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Post by the light works on Jan 24, 2014 6:11:38 GMT
for me, the primary requirement for the last car was 12,000# GVWR.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 24, 2014 7:54:13 GMT
[COF!]WOMEN are to frail?...
>>>> movin' swiftly on...>>>
I find that Manual cars are a lot lighter to drive than automatics.
My list of needs are good brakes, good ABS, power-assisted steering, GOOD engine, good build quality, 5star safety [NCap]
Wants, I can do without, but I would like, power windows, air con, sun hatch, central locking.
DONT want, full-automatic, power seats, cruise control that is hard to use, over complicated i-[dont]-drive computer controlled gubbins that just confuses.....
ESP?... yes, electronic stabilisation that knows the car better than me, I can live with, I do NOT want to turn the traction control off, and I disagree with the Jeremy-can-be-a-richard-head Clarkson on this, if a Car has electronic safety equipment that keeps the thing on the black stuff and out of ditches, I do NOT want it to be "Switch-able" between "Safe" and IDIOT....
If the car has "Track mode" on its switches, get a licence.
Seriously, if it has Track mode, get a track licence before you use it?... Thats good advice, because if all you have is a road licence, you seriously do NOT know how to drive in Track mode, and will end up in a ditch, in the "Pride comes before a fall" way.....
Go get a track experience day, do the training, let them show you how to get the best out of your car....
When you get to the stage where you start thinking you dont actually want to turn track mode on in live traffic, my job here is done.
There is someone out there right now who is thinking "He is s twerp, I can turn on track mode any time I want in my car and I dont need no one to tell ME how to drive".... I can bet on who that isnt, SR Racing, VWEngineer, and a few others who have admitted they have done some track time.
ANYONE who has done track experience under proper tuition will tell you they learnt a lot that day....
So back to REAL cars....
Yes I would take a spots car. But as a daily driver, I want a Five star safety (NCap) good drive, reliable, comfortable, five seats with plenty of room for six foot passengers in the back (My Kids) luggage space and a range of approx 300 mile on a full tank....
Keep your toys, safety reliability and comfort come first, always.
...And as a last word, when you end up on a race track facing the wrong way in the kitty litter, you didnt fail, you just learnt how fast you can NOT take that corner. Tracks are the place when you learn what DOES happen when you get it wrong, in a safe environment, wit definite soft spots that dont hurt... much..... most of the time..... There is a time and a place for this. If you end up facing the wrong way in LIVE traffic, because you pushed too hard, you are a danger.
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Post by the light works on Jan 24, 2014 15:17:45 GMT
keep in mind that this is a carryover from the days when it took a good 20 pounds force to stomp the clutch, and the shift lever was 3 feet long for leverage, not for decoration. AND even with synchromesh on the earlier cars; you had to do it right. - and at the time American women were not expected to be able to lift anything that didn't say Electrolux or Hoover on the side. as far as bells and whistles - I am singularly unimpressed with the electronic stability control on the new engines. mainly because it seems to be set at the "driving instructor with a hangover" sensitivity level. I understand that it is necessary to make it sensitive enough to keep the kids who aren't used to driving anything bigger than a Honda out of trouble; but when you can't make a reasonable short acceleration off a side street without it chopping your throttle; it gets kind of obnoxious. I suspect you could set a mug of coffee on the doghouse and not be able to make it slide off. in short: if a feature makes the driving easier for me, I am fine with it. if it makes a nuisance of itself, I'd prefer not to have it. the (semi)automatic transmission on my truck and the drive-by-wire throttle - I love. if I want to leave in a hurry, I just throw a brick on the pedal and it does all the thinking for me. as for cruise control, the only one that is a PITA that I have experienced is the one on my fire tender - which you can understand I almost never use. you have to press two switches in the proper sequence to activate it and remember to turn off the transmission retarder, or it will try to micromanage your speed to the point of being like a little old lady. As far as Jeremy Clarkson, the man is a full blown pompous buffoon. that's why we like him so much. and I do appreciate his "and it has a button marked 'track mode' which, when you depress it, makes the ride more harsh" remarks. If I were to select a daily driver, I would want electrically heated seats, power adjustment mainly for the tilt of the seat, itself, and the footrest for my clutch foot in the Acura was a stroke of genius. in fact, if it weren't for the lack of heated seats, and the fact that it felt like Bambi on frost unless I had the snow tires on it, my old Acura was about the best daily driver I could configure. Attachment Deletedand it looked like a proper car, too. not an amorphous blob that someone parked a bit too close to the heater and melted. (women have curves, cars have lines)
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Post by ironhold on Jan 24, 2014 15:50:57 GMT
My main focus is "safety and reliability".
As part of it, I don't want power windows; I've been stuck in vehicles before where the power failed, leaving the windows stuck rolled up.
