Conspicuous by Their Absence

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Smilo,
As you like wild birds, I´m sure you´ll like a Tigercat!
Having a garden or living near a forest is great for wild birds
and other animals. My brother once had a weasel visiting
- it took care of a mole that had made a mess of the vegetables.
A skunk lived under his house for a while too!

California (my heart bleeds with the news of the current fire disaster
there) is better for wildlife than here, but we have are interesting lizards
in the mountains, including rare, shiny metallic copper ones with a black
stripe down the side.

Though no garden, we have an outside patio, so our ginger cat is as wild
as can be got here in the urban surroundings.

Anyway - we are not totally off topic: The plane´s the Tigercat.
Tigers are wild, Cats sometimes too, also weasels, moles and skunks.
Birds fly, and planes do too!

So, everything here is on-topic, WILD being the operative word.
According to quite a few, the Tigercat was just about the wildest plane
in the Navy and the Marine Corps at the time, so it definitely makes for
an exciting project.

The .air file will obviously be quite a challenge. The 1st production model
Tigercat engines seem to be quite close to the engine on the P47d, so
that one could be souped up just a little to meet the specs.

Propeller size seems very similar too, but with 3 blades instead of the 4.
Ceiling was 36200 ft and Critical Altitude 19200 ft, lower than for the P47d,
so the supercharger will need a some adjusting.

WEP Power on this Tigercat was 2x2400 Hp at 2800 RPM, and at 1000 ft, it
did 400 mph. RoC was 4360 fpm. That sounds pretty darn wild, and will make
it quite fantastic to build, I´d say.

In the next few days I´ll turn the 3-views into some 2D AF99 templates for
the basic shape-layout, and to get a platform for a first draft of the .air file.
...with a new thread, of course!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

[Ivan]

The recent work on the Smilo's Hammer Thunderbolt got me to thinking:
Many of the projects that get stalled in my shop are stuck because of textures.
Sometimes I have a certain paint scheme in mind for a project but it is beyond my abilities to do at the time.
As we learn with each project, what was impossible earlier may become just difficult but possible.

This Albatros D.Va is such a project.
I wanted it to wear the Lozenge scheme that was used by many German aircraft of the Great War.
Attached are my first attempts at actually applying such a pattern to the Top Wing of the Albatros.

Getting the proper pattern printed on quality linen was difficult at first because the colours always came out just a bit different than I had expected. The most recent bolts of fabric seem to have come out reasonably well at least for the top surfaces.
My Technicians are more familiar with working in metal than in sewing and stretching and sewing fabric onto a wooden frame, but this looks like a pretty fair first attempt.
They didn't get the alignment quite right, so there will be another attempt soon.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Aligning the textures wasn't very difficult. I had shifted the wrong side which is why they didn't quite match.
First screenshot shows the corrected upper wing surface. Covering the underside should be pretty trivial at this point.
Second screenshot shows the general shape of this aircraft.
It still carries the headrest even though they were often removed in the field.
Third screenshot shows the current Virtual Cockpit which obviously needs some SCASM adjustments.
The Upper Wing should not show through the Windscreen and the Coolant Pipe to the Radiator mounted in the Upper Wing is obviously not quite connected.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

A expected, texturing the underside of the Top Wing was not difficult.
It is quite difficult to confirm that the alignment is correct through the center section because the Fuselage and Cabane Struts obstruct a direct view.
A view from the cockpit is at such an angle that the joints between each piece of fabric are hard to see (as they should be).

Next step is to map textures for the Bottom Wing and Tail Surfaces and the Ailerons.
The Wings are covered with fabric running in a chord-wise direction but typically the Ailerons were done span-wise.

This texturing method seems to have worked much better than I had expected.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

I actually hate laying out textures.

Most of the horizontal (Top-Bottom) textures are mapped at this point.
Even the little airfoil between the wheels has been mapped.
Redoing the Lozenge camouflage will not be difficult but first there needs to be a Radiator installed and some National Insignia painted on the wing surfaces.

There seems to be a slight bit of weirdness in the Elevator textures though I know everything is the same left to right.

- Ivan.

[aleatorylamp]

Merry Christmas to all!
I hope you have a nice few days.
Aleatorylamp

[Ivan]

A few days ago, I was involved in a forum discussion about the Hawker Hurricane.
I have at least a half dozen of them loaded on my Development Machine and thought I would just take one out for a bit of test flying to get a feel for how the aircraft behaved.

I found that I don't have even one that seems to behave well.
What is the best Hurricane that is currently available?
Is this another that has been missed over the years?

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Here is what I believe to be the best one that I have found.
It is labeled RAF 111 Squadron.
The model isn't that well detailed and has a few bleeds, but it does seem to have the correct shape.
The textures seem to be a little strange with the wings and forward fuselage being completely symmetrical.

The flight model also had a few small bugs that were not too difficult to tune out.
After that, the handling seems to be fairly good though I have not tested it for performance.

