P-51B's

[jankees 917]

some details:

and hey, why not one without the stripes too?

[jankees 917]

It's been a while since I played around with this one, but after a request for some checkertails, I couldn't resist, really..

[jankees 917]

this was done after a request for 'Kitten", the aircraft of what is still the USAF record holder in number of combat missions: Capt Charles McGee (408 missions in three wars..)

[UKJim 502]

Liking the Kitten

[jankees 917]

work in progress:

[jankees 917]

[mutley 4,498]

Ah sweet Clara! 

[jankees 917]

Needles wanted to see how I work in the B-17 thread, so I thought I'd show something simple:

 

First, I came across this image:

 

and I thought, hey, I saw that in one of my books too:

 

and when I have an example like this, repainting becomes easy, especially when you know the model. I have done a ton of P-51B's, so I know my way around the paintkit, so this will be an easy paint. This is good, because my travel scheme is a bit hectic lately, I live in Brussels, went to NL on sunday, flew to Milan on monday, spent three days around Lake Como, flew back to NL, spent one day in Delft, then back to Brussels on thursday evening, tomorrow a meeting in the aircraft hall in the army museum in Brussels, then back to Delft and on sunday I leave with 50 students for an excursion in the Eifel and the Ardennes. Back on thursday, for a few days of rest...and don't get me started on the situation at home, so a simple paint is nice.

So what I do? First I copy the above image in photoshop and redraw the noseart and the number:

 

so that I end up with this:

 

these are vector drawings, so I can scale them to any size I want, and can thus import them into the paintkit and blow them up to their proper size:

 

 

I add the red stripe (the roundel and dirt were already done for an earlier paint) and this texture is ready to be saved as bitmap:

 

 

I copy the layer with my paint to above the alpha layer, give it a white overlay and save this as the alpha bmp

 

 

and I continue with the other textures. Tail is easy, just some red:

 

 

and the same trick with the alpha of course, and the wings are easy too, just a yellow stripe on each wing:

 

 

Finally, I combine all the textures with the alpha layers using dxtbmp (don't forget to flip them vertically) and save them as dds:

 

 

In the FSX directory, I make a new texture folder for stinky, add the needed bit in the aircraft.cfg file, and I start FSX for a first test flight:

Taxiing (note the black pilot I made for an earlier paint):

 

and in the air:

 

 

Not too bad, is it? Total time, somewhat under two hours. This was of course a really easy paint, I knew the paintkit, and all of the weathering was done already, others take (much) longer.

But I hope it gives you an idea of how I do it.

And I still need to change one thing, any idea what?

 

[mutley 4,498]

A fascinating insight JK.

It still needs some red under the tail plane, still loving your P51 paints 

[jankees 917]

Yes, I thought so at first too, but no. Look at the first pic, I 'm sure this only the shade of the tailplane that cause the dark patch

[mutley 4,498]

Yup, the illustration was wrong according to the photo, also yours has yellow stripes on the wings not red.

[jankees 917]

Which is correct for the MTO, yellow, so there too the illustration is wrong