hobbes221

Okay, so it's not really part of Macross and just something that some subber tossed in, but it still makes me laugh - I mean who doesn't love a Topgun line kicked in for fun. Don't know if you can tell but it's from episode 4 and Alto's 25 is coming down and crossing in front of the school.

That made you laugh, really? Oh well, to each his own. I guess what I like about it was that to me it seemed like he took a hit meant for the Macross and maybe a hit that would have killed Hikaru and Minmay and that would have ended the movie right there.

Can't vote on this one. I will say that I feel that Guld got a big helping hand from the BDI/BDS systems and that was what allowed him to push himself so far, and that's the only thing that takes away from from him winning hands down. Now if he had done all that with with a stick and throttle in his hands that would give him the win for sure. After talking about this poll with my brothers we feel that one of the manliest death in Macross was by that one CF VF-1A in DYRL, the pilot who checked out in the background when Hikaru is talking to Minmay and the sound dies down only to have the roar of a gun pod cut in and he goes out in a blaze of fire. We always crank the volume WAY up for that. (kinda amazed no one has called the cops on us yet, got a huge sound system!)

With four engines with thrust vectoring two could be used to as we have seen to date to push the nose around while the other two working with the RCS system could be used to keep up the airspeed of the VF. If you look at video of aircraft like the Su-30/35, Mig-29 OVT, and the F-22 they can do a few high angle moves then have to regain airspeed. That is one of the main arguments against thrust vectoring in today's world, that a fighter pilot should never allow their speed to drop down into what is called post-stall maneuvering, that regardless of agility, fighting with such low airspeed presents an easy target. Also in the space combat that we have seen with the 27s they do jink around a whole lot. I also feel that the agility of the 27 in gerwalk would be very high as well. While the VF-27 is not high on my personal list of all time VFs, it is still a beast of a Valkyrie and deserves respect. Edit - As to the post-stall flight, who cares how slow you get when you're in a bird that may come close to kicking out half a million pounds of thrust! (No hard numbers on the output of any Frontier VF engines but if we look at rate that VF engine thrust is increasing, then with four engines I don't think that I'm too far off. The VF-19S had about 348,000 lbs of thrust)

Off topic but I just now got around to seeing episode 20 subbed and two things about the VF-27 caught my eye. The first was the fact that I had been wondering how the 27 would land with that long cannon mounted under the belly, I never would have thought that they would use the opening barrel to allow the nose gear to clear the cannon, very clever. The second thing was that a while back I had the idea about the wing engines having thrust vectoring but it had not been shown to do so yet, nice to see that I was right about that.

Nice pic Morpheus, but... WHERE'S ROY! I think it would be fitting to the guys if there was a pic of them in Vahalla. Here's one I found on deviantart

In response to Shaka_Z about having a 19 or 21 with an EX-gear, does anyone out there have any ideas on just how the EX-gear system works to enable the pilots to push their bodies harder. What I mean is that today both the USAF and USN use a system called Combat Edge that provides tactical aircrew with an assisted pressure breathing for G (PBG) system for positive acceleration protection between +4 and +9 G to an altitude of 50,000feet. This system has allowed aircrews to with stand up to 11g without blacking out. (on a side note I have heard from F-14 drivers who have pulled over 12g before this system was issued) I can't see the whole assisted pressure system being pushed that much farther without doing harm to the aircrew. On a another topic after having watched most of the fights with the VF-25G again, I'm not too sure that having a sniper system mounted to a VF is the best idea. If it were up to me I would have given the sniper gun pods to the Q-Reas (maybe in place of that beam cannon on the back) as Michael seemed to alway go to battroid as soon as the fight started. No one get mad at me I AM NOT bashing Michael in any way, all that I am saying is that if you look at the way that Alto and Ozma fly and compare that to Michael I feel that some of the Valkyrie's speed and mobility is wasted in the sniper role. Useful sometimes but more of a special role weapon than standard load.

On the topic of Ghost fighters, remote controls and lag there is also the reason that by using a data link in almost any form blows away any type of EMCON, or emission control. That means that if the enemy has any type of electronic warfare support measures they could use the data link to find out where the fleet is. Space is big and if you are at war you may not want to give away your location by having what is the electronic form of a leash going from your air wing right back to your carrier. In today's military there are many times when aircrews will not even use the radio for most if not the whole flight, using only hand and light signals to communicate. I'm not a real big fan of UCAVs (unmanned combat air vehicle) I feel that they have their place in war, but should never replace pilots in many missions.

