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Posts posted by F-ZeroOne
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Now I think of it, the P-38 itself had its fair share of development issues - and it wasn't a stellar performer in Europe; it just happened that its particular characteristics proved to be incredibly well matched to the operating environment of the Pacific theatre.
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Name inheritance can work in either direction. "My" nations air force uses the Typhoon, which namechecks a design that had its own fair share of early service woes (one newspaper letter I read at the time the name was announced for what was then the "EF2000" was written by someone who obviously had some wartime experience with the early "Tiffys", some of it tragic, and they were not complimentary).
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I really want to see the manufacturer that tries to sell a swing-wing design these days. I'm not saying it can't happen, but as one aviation book I read once put it, aviation has its fashion periods sometimes as well and swing-wings are kind of the flared trousers of aviation - they're always about to make a comeback...
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Boeing have been shopping round a "Silent Eagle" concept for a while now. No-ones bit. As awesome as the Tomcat was, its not coming back [1], anymore than the RAF will be getting modernised TSR2s.
[1] Except, possibly as a "Tomcat II" which would be a clean-sheet design that just inherited the name, like the Lightning II.
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That "Dodging Lightning" line... I wonder if that was a reference to "Final Fantasy X"...?
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23 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:
In twenty years of working in aviation, I've never seen a landing like this. The Air Force tends to be very, very safety conscious, so winds of this velocity most likely would have meant a diversion to another location. Watching the vid, I get the sense that this is routine at Bristol. Pretty amazing.
I read a book by an airline pilot who answers public questions and apparently it looks much more dramatic from the outside than it does from the cockpit. We'll have to take his word for it though! Also "landing" in the news this week, arrestor hooks just aren't cricket, old chap:
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Still processing ti a bit; it wasn't exactly an absolute classic of an episode but it did what it needed to do - though I wasn't expecting the ending to take quite the turn it did. The real bright star was, of course... well, the star. It feels like its going to take a bit more time for her to find a settled role (arguably, it took Capaldi a whole season; no reflection on him as an actor, I just think it took time for the writers to settle on... pardon the pun... who he was) but at absolutely no point, right from her entrance, did I feel "This isn't the Doctor" [1].
I need to hear it a bit more, but initial impression is I like the latest reworking of the theme tune; arguably its even more old school than anything from the Moffat era!
[1] And just so I'm not misinterpreted, no I don't mean "...because shes a woman". Thats never been a concern of mine; its the character.
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Much as I love the YF-23, I somehow doubt that the Japanese are going to go for a resurrected one either.
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Oh, yes... "F-35 can't land on carrier because it will melt the deck"...
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My original source was The Mainichi Daily News:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181004/p2a/00m/0na/001000c
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After inviting proposals for a successor to the F2, Japan has rejected them all (upgraded F-15, F-22 with F-35 avionics and Typhoon) and has decided to develop its own fighter, though possibly in collaboration with international partners - this could be good news for the UKs recently unveiled "Team Tempest" project.
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Wow, I didn't know they'd actually started on HMS Queen Elizabeth yet! (the huge "cricket score" display panel on the island structure was the giveaway!).
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This may not mean much in the US, but Carlos Ezquerra, one of the most well known artists to have worked for the UK SF anthology comic "2000AD", has died:
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/books-comics/60846/judge-dredd-co-creator-carlos-ezquerra-dies
Ezquerra is probably most famous for his work on "Judge Dredd" (having helped co-create the character with John Wagner) but his highly distinctive, tyre-tread outline style was also seen in "Strontium Dog" and a great many other works in collaboration with other well known comic book creators. Theres a lot to choose from, but my pick for his definitive work would be "The Apocalypse War", which can be found in "Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 5".
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I saw an An-124 at the Yeovilton airshow in the UK a few years back. It almost seemed like an airship going over, it just seemed to "hang" in the sky.
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TSR2 is a good pick, David!
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A XB-70...
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Well, for one mission. And then someone lobs a Genie from a Voodoo...
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Ah, apologies, didn't see the "See More" link and the relevant text was hidden beneath that. Will go and fetch food for the rest of the division as punishment.
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Its not listed so it might be missing this:
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Well, this might explode a few head-canons...
https://io9.gizmodo.com/report-matt-smith-could-be-joining-star-wars-episode-1828659955
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MegaForce I remember, though I was bit old for toys by that time <cough>ignores display cabinet of, ahem, collectable action figures just to the left of where I'm typing this<cough>. The thought that military vehicles could be so huge they could use Hind gunships as , essentially, cannon fodder.
"Army Gear" I don't recall at all, maybe we never got that in the UK?
Edit: Hmm, in my memory MegaForce used Hinds and other real aircraft but I see looking at the images they appear to be fictional designs with only vague resemblances...
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And shes called Misa!
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Not a good month for classic airliners, a de Havilland Dragon Rapide has had a mishap in British Columbia; there are injuries, a couple serious, but no fatalities:
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/historic-flight-museum-founder-injured-in-bc-air-show-crash/
I've actually flown in one of these. The crew warned us not to put your foot through the wing as you get on board, where you then encounter something you'd never really thought about before with classic airliners - its a tailsitter, so the cabin is inclined. On the ground..
Aircraft Super Thread Mk.VII
in Anime or Science Fiction
Posted · Edited by F-ZeroOne
Its not exactly a fair comparison, is it? The P-38 weighed 12,800lbs empty, topped out at 414mph and detected targets with something called an eyeball. The F-35 weighs 29,000lb empty, tops out at Mach 1.6 and detects targets with a range of different sensors and can (in theory) shoot down a target from over 70km away. To kill Yamamoto, the P-38 had to physically fly to where he was, carrying all the fuel itself, and get close enough to actually see the aircraft he was in. How much easier would the P-38s job have been if it could have refueled from a tanker, and fire a missile at the target from a distance? How much more of a "pure" dogfighter would the P-38 have been if it had had a single engine and didn't carry all that fuel, like a Spitfire? How long would a P-38 last in a modern, SAM-populated, radar-directed world?
The two are different aircraft from two widely separated periods of time and technological advancement and - a point often forgotten in this sort of comparison - different design goals. The F-35 was not designed as a Tomcat replacement - politics and economics have arguably "forced" it into that role. If the US wished to do so, it could design a "true" Tomcat replacement, if its willing to spend the time and money to do so. And for better or worse, modern combat aircraft don't exist in an "isolated" support environment anymore - Yamamoto saw his death coming, but he might not even have known he was under attack at all from an AWACs directed shot...