Consolidated PBY-2 and -3 Catalina

[Shessi]

Hi Folks,
Finally finished and freshly uploaded. A Consolidated PBY-2 and -3, with a couple of great skins by Mick.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...=19665&catid=6

Cheers

Shessi

[Mick]

Five skin packs will follow shortly.

When I painted the -5 last year, I painted all the section leaders from both squadrons that flew the -5 before the adoption of camouflage. Despite my compulsive tendencies it was impractical to do that with the early, round-tailed Cats as they were flown by more than twenty squadrons. I tried to mix up the squadron and section colors and to minimize (though not completely eliminate) duplication in tail markings, and still came up with nineteen skins.

By the end of the pre-camouflage identification system there were six different patterns for tail colors specified to identify squadrons: solid color, 1 horizontal band, 2 horizontal bands, one vertical stripe, 2 vertical stripes, and checkers. Each pattern was to be applied in each of the Navy's six identification colors: Insignia red, Insignia White, True Blue, Black, Willow Green and Lemon Yellow. there was also a seventh color, Aluminum, that was only used as a solid color. Finally, towards the end of the period the squadrons in the Philippines replaced their identification colors with red-white-blue rudder stripes to put themselves in full compliance with the Hague Convention, which still listed the rudder stripes as part of the American national aircraft insignia.

The same six colors, in the order listed above, were used to identify sections within the squadrons. Most of the older patrol squadrons had four sections (red, white, blue and black.) Many newly formed squadrons only had two sections (red and white.) A few had five sections (adding a green section.) No patrol squadron had enough planes for a sixth or yellow section.

Every one of the possible tail color/pattern combinations was assigned to a patrol squadron, but not all of those squadrons were operational on the PBY before the adoption of camouflage ended the system. Some old squadrons were still flying older equipment like the P2Y, and some new squadrons hadn't received their PBYs yet, or hadn't even been established yet, when the old system was discontinued.

I painted one plane from each patrol squadron that I could find reference material for (two for VP-101 in the PI because I especially like the way two of the section colors look with the red-white-blue rudder stripes.) I could have produced more skins if I'd painted planes from utility and training squadrons that flew the round-tailed Cats, but that would've duplicated tail colors in use by patrol squadrons, and with nineteen skins already, I felt no compulsion to paint more - especially ones that wouldn't look much different from some that I'd already done.

Anyway, the skin packs are on their way up the pipe and should appear shortly after the model does on the download list.

Enjoy!

[HorusJ]

Thank you Shessi,Mick,(and Alphasim)! Excellent work!

[p3aewguy]

Mick,

The solid tail pack appears to be missing 2 skins for VJ-4. They are in the aircraft edit readme (4-J-7 and 4-J-10) but there are no texture folders to support these two variants. An oversight perhaps, or were they not done after all?

Thanks for all the great skins in these 5 packs and a big thanks to Shessi for the rework and repairs to the old Alphasim bird!

Dave

[Milton Shupe]

One of my all time favorite aircraft; off to get her now. Thanks a bunch guys

[Drzook]

Looks really good Shessi and Mick. Downloading as I type. Thank you very much!

[Mick]

Mick,

The solid tail pack appears to be missing 2 skins for VJ-4. They are in the aircraft edit readme (4-J-7 and 4-J-10) but there are no texture folders to support these two variants. An oversight perhaps, or were they not done after all?

Thanks for all the great skins in these 5 packs and a big thanks to Shessi for the rework and repairs to the old Alphasim bird!

Dave

Oops! Sorry for the error, which is in the UI sections. I did that list early on and failed to edit it. I originally planned to paint those, but I decided not to include them as the number of skins grew like Topsy and I didn't need two more planes with solid red rudders, which was VJ-4's marking.

[p3aewguy]

Oops! Sorry for the error, which is in the UI sections. I did that list early on and failed to edit it. I originally planned to paint those, but I decided not to include them as the number of skins grew like Topsy and I didn't need two more planes with solid red rudders, which was VJ-4's marking.

No problems Mick! You did an outstanding job on these early Cats! Did any of the round tail Cats survive to wear camouflage in the early war periods?

Dave

[Mick]

Thank you Shessi,Mick,(and Alphasim)! Excellent work!

You're very welcome. Glad to see the screenie! I'd wondered if anyone would be interested in the VP-8 plane with it's plain silver tail. I almost decided not to do that one as the number of skins grew. Now I'm glad I finished it.

[Mick]

No problems Mick! You did an outstanding job on these early Cats! Did any of the round tail Cats survive to wear camouflage in the early war periods?

Dave

I don't know but I think not. I have several books on the PBY, several historical magazine features on the plane, numerous other books that include the plane, and an extensive reference library of material about interwar US naval aviation, and I have never seen a photo of a round-tailed Cat in camouflage.

That seems pretty strange at first thought, since the early versions were still in first line service when camouflage was introduced. But since there was no actual combat taking place (except for whatever unpublicized and unrecorded actions the Neutrality Patrol might have engaged in), and considering the effort and expense required to paint a plane as big as a PBY, it seems possible that older squadron aircraft, obsolescent variants slated for replacement, might not have been painted.