Yeah I always thought that there was a mid point for the throttle but I remember someone saying that it was never shown. I know that in Frontier there are shots that show the throttle down while the VF is in gerwalk so it's my theory that the throttle on at least some VFs slides right to left for gerwalk and then rotates up for battroid. And as for the throttle itself that could be the default setting as many aircraft today have throttles that are upright, although most are single engine aircraft. Would just love for SK to kick out a VF flight manual to answer all these tech questions but until that happens let the theories and ideas flow.

I'm not saying that it is a PPB but a blade that is very sharp on its own and with a ECA system making that edge hard to break or even dull.

I agree with the train of thought that the destroids seem weaker than one would think. But it's in my mind that the ones from Frontier are not akin to tanks and are more along the lines of highly mobile anti-air units. If they do use a energy converting armor system like the Valkyries it could be that due to the different type of power plants used that the destroids may not have as much excess power to give to the ECA. The VFs engines are made to put out large amounts of thrust and are close to the size of today's turbofan engines. I don't know about anyone else but I'm not seeing room for anything like that on the destroids.

On the topic of the 25's knife I had the idea that it could be a type of energy converting armor that we have not seen yet. The way I look at it is that if you kick enough power into the blade you might be able get something along the lines of a knife with the hardness of a diamond. And the glowing is a byproduct of the large amount of power used by the blade, this could also work for the punch by the 171 as at least to me it did not look like the type of PPB that have been seen before. Oh well just some ideas that were floating around.

Okay I posted this in another thread a while back because for some reason I couldn't find this one so I'll toss it out here as well. So near the end of episode 18 when Cathy tells Skull flight to protect the ship and Michael has a line that goes something like 'easy for you to say, we might as well be naked out here' (not word for word, please no rants) I got that line from Aliens 'What the h*ll are we supposed to use man? Harsh language?' by Frost in my head as soon as he said it.

Sorry 'bout the whole 'reflex' thing **cough, watching RT with the brothers - like the dub, cough, cough** and I didn't mean that the whole fleet of islands landing together, just more of what the guidelines for what type of planet they're looking for. I think that it would make sense if the the smaller 'hanger' islands landed first to get everything started then the main island would come down once everything was good. Now I really want to see how the Frontier would do this.

Alright finally got around to watching epi 18 (I try and wait for the Lunar subs) and right when Alto and Micheal are talking about the fact that they can't do much the Vajra as things stand, I got that line from ALIENS in my head 'What the h*ll are we supposed to use man? Harsh language?' from Frost. Haven't read through most of this thread yet so if someone's already said that, sorry.

I think that we'll see both a new type of gun pod or cannon round and that there will be something that will replace the reflex weapons Alright so the Frontier fleet has been going for at least 12 years, that makes me wonder just what are the requirements for settling down on a planet and calling it home. Also got me thinking about something else, what if the UNS/NUNS and those in command of the colony program are just writing off a fleet every so often so that it could be taken off the books making it so that the human race has a backup plan. (yes I know that the whole colony fleet thing is the backup plan, but "Plan A almost never works, plan B rarely works and plan C almost always works.") If there are colony fleets out there listed as lost that are doing just fine then any enemy who is able to spy on the colony command network would know nothing about them. And I know what has been said before about the Megaroad One, but the whole 'lost' thing could have been a cover up. Some in command may not have trusted the Zentradi who were now working with the UNS not to turn and wipe out what was left of the human race. So list the fleet as lost then have them fold as far away as they could. Not really tech, sorry 'bout that.

I don't know why but I kinda want to see Alto check out in the end. Its not that I don't like the character, I happen to find him to be one of the better main characters of any anime out there.

As to the 'wrong axis' the 25 was going up as to going down. And as for always moving forward, if you have enough thrust you can do almost anything you want to, look on youtube for Mig-29 OVT to see what I mean.

I have a question, some people have said that the fact that the X-9 Ghost had six lasers is a plus for the weapon, that it shows that they work well. But if they were so great, why did they have to put six on it. I think that had the Ghost been put into use the lasers would have been fired in rotation with two or four going at once and with the others brought online as needed. In WWII some pilots would only arm and use four of the six .50 cals in combat and once they ran out of ammo they would arm the last two in order to get them home.

After having watched FAR too much Battlestar my brain is running in so many different directions that it's hard to say, I can think of a reason to kill off every character and at the same time think of why they should live. But as of right now I have to say that Leon and Ozma are going to buy it. While many people say that Ozma has not had enough development to be killed off they did kill off Raramia. I don't think of her as cannon fodder because she had a name and I kept on waiting for the back story of the Pixies. I also feel that Michael may die, but I can't put my finger on why. While Macross does not have the rep of being too dark I would not mind if it ended up taking a turn in that direction. And I agree with Morpheus that the loss of some, most or all of the two fleet could very well happen. -If that's the case then my theory is that Alto and a lucky girl will take off in a VF-25 with one of those new fold boosters and heads out into the galaxy. (Maybe end up finding the Megaroad-01 with Misa and Hikaru.)