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Post by the light works on Jan 24, 2014 15:55:50 GMT
My main focus is "safety and reliability". As part of it, I don't want power windows; I've been stuck in vehicles before where the power failed, leaving the windows stuck rolled up. my cars have usually had a lever close to the power window switch that made the door go open... - and I've been in cars where the window crank fell off, leaving the window stuck rolled up. but yeah, I agree that power windows have a higher failure rate than manual windows. but on the other side, in my brother's volkswagen, he could turn the key in the driver's door, and it would lock all the doors and close all the windows and the sunroof. which compared to my Acura, which nobody who rode with me could EVER seem to figure out how to roll up the windows when I was parking the car, and I would invariably have to stick the key back in the ignition and roll the windows up before I locked the car.
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Post by the light works on Jan 24, 2014 15:58:49 GMT
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 26, 2014 10:49:28 GMT
Gone... to that thread....
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Post by the light works on Jan 26, 2014 15:01:20 GMT
we have been watching Voyager, and on of the episodes last night had Voyager trying to capture a ship of con artists. however, they also had to deal with an alien who wanted to capture them. how hard would it have been, really, for Janeway to say "we can discuss this after they are captured"
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 24, 2014 15:17:10 GMT
Today I decided to introduce my 6-year-old son to a rite of passage: watching Star Wars for the first time. I got bored in the middle, but got excited for the Deathstar battle.
One thing occurred to me with the fighter fight. Why are all the weapons on the fighters forward facing? I understand that they are controlled by the pilot, but why not have one or more rear mounted to cover the tail? It would be a simple matter to make it computer controlled. A single rear mounted laser cannon on each fighter would have completely changed the trench run.
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Post by the light works on Aug 24, 2014 15:34:31 GMT
I believe Y-wings DO have rear firing armament - which can be managed by the co-pilot or locked directly to the rear.
my last night movie was Amazing Spider Man 2. I particularly noted the scene in which Peter's dad shot the window of the airplane they were in and the bad guy got suctioned out through it by the explosive decompression. on a more esoteric note, I wasn't really pleased by their theme of ramping up all the supervillains to natural disaster levels. Spider Man is my favorite superhero, because he is a superhero of more human proportions.
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 24, 2014 15:58:17 GMT
If Y-wings had a rear mounted gun, why didn't they use it during the 1st trench run? They could have taken out Vader then, or at least forced them to keep a lot further of a distance, enabling them to have a much better shot at shooting the exhaust port.
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 24, 2014 16:08:51 GMT
For that matter, there were three trench runs. After the Y wings got wiped out, They repeated the same maneuver with the X-wings twice. Perfect insanity, using the same plan over and over hoping for something different. The only reason it worked was Han coming in with surprise support on the 3rd run. A much better plan would have been after they lost the 1st group of y wings in the trench to TIE fighter, then send in a trio of X-wings, let the Tie fighters get behind them, and then have the remaining x-wings come in after them, so Luke, Biggs, and Wedge could come in to the TIE fighters blind spots and take them out. Fighters, including Vader are dead, two runs at the exhaust port in quick succession and out before the Deathstar is even in range to fire.
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Post by the light works on Aug 24, 2014 16:29:32 GMT
If Y-wings had a rear mounted gun, why didn't they use it during the 1st trench run? They could have taken out Vader then, or at least forced them to keep a lot further of a distance, enabling them to have a much better shot at shooting the exhaust port. for the same reason they followed the trench all the way around the death star instead of just dropping in at the last bit; and the same reason they didn't have another unit flying cover above them. wookiepedia says the Y-wings in the battle of Yavin did not have that capability.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 24, 2014 17:04:06 GMT
If Y-wings had a rear mounted gun, why didn't they use it during the 1st trench run? They could have taken out Vader then, or at least forced them to keep a lot further of a distance, enabling them to have a much better shot at shooting the exhaust port. for the same reason they followed the trench all the way around the death star instead of just dropping in at the last bit; and the same reason they didn't have another unit flying cover above them. wookiepedia says the Y-wings in the battle of Yavin did not have that capability. There are two Y-wing variants, the only real difference being that one is a single seat fighter-bomber while the other is a two seater. Both have a swivel mounted ion cannon (not a blaster) that can rotate around 360 degrees above the cockpit. In the two seat version the rear gunner controls the ion cannon, while in the single seater the pilot controls the gun. Because pilots can't usually look both ahead and behind them, the cannon on the single seat Y-Wing is usually locked in the forward position - as they were at Yavin.
