know that spiders can only reach a certain size because of the method they use for breathing (among other structual problems... ) Of course, if you were some kind of mad scientist, and tried to create some kind of... oh, I don't know... man-spider, then that might be suitably big and scary - wait, whats that scuttling sound behin - YEEEAAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!

Spiders definitely do get more film attention, but people should be more scared of giant ants - after all, I've rarely heard of spiders co-operating in real life, but ants do all the time... ( funnily enough, at least two spider movies have spiders acting more like ants than they do spiders... ) I believe Arthur C. Clarke once wrote a spoof SF short about a mad scientist who was teaching termites how to make fire... Edit: BTW, I think that spiders do a lot of good and largely unsung work in the ecological community. However, if something the size of my fist happens to be crawling across the floor, just pass me that Janes All The Worlds Variable Aircraft, will you...?!

Thank You very much for the kind comments And thanks for the recommendations! interesting! Just for completeness sake, the small grey jet is an actual prototype technology demonstration plane thats been raising a few eyebrows ( I think its a Boeing product ), while the white cropped delta with the famous blue, white, and red roundels is the TSR 2, arguably the greatest aircraft ever to be destroyed by political squabbling...

3D CGI helps a lot, but even mega-budget films like Pearl Harbour often need close-up shots and the dilemma there is whether to make the 3D models match the authentic ones or what they've actually got available. In fact, when I saw one of the movie posters, I thought that the Japanese torpedo plane depicted looked a little strange - I later found out that some of the aircraft used were "pretend" Zeros and the like...! ( my all time favourite production story, though, is from when I visited Bletchley Park and the guide explained that the real mansion looks very different from the one in the film Enigma, because the producers felt that Bletchley Park didn't look enough like Bletchley Park! ) Gerwalker, there is a movie due out that will cover at least part of the Desert battles; its about that magician who helped the British Army with various camoflauge tricks and the like. The war film I would most like to see would be a biography of the RAF reconnaissance pilot, Adrian Warburton ( sorry - make that Wing Commander Adrian Warburton, DSO & Bar, DFC & 2 Bars, US DFC ), whose remains were recently found in Germany and properly buried, finally solving a 60 year mystery...

A fairly common sentiment in the British press is that there should be more war films about British war stories... I've long felt that an anime war anthology series would be an interesting idea. There would of course be some grumbling about Japanese animators being responsible for stories about American or British solidiers, for example, but I'd like to know where you'll find better animated flying sequences...! The advantage animation would have would be that its a lot easier to use authentic equipment thats hard to find these days - just about every film featuring the Battle of Britain, for instance, has to make do with what aircraft are currently available; its not noticable for a general audience but for those who know what to look for, Mk. V or later Spitfires or a Merlin engined Bf-109 do tend to stick out in 1940...!

I voted "other". Coming from the other side of the pond, there were a number of attempts by European companies to cash-in - and that is the only word for it, because there is no way in Hell these guys were going to beat the likes of Sega and Nintendo - on the 16-bit console craze. I can't remember them all, but among these ill-starred and doomed attempts were consoles from Commodore ( based on Amiga hardware, I think ) and Amstrad ( which if memory serves, bizarrely enough, was based on their CPC-464 computer hardware - a fairly good computer in its day, but completely out of its depth pitched as a console against the competition... ) There was also a handheld gaming unit made by a company more famous for its joysticks than its technological prowess; and oh, do the Sega VMU and Sony PDA count?

Apologies for the big edit to your text, I think you just burned out my cortex. This is what gets me about Evangelion. I've seen the entire series, seen several key episodes more than once, seen the movie, twice, and still when I read things like this I feel that theres some party I wasn't invited to. Could you please let me know - with full frame numbers, timing stops, and scene-by scene deconstructions - exactly where all this is explained in the series?! ( just kidding, honestly, but I think you can see what I'm driving at...! ) Edit: typos.

If you're seeing Dr. Who for the first time from the point of view of someone bought up on Farscape, Firefly, Babylon 5, etc, you might rather wonder what all the fuss is about. From the point of view of a UK resident and SF fan who grew up during the tail-end of Dr. Whos mainstream popularity, however, its a bit easier to understand. See a Dalek in action today and you see a wobbly pepperpot armed with a sink plunger. See it when I saw it first, and you'll grow up believing nothing, absolutely nothing, could possibly be more terrifying... Dr. Who might not have the best special effects, or the best plots ( there was an awful lot of running down corridors or around quarries ), but it had character in spades. There hasn't been a new series in years, but even today, a magazine in the UK can refer to a car as having a "TARDIS like interior", or someone "speaking like a Dalek", in the sure knowledge that everyone will instantly know what it means. And - for all the wobbly sets, and chroma-hue SFX, and tin-foil clad monsters - it could also explore some pretty fine SF ideas and stories. The TARDIS itself was an icon from the moment it appeared, but then throw in the Cybermen, and the Doctors re-generations, and UNIT, and the Daleks... B)