As for being able to switch ammo in flight it could be done and is done on some of today's infantry fighting vehicles, however I don't that it would be easy to do in something the size of a VF's gun pod. Ans as for Klan's Q-Rea, it looks as if she is using the cannons mounted on the chest in her fight with Alto and when the Vajra attack she goes to the arm guns. So I don't think that she switched rounds so much as switches weapons. EDIT - Hey look, I'm not cannon folder anymore!

I'd like to toss out some info as to the guns seen in macross, namely the rotary cannon, and no it's not called a chain gun like in so many games. Anyways the guns used by VFs have a few things going for them that I think we have missed. One being that it is a powered weapon that means that you could have a whole magazine of dud rounds and they would still cycle through the gun just fine for the most part. Two, even in most of today's fighters the gun sight is part of the fire control system which means that if the radar has a lock, the reticle only has to be placed on the target, you would not have to lead the target (that is a very simple version I know that there is some work to put rounds on target). Rotary cannons also deal with overheating very well because with 5 or 6 barrels all going in turn each barrel fires less than a gun with only one barrel while doing so with a higher rate of fire. Take the VF-1s GU-11 it has a rate of fire listed at 1200 rounds per minute with three barrels doing the work, that comes out to each barrel only fire 400 rounds a minute. And as for the ammo loads, the magazine could be loaded with a mix of rounds i.e. have a few rounds of high explosive incendiary with an armor piercing round in between a few more rounds of HEI so that you're covered no matter what you run in to. As to why VFs carry both types of weapons one reason maybe that pilots just complained about the lack of a 'real' gun. Pilots can get very stuck in their ways so for all we know when the VF-4 rolled out into the fleet pilots could have taken one look at it and said 'Nice, but where's the gatling?'. If any of you think thats reaching I know a whole lot of guys that don't like the idea of any type of battery power sights on their firearms because they feel that there is too much that can go wrong when you need it and thats just a little red dot sight. Also it got me thinking that I'm not sure just how the energy converting armor system works so what if some of the energy from the laser beam could be used BY the armor, or UNS/NUNS leaders fear that someone might come up with a type of ECA that would feed off of energy weapons. I know that I'm reaching with some of this stuff but ideas just start bouncing around sometimes.

This is all the Misa fan art that I have

Ok here we go, my theories for the lasers in the macross world. (I will have said someone this before in the tech thread, just recapping) -The lasers on VF-0 are the closest thing to true lasers that will ever be seen on VFs. They are underpowered due to the fact that the 0 has turbofans and not reaction engines. As to why the 0S' lasers due more damage than the one on the 0D I would say that Roy being Roy pulled the limiters on his guns to get more punch out of them or he took some of the power away from the ECA system and fed it to the lasers as that was his only weapon at the time. -Lasers on later models of Valkyries are a hybrid of laser and beam tech. My theory is that they are a mix of laser and plasma weapons. The laser would fire first then some of the fuel for the VF's engine would be fed into the gun and the laser would pulse again to turn the fuel to a plasma state. This would have the first laser pulse heating the target and making it easier for the plasma round to do its thing. This would make them more of a 'Phased Plasma Pulsed Laser'. (don't think that's a real term, just what I would call it.) They would go on to call these weapons 'laser' just because that is how they started out as and to keep all the different types of beam weapons straight. And as for why gun pods still are the main weapons, it may have something to do with fire times and how long you could shoot the lase before they start to overheat. Or the cannon round may have longer range of the lasers. In an atmosphere the air would bleed the laser away (I know that drag would affect the cannon round as well) and in space the cold vacuum could also bleed off the laser's energy where as the cannon round would have nothing to even slow it down and would go on forever. That brings up the point that the VF's fire control system would have to be able to rezero the gun pod in flight as the VF goes from vacuum to an atmosphere and back I know that some will disagree with me, but hey I did put 'my theories' up at the top as a disclaimer.

It was at the end of episode 13, here's a pic. I will say this about Frontier, after episode 13 and the way that you can see the guns tracking the 27 in a side to side motion helps me to see that the dorsal guns are more useful than I thought before. I was under the idea that they could only fire straight behind the VF due to the fact that they are listed as being fixed guns on the dorsal side in fighter/gerwalk modes. To me if they can move then they are not 'fixed guns', the wing root gun are fixed. Anyone else with me on this?