There are obviously cleaner models with fewer bleeds and much better detail and textures.
So what is it that makes this the best one in my opinion?
All of the other models seem to have the Center of Gravity located very far aft, about in line with the back of the radiator.
That makes it nearly impossible to tune the aircraft to handle and behave like the real thing.
This model does have the CoG in line with the propeller axis which is a bit too high but that is less of a problem than too far aft.
Another side effect of having the model's center too far aft is that the cockpit viewpoint is ahead of the CoG and pieces of the nose such as the propeller can be seen from the virtual cockpit.
The only other model that I have found that does not have the CoG too far aft is the stock Hurricane Mk.I.

I am not quite sure why, but the RAF 111 model seems to have a pretty clean view from the virtual cockpit which might suggest that this is a SCASM'ed model.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Here is an odd aeroplane that I found while looking for a better Hurricane.
It is supposed to be a Spitfire LF Mk.V.
The interesting thing is that this is a modified stock Spitfire Mk.IX with clipped wings.
The propeller is the 4 blade version from the Mk.IX which is somewhat unusual for a Mk.V and the armament appears to be 2 x 20 mm cannon and 2 x .50 cal MG in the inner gun bays which is more typical of a Spitfire with the E wing.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

Here is a beast that doesn't have a good representative for CFS.
I was reading about the Stirling a couple weeks back and decided to have a try at making the only model I could find into a reasonably flyable aeroplane. It is actually turning out quite a bit more difficult than I had first expected.

The model is of a Stirling Mk.IV which was one of the Transport and Glider Tug versions that was built after the Stirling was no longer a first line bomber. It originally carried D-Day Invasion Stripes which I removed.
I was thinking of editing the model to correct the nose position back to a two gun turret and to add in a "Mid-Upper Turret", but my SCASM tools can't read this model.

The interesting thing about this aeroplane is that with a full fuel load and no bomb load, it is very difficult to take-off and requires a bit more runway than the typical Island Airstrip I use for everything else. This is probably because in that state, it is pretty close to its Maximum Take-Off Weight of 70,000 pounds.

This sounds kind of backwards, but if I can get a decent flight model, perhaps I will build a visual model to go with it.
This Stirling got a look mainly because I needed a good four engine bomber for testing new Gauges that are being developed.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

I spent a bit more time over the last couple days (between other projects) editing the flight model of the Stirling.
Very early on, I found that substituting the Propeller Power Coefficient Table (Record 512) from the Spitfire Mk.I made a great improvement in general flight performance. The last Table was from the Hurricane Mk.I and while it let the engine achieve full RPM very fast unlike the original one which was probably from the P-51D, its power coefficient numbers were probably a bit too low.

The attached screenshot shows that with proper technique, it is possible to Take-Off even from the little Island Airstrip with full fuel AND a reasonable bomb load.

In this picture, the Zero Fuel Weight of the Stirling is 49,900 pounds so....

49,900 pounds - Aircraft
962.5 pounds - MG Ammunition - 14,000 rounds of .303
16,224 pounds - 2704 US Gallons in fixed Fuel Tanks
4000 pounds - 8 x 8000 ounce (500 pound) Bombs
---------------
71,086.5 pounds Take-Off Weight.

Two notches of Flaps,
Engines need to be held against the Brakes until they reach their maximum RPM (about 2350 RPM with no forward speed).
Acceleration once airborne is VERY slow and there is pretty much no margin for errors.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

After a bit more tweaking, I was finally able to land the Stirling successfully.
Conditions were: Full MG ammunition, no Bomb Load, 30% Fuel.
Surprisingly, there isn't a great tendency to nose over braking is very effective.
That combination has me a little concerned that some of the Landing Gear parameters may not be correct.

One other problem that needs to be corrected is the Cockpit Viewpoint.
While it is correct technically, its interaction with the MDL file is such that there is no view to the sides or rear and that makes orientation very difficult. If I build a replacement visual model, this situation should change.

There also seems to be a slight problem with No. 4 Engine.
In a flight that starts airborne, it is the only one that does not start automatically.

So far, there has been no checks for straight line performance at all.
My plan is to do that after doing some edits to the propeller tables.
Propeller Tables for Bombers tend to be MUCH easier to deal with than those for fighters.

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

The Short Stirling definitely fits into the "Conspicuous by Their Absence" category.
I don't believe I have ever seen one for CFS other than the one I have been experimenting on.
Building the AIR file has definitely taught me a few new things about how things work and how things fit together.

I thought it was an unusual enough package that I uploaded it so that others can also try it out.
Stay Healthy, People!

- Ivan.

[Ivan]

This is an odd beast I came across a few weeks back.

The general appearance is quite attractive but there seem to be quite a few issues with the aircraft as a whole.
The DP appears to be fairly good, but flight performance is very strange.
I have seen this model used elsewhere but the author's notes on editing and reusing pieces of his project are very restrictive.

- Ivan.