Just in case you're wondering, the writer Russell T. Davies is quite well respected in the UK. However, he does have a habit of picking controversial subjects; one of his dramas was about the Second Coming of Christ - in present day Manchester, England...! ( okay, for an anime crowd familiar with Evangelionthat might not sound out of the way, but for a "typical" UK television audience it was considered a bit of a stretch...! ) One things for sure, whatever - or whoever - the new Doctor turns out like, its probably not going to be anything like we expect...!

"Who?" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/t...dio/3140786.stm Its about time, if you'll pardon the pun...!

The more and more I try and find something that resembles this thing, the more convinced I am that its a made up design using elements of a lot of aeroplanes that the artists liked...! The cockpit and forward fuselage reminds me of some Italian monoplane fighters from WWII, the landing gear from a WWI Fokker Triplane, the rear tail is a *little* bit like a Hurricane (but more triangular... ) I did try a bit of lateral thinking and had a search for model kits that may have been produced to tie in with the anime, but came up blank. However, I would expect that *someone* must have tried building something like this at least once; anyone got a large collection of 80s Hobby Japans they're prepared to search through...?! Edit: the "Revi C/120", BTW, is the reference to the make of gunsight shown in the book scans, just in case anyones wondering.

Although theres a Patlabor influence in there, the thing this reminded me of the most was the Destroid Spartan...

IIRC, the SR-71 was originally "RS-71", presumably "Recon-Survelliance". Then at some press conference or another, a Presidential candidate - it might have been the President - got his letters the wrong way round, and SR-71 it was for all time to come...

Anything by Ghibli - Kikis Delivery Service if your audience has a worthwhile attention span, Totoro or Porco Rosso if they haven't. Project A-Ko if you think they enjoy some slapstick. Cowboy bebop does not need much scene-setting. Macross Plus movie. Dragon Half for laughs. If you think they have open enough minds, the Utena movie. Granted, the story will make very little sense to the unintiated, but as a as a visual spectacular, I don't think it can be beaten.

This is starting to bug me... Its not anything I recognize, and the design looks too "modern" to be from World War I. My best guess would be either that its a fictional creation, or some obscure Japanese or American light aircraft from the between-wars period.

At the risk of getting myself propelled into orbit in a Love! Hina manner, I feel obliged to point out its not entirely all my gender... I met a girl at a con a few months ago who had a t-shirt with a fan-art picture of Zechs from Gundam Wing on it, hair flowing in the "bishonen breeze"... ...the image was created entirely from thread stitching...! < okay, I'll just wait here while you fetch the hammer...! >

Amen to that...! (though of course, there were over 20 different marks, and my personal preference is for the Mk. IX - after that, Spitfires started getting leaner and meaner, with positive snouts out in front, but lost a little of their classic lines in the process... ) This is where the Zero, Mosquito, Hunter, FW-190, LaGG-5 etc start chipping in...!

Thanks, though I more often get a "funny weird" than "funny ha ha!" response...! Sorry I can't help you with a website; only thing I can think of is to see if you can find a copy of a Janes - perhaps your local library could help...?

None other than R.J. Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire itself, commenting on the name given to his plane by the Supermarine admin. (I can't believe I know that ) Thanks for the clip, G, it was a good laugh . Pin-pon! You win... uh... ...we'll get back to you on that...! We British have traditonally preferred understatment to invective, and have generally found it possible to express all our outrage into sentences like "Three Panzer divisions and a squad of Tigers heading for us, and all we have is this broken Sten gun? Oh, bother." Destroids Rage - I don't know of a suitable website, but the pedant in me needs to point out that the Vickers Vimy was actually a late World War One design; I believe it was created after Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard asked for a "bloody paralyzer of an aeroplane" to attack German strategic targets.

Radd - yeah, I had a bit of trouble getting the leg armour on. It does appear to require a degree of force unless theres some secret technique I'm missing. Takatoys decals - I suspect, though I can't be certain, that being based on the Hasagawa models they've come out a touch too small - possibly the Yamato FAST packs are a bit bigger than strictly speaking they should be. I went with the Yamatos because their skull fills the circle more completely, but I used the Takatoys for everyones favourite MW fan artist on the leg side packs ( for those who haven't a clue what I'm going on about... "Beware of... " ) I put my Budweiser and Cola stickers on the Reaction warheads, partly because its more obvious and partly because I don't have a handy reference copy of DYRL around...!

