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Still Spilling Paint

Willy

Willy

Administrator
Staff member
It's rainy today, can't get out to do much and I've been scratching a Howard 500 itch lately. I've been working on replacing the default Learjet AI traffic with Howard 500s and decided I needed more paint schemes to go with the dozen or so I already have been using. You can't have too many H500s sitting/flying around in the background.

I'm not sure which or who's model I'm using other than it's FSX native and uses the original texture mapping. I kind of got 'em all mixed up. I did the basic fuselage paint for this some years ago in FS9 and forgot about it. It's still a work in progress and I'm pretty sure that the bare metal on the front of the engine cowling is gonna go and some of the details will get moved around some. Otherwise, it's pretty much there, just needing a wee bit of tweaking...
 

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Getting there. Darn cowling bezels are apparently a lot more reflective than I thought they were. The textures are red until I look at them in the sim. Looks like I'm going to need really lighten up on the alpha there. Other wise I think I'm darned close on it.
 

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That's one of my favorite Milton aircraft! There's about 34 repaints for the Howard 500. The cowl and flap (mirrored) area are no fun to paint. The exhaust ports were not align up right with the wing-root making the strips hard to do correctly. Would be cool if this model got updated to FSX/P3D with the 2013 revised model. The tail mapping and proper sized crew were done on that one.

This one I couldn't finished due to issues with the mapping.
 
N500HP, before it was N500HP!

Someone did that paint for it early on in FS9 and I was going to take a shot at it myself as the old one was kind of rough in spots. I've been using the old FS9 paints for AI purposes (the H500 works quite well as AI as do everything else of Milton's I've tried) and that's one I've got flying about.

I've been detaiing the original paint kit into one that's more to my liking. Just mucking about, I did a fictional take on TWA's only Lodestar updated to '50s white top paint scheme on the Howard a week or so ago. I never did sort out the mapping of the inside areas of the vertical fins and just left them in white with no stripes as I couldn't get the one texture to line up right on both sides of it.

I've had more problems with bottom of the flaps as bare metal than anything else. Painted, those seem okay. The bezel texture for the front of cowl as I mentioned before is not wanting play nice, but I'm confidant, I'll get it figured out sooner or later.
 
Yep, now N500HP. Most difficult to paint that area under the wings on the nacelles. Had red bleeding thru the top nacelles on that N4362F. Maybe it's the model version I was using. It's an old model done a lone time ago.



The real aircraft, notice the exhaust stacks are below the wing-root.

https://www.airhistory.net/photo/18543
 
I've figured out my bezel texture problem is in the FSX native model. If I use a FS9 model the red shows. The FSX native shows bare metal from I assume the shared textures folder which is where I stash the bare metal exterior textures.

The FS9 model though throws my alphas all out of whack so I'd have to start from scratch if I went to that model.

Got some thinkin' to do on it, but I'm probably got a lot of redoing alpha layers ahead of me.
 
Seeing your work it will all come out exceptionally well! This is what I was talking about the red on the upper nacelles peeking thru. Pretty much killed the paint job sad to say.
 
Thanks! That's the one I'm mucking about with now, cooking up a paint kit for it.
 
Going thru my photo albums and found this and was learning how to using Paint.NET doing this aircraft 5 years ago. Man time flies! This was 2048 res and didn't know anything about paint kits then. Difficult to find any good rear fuse/tail section for the pattern so I think the that area is not correct. Anyways at the time I tried.

Some test pics back then with pillow effects...

45375296131_c844d19879_h.jpg


31499852588_4bd4d63ecc_h.jpg
 
I had to do a htail layered template which is probably going to cause mission creep to make it all match up. Shame as I finally got the metal on the FS9 textures where I liked it. But it gives me a chance to try out a few new ideas.

I had the htail all riveted up yesterday afternoon and when I got back to it last night, they were gone. There went a couple of days work.
 
Yep, remember doing that. Working in PS and closed it, but forget to save it. Thought I did. On those 4k projects I had out of memory issues at times and couldn't save it. It was hitting 8 GB of ram out about 96% and stopped. Bumped up to 16 GB of ram solved it. It was using 12 GB of ram to save a project.
 
Good stuff shipmates. One of the most fun planes to come from the Milton Industries factory! :very_drunk:
 
I agree Paul. It's always been a hoot to fly.

There's the TWA paint I did a couple of weeks ago for the FSX Native model.
 

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Decided I could do better on the side stripes on the black 'n red one. This is with the Alan Richards FSX model. I'm still sorting out the alphas on the 2013 version.
 

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Willy said:
I agree Paul. It's always been a hoot to fly.

There's the TWA paint I did a couple of weeks ago for the FSX Native model.
Click to expand...

Willy?? May I have a copy of that TWA Livery?? I fly withTWVA and this would be awesome :)..
Pam
 
Pam, check your PMs. It's a nearly completed work in progress, but I'm really not sure that there will be any more changes to it. Just giving it some time to stew a bit more before it's released.

Willy
 
Love that TWA paint, Willy - spectacular! Looking forward to that one!

Any other repaint plans for the lovely 500?

dl
 
delta_lima said:
Love that TWA paint, Willy - spectacular! Looking forward to that one!

Any other repaint plans for the lovely 500?

dl
Click to expand...

Yes, I've a few, but I need to get my "paint kit" where I want it before I can go into production. I've been redoing the bare metal to where I like it. Once that's done, I hope to be flinging and slinging paint.

There's a Howard 250 paint (N177L) scheme that's intriguing and I think will fit a 500 quite nicely . And a few of the Lodestar paints I did would look good on a Howard as well. And I'm thinking there's probably a Navy Admiral out there that is allergic to kerosene and needs a new personal transport.

I'm also wanting to do some actual H500 paint schemes and have been gathering data and pics that I can find on them. I'm thinking that N130P will probably be the first of those. And N500LN's new scheme is also intriguing. TuFun did N500HP and N137U quite nicely so I've no intent on doing those. Some of the paints that were done for the FS9 original haven't faired well over the years. Those paint schemes I don't mind doing my own take on.


And I'm working on an AI project to replace the default Learjets with Howards. There's a lot of good paints that were done after Milton originally released the Howard that still work in FSX.

Edited to add: In addition to the surviving airframe of N130P which is in Chandler AZ, N5831Y got caught up in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans while at Lakefront Airport there. As far as I know, the airframe still survives and rumored to belong to TP Aero which owns N500HP, N500LN and N137U. A few minutes ago while looking at H500 pics for some detail work I ran across a pic of N5831Y in flight which along with another pic I have of it in the same paint scheme should give me enough to take a stab at it. So that gives me 3 actual 500 paints and a H250 scheme for the short list. Should keep me busy and out of trouble for a while.
 
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