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Thread
:
HISS Tank Reviews The Sky Striker XP21F
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07-19-2011, 11:35 PM
Shin Densetsu
VALKYRIE
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Over the rainbow where your mom is at son
Posts: 23,515
Here we take a closer, detailed look at the Sky Striker XP21F. As noted earlier, the text details once sculpted on the wheels are not longer present. Would've been cool to have, but it doesn't bother me much. There are panel lines all over the plane, retained from the original.
There are a lot of stickers, 2 big sheets of them are included. I was surprised at how many stickers were included. For the 1st one I opened, I opted to use the regular Sky Striker logo on the vertical stabilizers, and "Aces High" stickers for the nose. The alternate stickers on the decal sheet, near the Sky Striker logo are better off as nose art. You can't even see some of them if they are on the vertical stabilizers because the stabilizers are black. Also, the alternate stickers are too small to be on the stabilizers. So on the nose they went.
Some stickers are optional, with no place shown to put them. The stickers for the most part, are of a higher quality than the POC vehicles. They tend to stick better too. However, the front windscreen sticker does not have a cut out in the middle, to account for the raised area on the windscreen. Due to this, I witnessed creases on that sticker. To begin with, creases are hard to avoid on that area due to the curvature of the randome, but that raised area only complicates things. Adding to that, the gun grill/vent doesn't make anything easier.
The cockpit seats only 1 figure due to the new parts that Hasbro crafted within. These parts include:
All new seat
Ejection ring handles
HUD(Heads Up Display)
MFD(Multi-Functional Display)
Sidestick
Throttle
Hasbro would often say that there wasn't enough room to seat 2 figures, leaving out the part that
this is due to the new parts put into the new cockpit
. Later, in a
GI Joe Q&A session
, they stated that:
Quote:
The two seater was indeed considered, however, it would have been very very difficult to fit the second pilot in the cockpit. Luckily, the new cockpit is indeed modular and a new, two seater cockpit could be designer at a future date to accomidate two (albiet, very awkward) seated pilots. Currently, there are no plans to revise this design.
I've heard many fans say they wanted a more updated Sky Striker,
Pursuit Of Cobra
(
POC
) style. Surprisingly enough, this cockpit is where we see the modernization. The Tomcat never had a sidestick, yet this new Sky Striker has it. The sidestick was an innovation introduced on the F-16, and made for ease of use. The original Skystriker never had a joystick, let alone sidestick, nor throttle. Early production models of the F-14A Tomcat sported a HUD screen, but were taken off, and an advanced one later appeared on the F-14D Super Tomcat. The original Skystriker XP14F never had a HUD screen, which makes sense as neither did most production F-14A's.
The new Sky Striker also has a central MFD(Multi Function Display) which the Super Tomcat also had. However there is also another panel molded but which is blocked by the HUD. Personally, I angle the HUD backwards a bit, because if it is against the cockpit panels, it doesn't look right.
The F-14D Super Tomcat had 2 MFD's in the front cockpit, 1 central, while the F-14A and B models had 2 CRT's in the middle. If you take out the HUD, it looks like the Sky Striker XP21F has the configuration of the F-14A but the central MFD from the F-14D.
In a way this is countered by Ace's new HMDS(Helmet Mounted Display System), the helmet that F-35 pilots use, as the F-35 does not need a HUD due to that helmet. I guess we can view the HUD on the new Sky Striker as a backup should the helmet electronics fail or something.
Where the cockpit seems like a step back can be found with 2 areas:
Ejection seat rings
Seat placement
The ejection seat rings are those of the F-14A ejection seat. The F-14D Super Tomcat had the NACES ejection seats which lacked those rings. Neat details, but inaccurate. Yes this is toy based on the Tomcat and has other inaccuracies to begin with, but I would be remiss to not point this out.
The seat placement does bother me, but not terribly. Ace is too far back. Due to this, his head sits directly under the canopy frame. For example, should he eject through the canopy(this has happened before), it would be a reinactment of what happened to goose in
Top Gun
but possibly worse.
Anyways that could have been rectified had the middle frame of the canopy been absent. That snag aside. it would have been preferable to see Ace seated further forward in the cockpit. That way, the middle canopy frame issue would not be an issue, and it would look more realistic. Why can't he sit further forward? The new cockpit panels prevent him from going that far. You could possibly take the cockpit apart and carve out said panels.
Ultimately, the new cockpit is far more detailed than the sculpted random dials/guages on the original Skystriker. Is it better? Yes. The original cockpit was only better in the respect that it could seat 2 people(adds to playability in my opinion), and had the front seat further forward.
The fact that the new Sky Striker is a one seater could be seen as an advancement. Maybe the Joe team was able to secure enough funding to turn an older Skystriker into a one seater.
Historical sidenote: Grumman did make a 1 seat F-14A Tomcat for spin/High AOA(Angle Of Attack) testing. The space for the rear seat was taken up by instrumentation. The Blue Angels also considered the Tomcat for a time, and wanted a 1 seater. However, Grumman found that it was actually more expensive to convert a Tomcat to 1 seat use rather than to keep it a 2 seater. The cockpit workload is huge and that is why it necessitates a 2 man crew. In fact, aside from the aforementioned Test F-14A, the Tomcat cannot take off without both crew members at the controls.
So maybe by 2011 we can presume that the GI Joe team found some way to integrate advanced avionics into an old Sky Striker to make it flyable by one person. In many ways, the Sky Striker XP21F comes off with similarities to one of the planes that Ace first flew before joining the Joes, the F-16, especially with the sidestick, HUD, reclined seat, and reclined seat. By the end of the
GI Joe A Real American Hero
line, he had flown the Ghoststriker X-16, also F-16 based.
Speaking of seats, the seat is reclined. A reclined seat is actually preferred for fighter planes as it increases the tolerances of G load on the pilot. More on the cockpit after we get through with Capt. Ace...
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