Theres a good deal of evidence to suggest that the very best pilots have outstanding spatial awareness - they might not be able to physically look straight behind them but they have an uncanny ability to be aware of whats going on around them in the sky. During World War II, the British ace "Sailor" Malan used to pin a dot on a wall and then practice swivelling his eyes towards it, so that he could train his eyes to quickly focus on a target. Its possible the rear-view mirrors on the early Valkyrie block numbers are actually fed by rear view cameras. Hurricanes, Spitfires, and other WW II aircraft also used mirrors, though for every technical account that describes them as being too small to be really useful, theres another account of how a pilot looked upwards at the crucial moment a Me109 was sneaking up behind... I believe that during the Vietnam war, an awful lot of attackers were spotted by the back-seater in F-4 Phantoms.

Anime, science fiction, reading, and history, particuarly military history from World War I.I. I also enjoy video games but find I rarely have as much time to play them anymore as I would like. That may change with Half-Life 2 hopefully appearing shortly, and then PC Knights of the Old Republic around Christmas time...! B) My work colleagues would also say that I am just a touch obsessed with Japanese bullet trains, but thats only because I work for the UK rail system and feel I am entitled to at least know what several hundred billions pounds-worth of investment can do for your daily train performance...!

Thanks for that, Graham - that was superb! I'm a bit of a Spitfire fetishist, so I enjoyed that a lot! I think that footage may have been shot at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, England. Theres what looks like a B-17 in the background (its hard to tell, but not many other planes have a rudder like that... ) Also - again, its hard to tell for sure - I don't think that was a Merlin making that noise, but a Rolls Royce Griffon engine, which was used in the later marks of Spitfire. I can't be completely certain, because I'm going by the fact that the Spitfire involved looked like a later mark, with the configuration of the underwing radiators and the outboard placement of the cannon barrels (later marks had 20mm cannon outboard, .50 cal MGs inboard). Hey, I said I had a fetish... Pop quiz - who remarked that the name Spitfire was "just the sort of bloody silly name that they would choose?"

Well, I finally got my FAST Packs today - thanks to Kevin and the Valkyrie Exchange, and no thanks to Her Majestys Customs for the huge customs bill I will no doubt be receiving later... <_< First impression: look at the size of those things! ( despite which, I still managed to walk right past the box when I first came home this morning... ) Yep, they are quite heavy, but something I don't think has been emphasized is how freakin' huge the Packs are; its suddenly obvious why Valks can't use them in atmosphere - they'd just go into a flat dive...! Although I have a set of Takatoys decals, I mostly used the Yamato Strike ones; this is no slur on the quality of Takatoys decals, which I've used on my 1/48 itself - Yamato, please learn from this guy! - but partly due to my being a bit of a klutz and partly being in a hurry to get the stickers on so I could fit the packs. Quibbles first: take your time. I found it quite difficult to attach the armour; however I should have slowed down a bit and looked closely at everything - once you've actually attached something, its suddenly obvious what you should have done in the first place ( I even managed to fit the arm armour backwards first try...! ). Landing gear on my VF-1S does have a bit of trouble; it can collapse if the Valk is pushed hard enough but its not generally a big problem. The gunpod does also hang a bit low. The micro-missiles were a bit of a pain; in fact if your experience is anything like mine you might need eye protectors because the things were springing all the over the place! However, again, this might be due to there being "flash" from the sprue left on the rockets and me not taking proper time to file it off, or even remove the missiles from the sprue properly. That might all sound negative - however, to sum up, I adore these things and only wish I had more room for more Valks and their FAST packs. My VF-1S suddenly looks like it could take on the entire Zentraedi fleet on its own, Minmay or no Minmay! I also love the little "drinks can" stickers, which was a nice touch on Yamatos part. And, oh, the packs fit very snugly; the only looseness can be found on the dual Reaction warheads and even thats not a significant trouble. If I ever get to Japan again, I might have to find a loose set of 1/55 armour just so my 1/55 Max doesn't feel inadequate anymore...!

I don't have any inclination to paint the tips red, but its obviously a matter of preference. I could quibble a bit about it being "anime accurate" though, because in at least one episode of Macross TV ( "Pineapple Salad" ), Maxs missiles have both red and blank tips at various times during the same dogfight...! I actually do quite like the tips on the low-vis, but it does give an impression of it being rather a "painted lady" Valk...!