So, two thoughts I had while at work.
First, I've never been entirely satisfied with the 'engine-on-chest' layout of the Bobcat's battloid mode; it puts the propeller in the way if you try to use it, and raises awkward questions about what you do with the thing otherwise, and generally strikes me as 'maybe this is kind of ugly'. But if you used the cockpit block as the 'anchor' of the rest of the transformation rather than the engine firewall, then you could put the engine block on a rotating yoke, like the VF-0's legs use (the VF-1 is supposed to use a kind of detaching ram arrangement, which is silly but oh well), that would rotate up and over the cockpit while the arms and tail assembly split outboard to either side. This would mean stuffing the head into the space between the engine and the front of the cockpit, since there wouldn't be room for it to basically reverse the engine's motion in the same space, but that'd be doable.
Second, while the sheer complexity of producing a working variable mecha is obviously more on the order of creating a modern latest-generation jet fighter than the actual fighters of the 1940s, the reference to a salvage mechanic suggests that the RL examples where planes that had been designed for piston power were reworked as jets might be worth investigating as possible design territory.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
First, I've never been entirely satisfied with the 'engine-on-chest' layout of the Bobcat's battloid mode; it puts the propeller in the way if you try to use it, and raises awkward questions about what you do with the thing otherwise, and generally strikes me as 'maybe this is kind of ugly'. But if you used the cockpit block as the 'anchor' of the rest of the transformation rather than the engine firewall, then you could put the engine block on a rotating yoke, like the VF-0's legs use (the VF-1 is supposed to use a kind of detaching ram arrangement, which is silly but oh well), that would rotate up and over the cockpit while the arms and tail assembly split outboard to either side. This would mean stuffing the head into the space between the engine and the front of the cockpit, since there wouldn't be room for it to basically reverse the engine's motion in the same space, but that'd be doable.
Second, while the sheer complexity of producing a working variable mecha is obviously more on the order of creating a modern latest-generation jet fighter than the actual fighters of the 1940s, the reference to a salvage mechanic suggests that the RL examples where planes that had been designed for piston power were reworked as jets might be worth investigating as possible design territory.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."