Ode to Ugly Gals...and Planes.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

I love ugly planes apparently, because like an ugly girl friend they treat you First Class while they are with you, and when they leave you on the ramp alone, meh...who cares?

 

Joining my DO228 in the hangar...a new contender for Purty Great Plane: Virtual Col's Shorts Skyvan. The package includes the stubby skyvan in a couple configs (skydiver, cargo, and pax) and the Shorts330-100 and a Shorts360. All the models have EXTENSIVE liveries, up to 25 for one model...so I spent a half hour going through all the liveries and trashing most of them reducing my final disk size from 1.5 gigs down to more like 500 megs Also note that this plane has VERY WEAK VC treatment albiet a huge cut above the Freeware shorts van I had used previously. VirtualCol is not known to be a High End dev by any means, but they are the ONLY payware Shorts skyvan I could find. If A2A or JustFlight would consider making one I'd be all over it...although Probably the only customer for it.

 

(As an aside: Man...I HATE planes that come with gazillion liveries...Could y'all put those into a free Extension Pack please Devs, or create a way to only install those liveries we want without requiring a another third party livery manager? Chrisp on a cracker!...who really wants to scroll through 50 liveries for One Plane? The Kodiak is a major offender in that regard too. [yeah, I uninstalled Sim Starter ages ago...what a PITA...deleting liveries and modifying .cfgs is much simpler, and reduces disk clutter IMO] )

 

 

 

I decided to concentrate on the Pacific Islands this holiday sale season...checking out some old and new islands in the new Cargo Box Kite :

 

Starting out in American Samoa in the 330-100 model...Bahamas Livery...a bit far from home . It sure does dwarf the islander:

 

 

Checking out new to me Fuaamotu International by Pacific Island Sims (my third scenery by them):

 

 

And switched into the 360 model for a look at a new to me Nauru International (my Fourth PacIslandSim scenery):

 

Cheers from the Islands!

Thanks for looking.

Coff.

 

Edited December 21, 2016 by Captain Coffee

[dolf8857 640]

She's not THAT ugly Matt, super nice shots these!

[mutley 4,498]

Ugly but faithful!

 

Great shots Coff 

[ShrewsburyFC 215]

Nice shots Matt! Love the scenery!

 

Sam.

[rosariomanzo 545]

Top notch shots!

[wain 879]

nice one Matt, great shots, yeah a little quirky in the looks dept....I think a simple tikbox on installation would work well for liveries...

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

The SD330 and 360 are both very versatile aircraft. So much so that the USAF used the SD330 in service as the C23 Sherpa. In The UK the 330 was used by many courier companies as a mail carrier serving the smaller regional airports.  The 360 was used mainly for passenger work originally though now many of those are also used on freight work. The SD330/360 series was nicknamed affectionately "The Shed" by almost everyone associated with it. Not because it was ugly( personally I don't think it is, ) but because it was so useful. You could throw all sorts of crap into it and it would haul it. The basic design of the Skyvan and her larger sisters proved to be very successful aircraft in spite of their somewhat unusual appearance. 

Of the 153 Skyvans built approx 40 are still in use.

SD330 136 built, approx 35 still in use 

SD360 165 built 110 still in use as of late 90s but some figures suggest less than 20 remaining airworthy now. 

C23B was also a version of the SD360 but fitted with the tail section of the SD330 so as to incorporate the tail ramp. some of these have now found their way into civilian use.

[brett 2,316]

Great shots there Matt, looks right at home delivering cargo in the islands.

 

I'm with you on those aircraft that come with a crazy amount of liveries, better to allow them to be downloaded separately from their site or other fashion. Time to get busy with the hash marks.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

20 minutes ago, brett said:

Great shots there Matt, looks right at home delivering cargo in the islands.

 

I'm with you on those aircraft that come with a crazy amount of liveries, better to allow them to be downloaded separately from their site or other fashion. Time to get busy with the hash marks.

 

Hash marks...pffft. Get serious about it like I just did and recover a ton of room on your disks

 

I took the time to go through every payware and freeware in my hangar, and edit out every texture I don't intend to ever use, then deleted all those texture folders. I recovered about 7 gigs of room on my SSD.

 

The Kodiak was the worst of them...I deleted about 75+ textures from that beast. Really...did the dev's really think that we'd appreciate 2 gigs worth of every model variation (cargo, cargo w/pod, Pax, Pax w/pod, Ambulance, Ambulance with pod) in Red, Orange, Yellow, Lime, Blue, Metallic Green, Black and Turquoise, and Bare Metal texture? And that's not counting the separate folder for the Float version...lather rinse repeat. I got rid of Everything except 4 liveries (Metallic Green, Black and Turquoise, Bare metal, and and Striped Blue) of the Pax with Pod, Cargo w/pod, Amphib Pax,and Amphib Cargo.

 

@dodgy-alan  Thanks for the Shorts history lesson regarding the model. I'm surprised there were that few hulls made actually. It seems to be a brilliant mid size cargo hauler and I'd imagine companies couldn't care less about looks over operational costs/profits, wonder why so few were made. The FSX model doesn't appear to be too bad on gas consumption based on the few short hops I've done so far? Were they maintenance heavy birds?

Edited December 22, 2016 by Captain Coffee

[brett 2,316]

I never messed with the default aircraft but as long as you are careful with the other edits it's a good way to save space. Otherwise one tiny mistake will set the aircraft listing all out of whack.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

I'm not sure what the maintenance requirements were on the aircraft . However I daresay the information is out there somewhere. I used to see them regularly at Stansted when I drove the crew coaches.  They were used on the mail runs and were turned round in 15 minutes flat! Always busy little aircraft.

 

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

18 minutes ago, brett said:

I never messed with the default aircraft but as long as you are careful with the other edits it's a good way to save space. Otherwise one tiny mistake will set the aircraft listing all out of whack.

 

Yeah...I don't touch the default stuff. It gets used as Ai planes by the sim...don't wish to PO the simulator.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

There is a facebook page dedicated to the type. well worth looking at. https://www.facebook.com/groups/888447407848279/

[wain 879]

I agree regarding the Kodiak, great plane but so many liveries, I only ever import 1 into AH, orange with pod....