Alpha T-50 Bobcat....No Engines?

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I was flying the Alphasim Cessna T-50 Bobcat around and was checking out a new skin I am working on for the plane....and I noticed that the plane appeared not to have engines. I zoomed in close...the engines were there, but they were so darkly painted that they could not be seen against the black fire wall behind them. So, I did some tweaking to the engine textures (took a bit of hunting to find them). Now the engines can be seen and admired.

A side benefit: The engine control levers in the VC were rather dull and boring (as is most of the interior). I repainted the knobs to give them some color and pazzazz. They now look like vintage billiards balls sort of...the throttle lever knob is green, mixture is red and prop pitch is yellow (I think...throttle is green for sure). They still have the letters on them...but instead of being dull cream on black, they are now crisp white on green, red and yellow.

I am attaching the file needed to give your T-50 engines and control knobs some punch.

OBIO
 
Thanks Obio,

they look great, as does that red and yellow scheme :d

Jamie

PS. did you notice the reply re. the reflection tute, if not, sure, go for it, lost mine with my last HD crash. Unfortunately 500GB of fatality.
 
Jamie

I am looking of my copy of the tute....I moved things around a lot lately and there are several things I have not relocated. I know I have it saved to a few places....just got to find those places.

The red and yellow scheme is a patchwork of parts....I am working on the repaint template...the fuselage template is done in red. One wing is done in yellow. The other wing is stock skin stuff....need to finish that template. Then tackle the interior stuff. Once I have the template done I will be doing a paint based on a T-50 I saw on YouTube. Not sure if it was black or something like Black Cherry...it was dark as black but had a redish hue to it....then it had deep red trim. Beautiful. The plane was built toward the end of WW2 and did not see much use as a military bird. After the war, it was purchased by a civilian who owned it for YEARS. Then the current owners bought it and had it fully restored. It has the complete original WW2 panel and gauges (all still functional). Total flight time on the bird is around 450 hours....and that is from the day it rolled off the assembly line to the day the video was shot.

MAAM (Mid-Altlantic Air Museum) is restoring a Bobcat. Very interesting to see the pics of the bird. The panel will be what I base the new panel and config arrangement on. Will be adding LOTS more gauges...if I can do so and maintain decent clarity to the VC gauges.

OBIO
 
Looks like a nice shiny radial obio, just what I like to see!

on lever colours i'm not sure as to older standards but my familiy's (real) aeroplane has Black Throttle, Blue Propellor and Red Mixture controls.
 
another great project.
I retired the alpha bobcat for some reason --this may be a good time to bring her back out while we wait for the Super Electra.

thanks as always, OBIO!

brady
 
It's amazing what a little time spent in Photoshop can do for a plane. The new engine detail really adds to the visual impact of the Bobcat. Some work on the interior and the gloominess is gone from inside this neat little plane. Currently I have it in an OD green sort of color, but the interior can be quickly and easily recolored for civilian uses. A bit more work to do on the interior detail job...recover the seats with something other than that purpley brown looking stuff...maybe some nice Corithian Leather (de plane boss, de plane).

The panel is in the shop now and getting a major face life. New pop ups added for engine controls (with full compliment of engine gauges), enlarged GPS pop up and the oh so nice CD Player. The 2D and VC panels will be receiving many more gauges and the painted on gauges will be history. If it don't work...it ain't going to be on the new panel.

Oh, and there is a dedicated sound package being worked on as well. Twin Jacobs R-755 radials....sounds good so far, still have some tweaking to do.

Here's an interesting site I have been spending some time on checking out info on the Bobcat.

http://www.cessnat50.org/index.html

OBIO
 
Having looked through more of the pics of the restoration of the one Bobcat, it is now clear that my wings are way off. I have them shaded to accentuate the ribbing and the "sagging" of the cloth between the ribs....WRONG! Looking at the wings on the Bobcat after restoration, the wings are pretty much smooth with just slightly raised areas over the ribs. That is the good thing about working with layers....I can delete the shading with just a couple clicks of the mouse.

OBIO
 
Looks like I will be doing two distinct panel arrangements for the Bobcat. I found some very nice, very clear period photos of the panels of the T-50 (circa 1940) and the UC-78/AT-17 (circa 1942). Totally different gauge placements, with the military panel being more heavily populated with gauges. Now I just need to see if I have all the gauges required for the UC-78/AT-17 panel.

OBIO
 
Nice work Obio, the Bobcat will look better and improved with your work on it. Do please post some pics of your work in progress if you can.
 
The first external paint is coming together. Need to tweak the black on the doors to line up with the black on the fuselage. Need to add the shading to the horizontal stabilizers and elevators (I toyed with the idea of not shading the cloth between the ribs...but the wings just looked dull...and dull is what I am trying to remove from this neat little plane). The interior needs some work...that baby blue is best used in small amounts...and having it on the inside of the plane is just too much. Still need to get the 2D and VC panels reworked. I think I am just going to go with the UC-78/AT-17 gauge configuration since most of the Bobcats I have profiles for are ex-military birds....and the military UC-78/AT-17 panel looks nicer than the original T-50 panel. I have a profile for the prototype Bobcat which I am going to do up, but I think I will sneak in the richer looking military panel.

Here are a few screen shots of the first scheme to roll out of the paint booth....a UC-78 in civil dress. I won't be uploading this until I have every thing buttoned up in regard to the panel work as I am repainting the 2D and VC panel to more properly reflect the UC-78/AT-17 panel.

Wait until you folks get a look at skin number 2...a Bobcat with a shark's mouth ala the P-40. The real plane is in a museum somewhere....the registration starts with SP...where ever that might be...Spain, Spaghettiville, Spam City, Spandex Acres.

Tim
 
Great Paints OBIO !! where did you get the program that tells you where you are and you alt ?

Craig
 
Full

THe screenshot program I use is Snapper. It's free. You can set it to stamp your screenies with your location and altitude.

http://www.ovosoft.net/snapper/

SP is Poland? I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere...Did you hear about the Polock who entered the spelling bee? (No offense meant toward my friends from SPoland).

OBIO
 
Obio thanks for the updated engine textures and pointing me to Snapper. Got to give the program a try.
Anyways since it's related to the topic I'll share with you a pic of the Collings Foundation's own T-50 / UC-78 Bobcat.
If anyone wants to paint it on this Alphasim model it would certainly be appreciated.
 
Will have to dig up some other pics of the Collings Foundation Bobcat...that tri-color scheme is sharp.

OBIO
 
After several attempts at creating a new gauge configuration based on photos of the UC-78 panel, I have decided that I am going to stick with the original gauge config and simply replace the stock AS gauges with better looking gauges. There are so many gauges on the UC-78 panel that I don't have any idea what they are and/or don't have a sim version of. I tried, I saw that my attempts were not producing the desired outcome, I said phooey on it.

Look on the bright side...that means that the first new skin will be uploaded faster and I can get to the second new skin sooner.

OBIO
 
Looks great, youre doing a pretty good job Obio. I'm keen to update my Bobcat with your new textures and VCs.

edit: I just seen what you said about the VC gauges, I'm not too worried about that.
 
While taking a short break from pre-Thanksgiving house cleaning...I rolled the Collings Foundation tri-color Navy plane into the paint booth and gave the fuselage an initial coat of paint. Need to go back over it and fix some areas....especially on the engine nacelles...but for a quick paint job it ain't all that bad.

Well, back to cleaning...my wife wants all the dirt out of the house before her sister and dad come for Thanksgiving dinner....so I have to move my entire flight room out to the storage shed LOL!

OBIO
 
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