Ahhh PII, count on you bringing up the past 😉 I sure do remember those things and I loved Megatron who could turn into a Walther P-38, which always made me think how could such a big robot turn into something so small?

Anyone who didn’t like the Dinobots was an idiot, and the Constructacons were cool also. But I have to agree with Matt, Macros/Robotech were far better at transforming 😉 As was Voltron in both his forms (5 Tigers and several vehicle componants which formed three seperate groups or all combined formed “Voltron- defender of the Universe”) I saw the episode where both Voltrons came into contact that was weird as my brother liked the Tiger one and I liked the other one, still my brother did me up because he actually got his Voltron as a present once 🙁

Anyway back to the main topic, have you seen the new Transformers- Beast Wars? The animation in the is soooo cool, I’ve started collecting them and my favourite is Tigertron who is a rogue but it’s like this:

Maxilams
Optimus Primal- Gorilla
Rhinox- Rhino
Rattrap- Rat
Cheetor- Cheetah
Dinobot- Velociraptor; Left the Predicons after losing a battle with Megatron
Tigertron- White tiger
Airazor- Peregrine Falcon
Silverbolt- Grey wolf/Bald eagle
Depth Charge- Manta Ray
Tigerhawk- Tiger/Falcon; Combination of Tigertron and Airazor after kidnap by Aliens

Predacons
Megatron- T-rex
Scorponok- Scorpion
Terrorsaur- Pterosaur
Waspinator- Wasp
Turantulas- Trantula
Blackarachnia- Black Widow
Inferno- Fire Ant
Quick Strike- Scorpion/Cobra
Rampage- King Crab
Dinobot II- Velociraptor; A white version of Dinobot who is under control of Predacon atributes and after Rampage is killed, betrays Megatron to allow the Maximals to win the beast wars!

There are only three seasons of this series, and all of them are woth watching simply for the admiration of the graphics, a far cry from the cartoon drawings of the original transformers

My personal feeling on this matter mate (if I may be permitted), is that that concept is old and out dated, it is time, labour and man power intencive. Why have so many people in your force doing all those jobs when with MR a/c you can have just a few?

Single Role a/c are good if you have both a huge budget to waste on poeple, training and the planes as well as a sizeable man power (usually conscripts) to look after these planes.

Bombers are the worst, they have a requirement for so many people maily due to their size, but also due to their role (extra armourers needed to handle the bomb load in a quick time). Most forces can’t sustain these types of a/c mainly because they don’t have the men/women (lets be fair now) for them.

Sadly I see MR a/c as the future because they reduce the amount of people needed to look after them, they are cheaper to aquire and sustain and most importanly, they can do the role of several different planes in one frame. People whilest growning in population, are becoming lazier everyday and inovation is the key to that, I mean why do what 20 people can do when you can have 3 do it? It saves you money, it saves you time in training and most of all it makes you a “more professional” force.

Sadly this debate will only end in logic of numbers, money in the pocket of me over money in the pocket of you, human nature (greed as it is) will always place more in my pocket rather than giving you a fair share.

One thing forgotten in this post is the South African Grippens which are to be armed with the Darter systems and all American content is being removed and local ones put in their place, all except the engine that is.

You mongrel 😛 I get a computer freeze and you jump in on this aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh

The Elkans and Panteras are good for another 15-20 years of service since they have just gone through an upgrade they have one B707 refueler but this is grounded most of the time due to technical faults in the engines (they still use the old JT-3’s). They have been looking at the K767’s and even a tanker version of the B737 but as I stated before, they don’t have any money.

Hey Flood I noticed that you have diabled your rep button, why?

Also how can you start off with ten when Glen has only one and I have ten? Doesn’t make any sence to me, besides this is like the old rating system on the very old board a couple of years ago, I disapproved of that even though I had some 92 points by the time it ended, I’m going to disable mine because I don’t like this system, people take you for what you are not what others think of you! How do you think new people to the board are going to see someone who has a low score but very good comments in their posts? I really don’t believe it fair one anyone really, that’s just MHO

Does anyone have any pics of the F-5 firing it’s guns?

I also hear that the Polish Navy are thinking of working on their machines as well. I missed that SBS special but heard the jist of it on an ad now I’ll look into it from your link, Thanks mate.

As I said a while ago, Australia is trying to cram too much cutting edge tech into too little a system, The SH-2G’s are one example as is another with the Collins class. I served aboard it when it was new to the fleet and we had to requsition toilet roll holders as the boat was built without them, and you couldn’t leave the rolls on the floor next to it because the toilets leaked.

Australia really needs to look at what it’s doing interms of it’s defence, these leaps are causing so many problems that they are diverting money away from other needs producing capability gaps in our forces as we can see with the AAWD’s and other such cases.