hobbes221

Nice to see another update and the design for the blade looks good. Man you are going to town with this, looking forward to any other VFs you have in the works.

Man I haven't heard anything about the F-22 being canned! On the man topic I feel that the UK, Japan and Australia should be able to buy the F-22, however the only part I disagree on is this... While it is the same type of risks I feel that there is a higher chance of it happening just due to more aircraft being in more parts of the world as well more people knowing things that others want. But nothing's for free or without risk and I'd rather back those who would (and have) back us. Does anyone else think that with all the problems that the F-22 faces that there is a good chance of seeing the F-15 get a major upgrade? I'm thinking thrust vectoring engines, maybe around the 40,000lbs range along with a full glass cockpit for starts. And maybe some new-build airframes as well.

The talk 'bout Hoser got me to thinkin' that I should share this pic for any who have not seen it before, no not from Hoser but man it's funny!

Ahh, sorry didn't see that and had not heard of that anime before, just saw the opening on youtube and the design doesn't look bad at all, will have to try and find some good pics. This is what I thought you meant

You're talking about a gun that fire 3,000 to 4,000 rounds a minute over a deck full of aircraft that act a lot like vacuum cleaners, the area of danger in front of an intake is a fair amount of space, more so when they throttle up. If even a few dozen sabot are laying around in the wrong places your out an engine or two, it fouls up the operations on the deck, the flight is down a bird and a replacement has to be used. FOD walks are a huge part of life on the flight deck and in aviation (turbine powered at least, known some prop guys who were a little more 'lax') in general for a reason, trust me I know as I have done far too many in the Arizona summers myself.

Is that the one that looks like a cross of a -19 and -21/22? That wasn't bad from what I remember, now I'll have to go digging in my HD for pics

Way to crush my dreams, thanks Kick me when I'm down why don't you.

Thanks for sharing, but these two have been posted around here before. They are good designs but many had a problem with the single engine design of the VF-32 as it was felt that there was just not a whole lot of room for a good sized engine with the way in which it transformed. I think there was also a comment about 'chicken legs' Have you made your way over to the fan works area, there are some great designs over there. The best IMHO is the VF-4 redesign/VF-400 done by anime52k8, take a look if you haven't yet.

Thanks for the pics, that always helps. That CIWS on the starboard side of the island is fine by me as it does not overlook the flight deck.

When we are taking about FOD we don't mean that the sabot are going to damage the deck, but will be sucked into the intakes of any aircraft with the engines running.

That's for sure, everyone should know Hoser! Man there are some great stories in there. I go back and reread almost the whole thing from time to time and it never gets old. Good to know you're a fan as well! Here's some of the best pics from him, please go and read to find out what's the story behind them, it's worth your time!

You know I have been wondering the same thing about the sabots for awhile now, I read some time ago that the AV-8B's 25mm can be loaded with sabot rounds and could get around how it dose not eat the things. If anyone knows I'm all ears. (I mean it has to work because they do it, right?) And as for making it past the deck, the problem I see would be if it was shooting towards the bow and the ship was moving at a good speed. With the head wind it might cause some to fall to the deck. That and the fact that shooting from the island out past the bow area is a fair amount of distance. Also by mounting the guns high up you add a greater rate of angle change to the problem of shooting a sea-skimmer as the guns would have to keep lowering their aim as the missiles get closer (also what The Saint said about having the radars looking into sea). Mounted just under the deck would seem to give the best line of sight to the target with the lowest amount of movement relative to the line of travel. Having guns mounted in both places might mean that the high gun are for targets other than sea-skimmers as well as giving a more complete coverage of the ship.

I'm with you guys on the FOD, looking up some stuff on the Mk 15 shows this. So it looks to have no problems with the rounds messing with the radar.

Always look forward on hearing your take on things Mr March. And I would like to say one more time to everyone out there, I was never trying to make the VF-25 to be better than the -19/22, my question was just for the -25 itself due to the wording that's all. I don't think that the -25 HAS to be better in every way over everything before it. I feel that the -25 is a better fighter for a few reasons that have nothing (or at least not much) to do with the G limit of the airframe. It was good to here other takes on it though. Although if I had my way an air wing in the Macross world would have a mix of VFs of almost every type we have seen.