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Post by the light works on Aug 24, 2014 17:16:48 GMT
for the same reason they followed the trench all the way around the death star instead of just dropping in at the last bit; and the same reason they didn't have another unit flying cover above them. wookiepedia says the Y-wings in the battle of Yavin did not have that capability. There are two Y-wing variants, the only real difference being that one is a single seat fighter-bomber while the other is a two seater. Both have a swivel mounted ion cannon (not a blaster) that can rotate around 360 degrees above the cockpit. In the two seat version the rear gunner controls the ion cannon, while in the single seater the pilot controls the gun. Because pilots can't usually look both ahead and behind them, the cannon on the single seat Y-Wing is usually locked in the forward position - as they were at Yavin. according to wookiepedia, the Y-wings at yavin were early models that did not have the ion cannon at all. (which I read as Lucas patterned them after existing fighter/bombers, which typically did not have rear firing armament - and it was later EU writing that added the rear firing armament)
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 24, 2014 18:30:24 GMT
Okay, Star Wars was based on WWII fighters. In WWII, with human based controls, forward facing guns make sense. But even in WWII, several 2 seater models of fighters had rear mounted guns. In a technologically advanced society of SW, by having all gun forward facing, you have a huge vulnerable, unprotected area around the ship. How hard would it be to have a turret or two that are computer controlled to seak out and shoot enemy ships?
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Post by ironhold on Aug 24, 2014 21:22:50 GMT
A famous two-part episode of the original 1980s G. I. Joe / Action Force cartoon is named "The Synthoid Conspiracy."
Cobra, the bad guys, have developed a way to clone humans. These "synthiods" (synthetic humanoids) look like the normal humans that they're clones of and can be programmed with as much of the original's memories and behaviors as the Cobra scientists are aware of. However, they aren't perfect.
1. If the Cobra scientists don't know something, they can't program it in. For example, the synthoid of G. I. Joe / Action Force first sergeant Duke nearly blows its cover because it confuses two physically similar members of the team when the real Duke could have immediately told them apart.
2. Dogs and other such animals with sensitive senses of smell can tell the clones from the originals immediately. Once more, the Duke synthoid is nearly discovered because Cobra forgot that the Joe team uses a combat-trained K9 / handler team (Mutt & Junkyard).
3. As a failsafe, Cobra arranged it so that the synthoids were vulnerable to certain high-pitched fequencies. If a synthoid ever went rogue or needed to be disposed of quickly, a strong enough burst would kill the synthoid immediately.
4. Cobra Commander, for his own personal amusement, chose to make synthoids out of a pair of lieutenants... who were known to be tempermental... and who knew about the vulnerability to high-pitched frequencies.
One lieutenant responds to CC's insult by assisting Mutt after the Duke synthoid framed him for being a traitor. Not only does he save the handler, he shows the handler where the main synthoid cloning facility is.
The other lieutenant is so furious that he goes to kill his clone, only to accidentally boost the power on the frequency transmitter so high that he winds up killing most of Cobra's other synthoids as well.
Mutt takes advantage of the confusion caused by the deaths of so many synthoids to slip inside and free Duke. Together, the pair do so much damage that the rest of the team faces minimal resistance when they strike.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 24, 2014 21:25:36 GMT
There are two Y-wing variants, the only real difference being that one is a single seat fighter-bomber while the other is a two seater. Both have a swivel mounted ion cannon (not a blaster) that can rotate around 360 degrees above the cockpit. In the two seat version the rear gunner controls the ion cannon, while in the single seater the pilot controls the gun. Because pilots can't usually look both ahead and behind them, the cannon on the single seat Y-Wing is usually locked in the forward position - as they were at Yavin. according to wookiepedia, the Y-wings at yavin were early models that did not have the ion cannon at all. (which I read as Lucas patterned them after existing fighter/bombers, which typically did not have rear firing armament - and it was later EU writing that added the rear firing armament) It is wrong, you can clearly see the cannons above the rear part of the cockpit in the film. starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Trench_run?file=Ywings_trenchrun.pngI'm only aware of a single WW2 era fighter that had four guns - the Boulton Paul Defiant; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_DefiantThis had some success as a night fighter, but got shot to pieces by German fighters when it tried to fight in daylight. (At least as long as Luftwaffe pilots didn't mistake it for the Hurricane, which they did initially). The problems with turrets on fighters is/was always that they added considerable weight to the fighter, reducing flight performance and agility. At the same time the turrets, no matter how well positioned, simply can't cover all attacking angles and they also take time to move and track. Add to that the need to maneuver and no matter how advanced the targeting and tracking system is the chances of actually hitting a small fast moving fighter fall so low you'd be better off without it. Sure, we have such systems on modern warships. But the firing platform is moving in a fairly predictable manner, is incapable of a snap-turn and as such is effectively stationary as far as the targeting system is concerned. In the Star Wars universe ECM systems would also come into play, as in the Imperial forces have much more advanced systems than their Rebel counterparts - at least as far as electronics go. It is probable that the Empire would be able to jamb any automatic targeting systems well enough to further reduce accuracy. It is also probable that a blaster system set into a turret would have to be smaller, at least as far as the length of the barrel goes, which would mean shorter range and less hitting power. So a smart attacker might be able to stand off outside your effective range and shoot at you at no risk to themselves. The last point is that an automatic turret system, or for that matter even a manually operated turret, is much more complex and therefore would require considerably more maintenance than a fixed weapon system*. For the Rebel Alliance which is short on resources and skilled manpower such complexity would not be desirable. (*'Fixed' is actually not exactly correct. The guns on the X and A-Wings (and presumably the Y and B-Wing as well) are actually capable of moving a small amount. This would explain why Luke got a targeting lock on Tie Fighters before firing at them, rather than peppering the area around the fighter with shots in an effort to make it break off its attack. The A-Wing goes one further, as there is a version where the guns, which are located on the outer edges of the hull, can be rotated to fire to the rear. In the X-Wing series of books one A-Wing pilot takes full advantage of this by rotating his guns some 45 degrees. This allows him to attack one target with missiles and another with his guns.)