By the advent of camo, the -5 was in series production and in squadron service, and older versions were being transferred to the training establishment, where they apparently wore their pre-war livery for the rest of their service lives. So the VP squadrons wouldn't have had un-camouflaged early versions on hand for very long.

Still, just because I haven't seen a picture doesn't mean it didn't happen. (But you'd think there'd be a picture somewhere...)

[Milton Shupe]

This version and paint schemes look great!

I am having sound problems. Startup and shutdown work fine but once engines are running, the sounds never change with prop rpms, pitch, manifold pressure, or speed. Just one constant barrage of engine sounds. I have tried different sound quality levels but no change. Anyone else having this issue. Looking at the sound.cfg and .wav's, this looks like a very thorough sound setup; just is not working for me.

[Mick]

This version and paint schemes look great!

I am having sound problems. Startup and shutdown work fine but once engines are running, the sounds never change with prop rpms, pitch, manifold pressure, or speed. Just one constant barrage of engine sounds. I have tried different sound quality levels but no change. Anyone else having this issue. Looking at the sound.cfg and .wav's, this looks like a very thorough sound setup; just is not working for me.

Thanks Milton!

I'll have to leave the question for Shessi, since I know nothing about sounds. I can't even tell you if they work for me, since I haven't installed that sound set; I've had a set of SA-16 Albatross sounds installed temporarily during the painting process. Maybe I should just stick with that.

[Navtech]

Thank you ..great !
Just performed some flights
I noticed a anomaly (IMHO) with the tail light
The light is inside the tail

After correction

New lights parameters
[lights]

//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit, 5=landing

light.0 = 3, 2.86, -50.00, 8.60, fx_navred
light.1 = 3, 2.86, 50.00, 8.60, fx_navgre
light.2 = 3, -45.10, 0, 14.16, fx_navwhi
light.3 = 4, 12.00, 0.00, 3.31, fx_vclight

Note
I can't avoid to have a light reflection on the portside of the rudder (no reflection on starboardside)

Engines sounds
Same problems (no regime variation .. sound steady) so I use another set

[Milton Shupe]

Thanks Mick. Not a problem for now. Nigel Richards created a nice P&W R-1830 sound set for the Consolidated PB4Y that I can use temporarily if Shessi has no fix off the top. They just lack the water sounds.

[Shessi]

Hi Folks,
Glad you like it. I have flayed both myself and the 'testers' for missing a couple of glitches!

Two simple fixes, the sound config and aircraft.cfg attached, both one line tweaks.....

Cheers

Shessi

ps Milton, I wonder if anyone would hear any water sounds with two dirty great Twin Wasps with props thrashing around above their head, and wearing headphones...or is it just the flightsim immersion factor...

[Blackbird686]

Vey Nicely done! You chaps picked a difficult plane to modify and paint, but the end result is superb... This is a nice complement to the Alpha PBY-5 and 5A I already have installed. Saw the tail light right off, it's location is for the original PBY-5A. Thanks for the fix!

BB686

[Scale Dail]

I am so excited I can't beleve it! Incredible! Thank you Shessi and Mick!!!

[TARPSBird]

Did any of the round tail Cats survive to wear camouflage in the early war periods?
Dave

I was wondering about that myself. Late last night I came across this photo of the seaplane parking apron at NAS Ford Island shortly after the Japanese attack. This is about all there is online showing older Cats after hostilities kicked off. Notice the USS Nevada in the background, being recovered from where she ran aground at Hospital Point. There are four PBY-4's (or earlier) visible, the one by itself on the right side of the pic is clearly in the same blue-gray paint as the PBY-5's, and the three on the left also appear to be blue-gray. So I would say yes, some of the older Cats discarded their flashy pre-war paint for wartime camo but I doubt any of them deployed westward in combat units. Mick mentioned the training command. There's another portion of wartime Nav Air that doesn't have much online for photo coverage. Mostly N3N and N2S trainers and a couple former warbirds in flight. There's a pic of the ramp at NAS Miami that shows a whole assortment of former fleet aircraft but it's not very good.

[Shessi]

I am so excited I can't beleve it! Incredible! Thank you Shessi and Mick!!!

Please sit down before you explode......ha ha! Really glad you like it, as I say wouldn't be here without Alphasim.


Mick's done a great job bringing the late '30's US naval aviation feel to the beastie with his texs.

Cheers

Shessi

[expat]

Superb work guys on this. Looks and flies great also in FSX. Really do share the interest and enjoyment of the pre-war navair paint schemes. Question: where exactly were the non-amphib/flying boats based at Pensacola? Was there a ramp and is there any FS scenery for this?

[Mick]

... There are four PBY-4's (or earlier) visible, the one by itself on the right side of the pic is clearly in the same blue-gray paint as the PBY-5's, and the three on the left also appear to be blue-gray. So I would say yes, some of the older Cats discarded their flashy pre-war paint for wartime camo but I doubt any of them deployed westward in combat units. Mick mentioned the training command ...