Thanks for that, I guess I'm from the school where max airspeed is what's useful without breaking the bird, I think IIRC the F-15 tops out at 2.5 because at that point the windscreen starts to melt, or was it the F-111? So to me the max for the VF-25 is around mach 5, going faster is pointless if you can't bring the bird back (or more important, IT can't bring YOU back ). I guess you could tool around at that speed all day in a VF but I can't help but think that the cruise speed would be lower. On the topic of the -27, is there any reason as to why the -25 would not be able to pull off the same trick and go faster as well? The only things that I could think of off the bat is that maybe the two main engines are used for thrust and the two wing nacelle ones are used just to generate power for the ECA system, or that it takes the full power from all four engines to give enough juice to the ECA to go that fast.

No, it's not -from the Macross Compendium

With a little luck maybe this will be the start of a line of books for the tech side of Macross.

And I forgot one thing, when I said that I felt the max Gs may be higher I also meant to say that they did not have to be higher than the -19 just higher than 27.5, it could max out at 30, 40 or 51.127834 Gs. It just felt than the way it was worded was the max Gs for a specific area of it's performance envelope not the max the airframe could withstand.

Good points from everyone, and I'm not trying to make the VF-25 to be better than the VF-19 in every way it's just when I read that part about the Gs again it got me thinking so I just wanted to hear what you guys thought and I was not disappointed. And on the top speed of the F-15 and F-22, planes today almost never get to their max speed so right now it's more about highest practical or useful speed and super cruise. I think I said before that VF-19 and YF-21/VF-22 were perhaps overbuilt and may have never gotten close to their max Gs in use. Even at the end M+ after everything that Guld put the -21 through the main body of the airframe was still in one peace, more or less. They could have lowered the G limits because they just did not need to be that high and reducing it would allow the airframe to be lighter and maybe a little cheaper. -edit- oh and thanks for the heads up on that VF-1 book and the link to it (maybe I can bribe someone to translate some, because we just have not gotten enough on the -1 in the Macross Chronicles )

I don't know if using the F-35 is a good example because it's main role is air to mud and the job requirements are different than those of an air to air bird. I think the whole VF-19 vs VF-25 is more along the lines of the F-15 and F-22. What we really need is hard numbers as everyone has said time and again. And I'm not trying to jump to conclusions here, its just those stage IIs are driving me up a wall. Why so much power if it can't turn as well as burn? Otherwise we're looking at the Macross version of an F-105 or Mig-25, fast as anything but would take the whole state of Alaska in a turn at speed. If you don't agree that's fine, I do like to hear all the different ideas and views, that's why I'm here, it keeps my mind open and working. I just really want a VF tech manual (with line art, tons of line art!)

OK that is THE funniest thing I have read in a very long time

"Maximum airframe design load: 27.5G at maximum acceleration for 120 seconds" Okay I know we talked about this over and over but reading that again got me thinking. The way I'm looking at right now almost makes me think it can take more Gs than that for say it's instantaneous turn rate (David Hingtgen, got me thinking about that, thanks and good points too). Because now that make me think that the whole 27.5 thing is what it can take for 2 minutes strait with the engines wide open. I don't know if I'm making myself clear but what I'm trying to say is that if it were a human it's kinda like saying we can take 8 Gs for XX amount of seconds, we can go higher but just not as long. What do you guys think? Am I just way off base with this or what?

Anime52k8 You could also look at the design for 'Out of The Front' automatic knives. Instead of pivoting around a point like most other folding blades they come out like a piston. Depending on how long you make the handle/hilt it could help to cut down on the total length when stored, it would not be able to hold the full blade, but should help a little.

You did design the gun pod to mount on the engine nacelle so why not design a aerodynamic pod/sheath for it?

First off it was mainly a joke and second they were at what amounts to an airshow so I wonder just as to how long getting live ammo would have taken. And is was a joke. Oh the whole plot device thingy.