Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Bone Yard

Kent Esbenshade has established a hangar for his fine models at: The Bone Yard. The F-104C, F-86F and F-100D entries at my hangar now redirect you to The Bone Yard.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Offline for a while

I'm going to be offline for a while. I may not be able to respond to email in a timely manner. I'll be traveling a lot. Return time unknown.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Chrome Shader on P-80



Playing around with the chrome shader. This one has some blue added on top and brown added below. It should look better in the new FlightGear release, which won't be adding as much additional blue from the sky. The P-80 really needs the chrome effect.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

F-100D, Early '60's Livery




Kent Esbenshade turned the clock back on the F-100D, giving it a pre-Vietnam livery. The model includes many enhancements, including a very realistic panel. It's available now at the hangar.

Some flying advice for the F-100: Don't horse it off the ground. Climb shallow at first and let the speed build up. At slow speeds, or high AOA, use mostly rudder for turns. Using aileron could lead to a snap roll.

The Hun Shuffle

I've renamed the F-100 the F-100D, to distinguish it from Kent Esbenshade's new F-100 model, which is also a D model, but will be listed here as F-100. Kent's model will be here soon.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Michael Fader's Wings website

Here's a website recommended by Kent: Wings . It's a site with lots of information on military aircraft and squadrons. Scroll down to the Profiles button. In this section you'll find a great collection of profiles, especially for U.S. Navy airplanes!

Hawker Sea Fury

This model has been sitting around for years. A lot of things kept me from releasing it. First, the engine and prop weren't working right, which kept me from releasing any piston powered models for years. Then there was the "drifting in the direction of pitch angle" bug in the JSBSim gear code, which is now fixed, but kept me from releasing tail-draggers for a long time. Some things that still need work: better engine and prop configuration, better sound, and better gear animation. At least it's pretty! That's thanks to the original designers at AlphaSim.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Boeing's OV-10X proposal

Some details of Boeing's proposed new OV-10 are available in this 2-page PDF file: http://www.ov-10bronco.net/Technical/boeing_ov-10(x)_super_bronco_info_card_2009_01.pdf . I hope they go with P&W engines.

Chengdu F-7MG

Released version 1.0 of the Chengdu F-7MG. This airplane is equipped and painted for the August 1st aerial demonstration team. The airplane is not as polished as others in the Hangar, but I'm pressed for time these days. Besides, there are 1.3 billion people in China, and you'd figure one of them could do some work on it.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Kent's F-104C and F-86F

Kent Esbenshade's new F-104C and F-86F models are available at the hangar. You need to check these out!