I Never Heard Of It

[tgycgijoes]

I had never heard of this really unusual aircraft...but that's because probably that I am a city boy and not rural. To me when I was doing some crop-dusting research back when GAS put out the Super Stearman that was a crop-duster, the updated crop-dusting was now being done by helos. Well I learned a lot today. One of the buildings at Perry-Houston County Airport that I started to work on today is AGAirUpdate Magazine which is in what looks like a hanger. Checking them out further I kept running across the S2R Turbo Thrush by Ayers Aviation. It is so unusual that I had to look for it. Well, it turns out that it WAS created back for FS2004 but the nice part is that it was updated to FSX though opening the model in MDCx you get that screen to click settings that at least to me means "port-over" not native. In any case, it obviously will work in FSX and has a simple panel and VC. Here is a photo of it. You can download it at Flyaway Simulation where I first ran across it as well as Flightsim and Simviation. It even has crop spraying effects. From my research and the textures that are included, it looks like a lot of use is by foreign countries though I DID find some US registrations like this one. I will probably do this repaint on the yellow texture that is included.

[tgycgijoes]

While I was doing more searching on Google, I discovered that back in 2018 SOH member l'guane did an updated mdl for FS2004 and some textures for the FS2004 Model of the Ayres Thrush S2R-T34 and 510G. Here is a link to that article.

https://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...om-M-Duplessis

He did a really beautiful texture with that artwork on the tail. I am doing my repaint of N32LF which was registered to an owner in Anchorage, Alaska when this photo was taken. I may also make a glass panel for it from an article in AGAirUpdate magazine, June 2022. I HAVE updated the mdl to FSX native successfully from the mdl port-over in my download which as far as I could tell was allowed in the README. Its NOT for profit and repaints are allowed without contacting him.

[tgycgijoes]

I just finished up the repaint and took some screenshots. The only problem is that it's dual not single cockpit but I'm ok with that. When I converted it to native FSX it lost the VC and I am not savvy enough to know why so I put back the port-over mdl and the vc came back so since I am FSX I am going to use it this way. Here are a couple shots: one on the ground at 60J in North Carolina and one airborne over North Carolina:

[Dangerousdave26]

That is a very interesting looking bird.

[tgycgijoes]

The Thrush has a VC but when I went to fly it in FSX, the left had side was missing all the gauges. I downloaded three different files from the online sources each different panel.cfg's I don't know why. All three are "port-overs" none native models which you can tell when there are no interior mdl's when opened in MDCx. Anyway, I found in one of the panel.cfg that there is a [VCockpit 00] as well as a [Vcockpit 01] 00 is the left side and 01 the right side. Again, interesting that ONLY [VCockpit 01] opens in FS Panel Studio so I opened up the panel.cfg in Notepad++. It is supposed to use the default C208B gauges. It is supplied with the cessna208B.gau which I can't open but my FSX(A) Cessna208B default aircraft has a cab of XML gauges so in Notepad++ I changed the location of all the Cessna208B.gau to Cessna208B_XML and ALL of the gauges on the left side (except ONE) were visible and working including switches EXCEPT for the fuel tank switch which is in the gau BUT still is inoperable. So what! I am going to find another switch and replace it in the panel.cfg This took 4 hours of trial and error but I am pleased that it finally worked and I can fly it. I gave it a "popup" of the GPS530 and also a radio panel I assembled with Bendix gauges so that I can fly it not just for local crop-dusting from a dirt strip somewhere close.