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 25, 2014 0:56:02 GMT
Cyber, another small plane with a turret was the Grumman TBF Avenger which was rather popular as a long range torpedo plane and rather popular in the pacific. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_AvengerHowever it was common with 2 seater plans operating in the pacific to mount one or two .30 or .50 machine guns for the copilot to use when needed. A setup like that is much lighter than a full turret, albeit with a lot less area it can cover, it is still an improvement over having a completely exposed rear end. One example of this is the Douglas TBD Devastator. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_TBD_DevastatorAs far as aiming goes on a SW fighter, in this case, the primary role is not to shoot down enemy fighters, but to provide covering fire to keep them further back where it is harder to get a lock and where it would be easier for other rebel fighters to get them. Additionally, to keep enemy fighters distracted by dodging fire so it is harder to get a lock.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 25, 2014 1:39:52 GMT
The aircraft that possessed rear firing weapons were bombers rather than fighters (The aforementioned Defiant being the exception along with the two seater ME-110). These were comparatively slow moving craft that were vulnerable either during their attack runs or just afterwards, and were not intended to engage fighters in dogfights as they usually lacked the agility to mix it up.
Two seater craft suffered from poor performance compared to single seat fighters in WW2, the notable exception being the Mosquito (or at least the variant that had guns in the nose) which could hold its own against single engined/seat fighters of the period if it had to and which it should probably be noted lacked rear firing weapons - the second seat was for a bomb-aimer. Other than that two seaters ended up being used as either 'pure' bombers or as night fighters - in the latter case the second crewman worked the radar set.
In Star Wars the Rebel craft are multi-role fighters, not pure bombers - even the B-Wing which was designed principally as an anti-capital ship platform. In order to remain viable in the fighter role this necessitated (or would necessitate) keeping agility and over all flight performance as high as possible. Which in turn would require dispensing with rear mounted weapons and ideally with a second crewman where possible. The two seat Y-Wing is actually a 'pure' bomber, and as such does have the rear firing guns. The ones used at Yavin, and it appears Endor, were the single seat versions where the turret is locked in the forward position. This is not just because pilots are not usually that good at firing at targets behind them, but also because the guns in question are ion cannons that disable craft rather than destroy them. The Rebels used the cannons to disable ships to capture them, or so they could board them to recover valuable cargo. Easier for a pilot to disable a craft while heading for it than having to fly right up to it and then turn around and try to aim while looking over their shoulder and avoiding enemy fire.
Looking at the prequel films, or Revenge of the Sith anyway, it is easy to see why this would be the case. If you pay attention to the space battle at the beginning you'll notice that the Clone fighters have a three man (clone) crew and a rear firing weapon...they also have the agility of a freight train and quickly get shot to pieces by the smaller, faster and more agile droid fighters.
In the Star Wars universe, much like our own world, slow moving 'fighters' are at a serious disadvantage against smaller and faster craft no matter how many rear guns they might have. Even if the craft is flying in a nice straight line, hence making it easier for the gunner to target, a fast moving opponent can (and is seen to) move across the gun-sight faster than the turret and gunner can physically move. It is probably most notable in A New Hope, where four Tie fighters make a mess of the Falcon. Of these fighters two are destroyed when the pilots were stupid enough to attack the Falcon by flying in a nice straight line towards it for several seconds. The other two being destroyed when the pilots appeared to make the mistake of forgetting that the ship they were attacking had two guns, and their attempts to get out of the way of one of them put them directly in the path of the other gun. More experienced pilots would most likely have concentrated their fire on one side of the Falcon, and not flown in such predictable paths.
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