Great pic! Mystery solved! Thanks for posting that!

I'm tempted to go and paint one like that, but I'm not very good at soft-edged camo schemes, and that early blue-gray gives me fits. But I have a -5 in that scheme that someone else painted, and it should work on the older versions with no more changes than renaming the external texture files.

The training command was interesting, and frustrating from a modeler's point of view because there are interesting B&W photos where the colors can't be determined. We can usually determine the section colors by context and aircraft number, but we often don't know what the tail colors were, and we have no known system that can give us a clue.

I have a number of books and articles with photos of service types in use as advanced trainers, some in color, and the tale they tell is interesting, if sometimes somewhat cryptic. The general rule - which had many exceptions - seems to be that the training establishment usually left their hand-me-down planes in the colors they were received in, but changed the markings to suit their own purposes. Planes delivered new to training units sometimes seem to have been painted in the then-current fleet scheme, but sometimes appear to have been delivered in the old silver & yellow colors when planes delivered to the fleet were camouflaged. (SNJs and OS2Us seem to be examples of this.)

One system that appears to have been used on Boeing F4B fighters and TBD Devastators was to have the pre-war livery of silver paint with yellow upper wing surfaces, and pre-war style section markings and colored tails. The old three-part identification group was replaced by a simple aircraft number. Numbers 1 through 18 wore the standard tactical section markings in the usual order: red, white, blue, black,green,yellow, with the section leader having the section color on the fuselage band, wing chevron and full cowl colors and the two wing men having the color on the chevrons and half of the cowling, with no leader band. The sequence was repeated for aircraft numbers 19 through 36, then again from 37 through 54, so so on. The tail color apparently always matched the section color. I have a color photo of a huge formation of F4Bs that illustrates that pattern.

I have a photo or two of Grumman F3F trainers that also seem to follow that pattern, though not a big formation like the F4B shot.

I have a black & white photo of a TBD that also appears to follow that same system, though the photo being B&W makes certainty about the colors impossible. But it sure looks like the colors could match the number of that system was indeed being followed; the section color is dark and the aircraft number would call for it to be red or black (don't remember which.) What's interesting about the TBD is that the entire TBD fleet was camouflaged while the type was still in first line service with the fleet. You may recall that in the movie Dive Bomber, all the TBDs were gray while all the other planes - almost every type the Navy had in 1941 - were still in silver with yellow upper wing top surfaces. So the training command must have repainted the TBDs back to the old colors. That seems strange, but the photo, even in B&W, is clearly of a silver and yellow plane, not all gray.

I have a color shot of a ramp full of SNJs at Jacksonville. They all had their cowlings, tails and fuselage bands in the six section colors. All had fuselage bands and fully colored cowls, none had fuselage bands, and all their tails were the same color as their cowls and fuselage bands. Aircraft numbers appear to follow the old sequence of 1, 2 & 3 red, 4, 5 & 6 white, etc., but most of the numbers aren't clear enough to determine if they all follow the pattern. It looks like they do, though. So here, the use of colors follows the old pattern but the section markings, such as they are, are only an approximation of the old system.

One of my references has a B&W photo of an early PBY trainer. It wears the old livery with standard section markings and a colored tail, with the identification group replaced by s simple aircraft number. In this case, the rudder color and the section markings are not the same color. I can't figure out what colors they are (or I might have painted the plane) but they are clearly not the same.

Finally, I have several color photos of OS2U Kingfisher trainers with the old silver and yellow livery, but mid-war style national insignia. If memory serves, they have no section markings. Scattered among them are a few that have camouflaged fuselages with silver and yellow wings, possibly mashed up from the remains of crashed aircraft - though there don't seem to be any with camouflaged wings on silver fuselages.

[Mick]

OK, I tried it and and it doesn't work very well at all. I took someone else's paint of a -5 in early 1942 colors and markings and changed the file names to make it work on the early versions, and the result was rather unsatisfactory.

Mapping changes on the cowling and nacelles resulted in the gray undersides appearing in bits on the top and sides. That could be fixed but it would take a lot of patient trial and error.

Worse, the repaint retained those cursed painted-on shadows that the original AlphaSims skins have, and the shadow of the waist blister looks really strange in the absence of the blister. Removing the shadows would be possible, but after doing it on the silver textures, I know what a big, tedious job that would be.

If anyone wants a round-tailed Cat in camouflage, it would be easier for someone who's good at camo schemes to start from scratch. If anyone wants to do that, feel free to use my textures as a base. Obviously the silver base color won't be of any use, but it's a set of textures with Shessi's nice, clean, simple panel lines and without those painted-on shadows. And the file names have been changed to match the new mapping.

[gaucho_59]

Do you know what key opens the sliding hatches?
Thanks in advance...

G.

[TARPSBird]

Shift+E, or whatever you use to open a canopy.

[gaucho_59]

Shift+E, or whatever you use to open a canopy.

Thanks a lot!!
G.