2 more additions to my hangar

[DaveB]

Hi Chaps

Continuing the recent urge to get the old brushes wet.. here are a couple more paints, both of which are authentic.

G-BLZJ wearing a rare hybrid ..


G-BFEF wearing AAC motif ..


G-BLZJ - Nemeth AS332 Super Puma
G-BFEF - Flysimware Bell 47G
FSX
ASN - Real Weather (murky as it was)
GenXv3 with local additions

ATB
DaveB

[Filonian]

A very good brush wetting Dave


Graham

[Paul K]

Lovely stuff. It's pictures like those that make me wish I could handle helicopters in FSX/P3D. Dave, is that Bell 47 the one with the odd-looking pilot figure that had to be corrected in a service pack ? If so, it looks pretty good now.

[DaveB]

Cheers guys

Paul.. yes, the pilot was given an overhaul in one of the SP's. He still looks like he's wearing a Russian cosmonauts hat mind you The paint map for the Bell 47 is atrocious.. very 'old school'. I started off doing the Army Historic Flight's XT131 to go with my FSHeli.ch Alouette and due to the model lighting, ended up doing BFEF instead TBH.. that white paint for the Puma was far from straight forward. The dirt and lines are on the detail layer (not part of a group or individual layers) so you can't change the dirt and shading without losing other detail. As a consequence, I had to redraw some of the lines and I have multiple copies of the detail layer with various bits cut out.. mainly because I changed the black exhaust area and the danger sign on the fin You wouldn't believe a simple white paint could be so fiddly The Bell47 doesn't have a PK so I had to make my own

Having modified the Puma model using a Hex editor so that the nav lights are the right way round.. I'm as happy as I can be with that model. As for the 47.. each update seems to make the helicopter fly more and more odd so it's not as much fun as it could be. Flysimware DO keep updating it though so we should think ourselves fortunate

There are a few more paints I can do for the 47. I'm also looking at the Cera Bell 212 (BA) but can't fathom why my nav lights don't work on it at the moment. I fancied doing a BA paint for the MilViz/ND Chinook but the 721mb PK (compressed I might add) has more layers and groups than Woo's in a Chinese telephone directory so I think that will have to wait until I retire In the end.. I'm finding my way around PS CS2

ATB
DaveB

[rohan]

Dave,
Any chance you're going to release any of these paints, especially any for the Puma ?
regs,
ro

[Airspeed]

Dave
They look neat!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the default pilot seat in a helicopter was the RIGHT.
Never understood why they were opposite to fixed wing, but there you go.

Casual question, did it make you tough, or tender, being "marinated" all those years?

[DaveB]

Hi Ro

I'll certainly release the Puma paint as it's ready to go. All I need to do is work out the texture.cfg.. I've all the textures loaded at the moment (rather than the 3 or 4 required) I need to find a few more logo's for the Bell and perhaps change the reg font. It will 'do' at the moment but it's not quite there yet.

Mike.. yes. My understanding is that the gaffer usually sits in the RH seat in helicopters though looking at shots of Bell 47's in the air.. he or she is generally sitting in the LH seat Default view out for the model is the LH seat too.

As for being tough or tender.. how does short tempered sound

ATB
DaveB

[Paul K]

I'm rather tempted to get that Bell 47. What's it like to fly, Dave ?

[DaveB]

Hi Paul

As I mentioned above (I think) the FD seems to get slightly more weird with each update. I went back to the 2007 airfile the other day but didn't add the 2007 config entries and there seems little change. It's ok I suppose. With the latest files (and the old 2007 airfile for that matter).. when opening the throttle very gently with the model on the deck, it starts to turn to the left. If you're a bit less gentle and get it past that point before it realises what's happening.. the 'left hand swing' is almost not noticeable. It feels heavier with the latest files and this helps keeping where you want it while in the hover. Before.. trying to land on a given spot was akin to keeping a marble stationary in the bottom of a glass bowl while riding a monocycle
Certain paints show the models age more than others. If you fly the 'doors' version.. the doors themselves can look like they've been cut out using edging shears rather than laser cut if you see what I mean. The maps are horrible. For example, the safety guard at the rear of the boom pulls from a small square map called Green.bmp so no additional detail can be added. Also, if you want to repaint it.. that map has to remain as Green.bmp regardless of what colour it is. Likewise.. the skids pull from one area on the map which is stretched to cover both skids so no detail (like anti-skid tape) can be added. It's all very 'old world'. As the maps come with the model.. they're dxt5 bmps and not flipped. I did think they were 32bit-888 to start off with but DXTBmp shows them as dxt5 - extended.
The default model comes with green with skids and doors, green with skids and no doors, yellow with skids and doors, yellow with skids and no doors, green with floats and yellow with floats plus a crop duster and MASH (stretchers on each side) version. Registration for all but the MASH version is G-CHOP (nice) but the font is stretched (vile)

Like the FSHeli.ch Alouette.. the Flysimware 47G is still on sale at it's original price which I think is a bit steep in 2015 for what you get. Unlike the Alouette, Flysimware still revisit the 47G and release updates every now and again which is a good thing. I dearly wish FSHeli.ch would do the same.. new pilots and passengers would be enough as externally, the model is still ok but for the odd texture here and there. They're both very similar models in a good many ways.. not least of all their age!

At the right price.. the 47G is ok but I think $24.99USD is perhaps a bit much.. unless you really want one then who cares Other than what you get with the pack (those awful G-CHOP paints) there are no G repaints for it anywhere on the web as far as I can tell.. hence me doing my own. If foreign paints are to your liking.. Matt (Jeansy) has a few Aussie and NZ paints over at Wombat's Paints.. a couple of which I used to find out where various parts were taken from on the maps

ATB
DaveB

[Paul K]

Great info, thanks Dave. I flew in one when I was a boy in Australia - it was fitted with those big floats that you get in the package. The only payware chopper I've got is the Aerosoft Huey but it's not got many hours on it. As I say, I don't normally bother with them much but I think I'll put this Bell 47 on the list. Hopefully it will come up in a sale.

Thanks again for the info, very useful.