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An oldie but a goodie

Willy

Willy

Administrator
Staff member
Cowboy was showing Pan Clippers in another thread and got me to thinking about this one, the Sikorsky S43 "Baby Clipper". Rather than hijack his thread I figured I'd start a new one on this classic from Bill and Lynn Lyons.

Part of the Lyons' Golden Hawaii pack, the S43 comes in two paints, Pan Am and Inter Island Airways. I flew the Pan Am version on this flight. Originally a payware release, it was rereleased as freeware before the Lyons retired from the FS world minus some custom features that were available on the payware version shown.

The S43 was intended as a shorter haul version of the S42 Clipper and carried about as many passengers as a DC-2. The big difference was that the S43 was an amphibian and could land and take off on any suitable water surface which opened up a lot of areas to it. Unfortunately for Sikorsky it was also a lot more expensive to purchase and operate than the Douglas. Still about 50 S43s were built and used around the world.

The S43 is included in the Golden Hawaii pack that can be found at FlightSim and AvSim.
 
This great model never did get the attention it deserved. With a good VC, fully modeled interior, rotating RDF it was first rate for it's time as was all of Bill's work. It even works perfectly as an AI. Wish there were more paints for it but I've been told it is too difficult to paint.
 
Difficult to paint is an understatement. Many of Bill Lyon's aircraft are difficult to paint....the PA-23 for instance...but the S-43 is near impossible to paint...the best I could manage was to redo the bare metal and make it look cleaner. Too much mirror/shared texture mapping on the plane...use of decal mapping.

OBIO
 
Bill Lyon made it hard for other payware to justify high prices. All of his packages included aircraft (usually two different), excellent scenery, missions and other features for $12. Hard to justify a $30 payware and it's just being one aircraft with that kind of deal around. And he was usually ahead of Microsoft on features to boot.

He'd also customize the package to the purchaser. If you'll look at the pic above with the radio, you'll notice a name plate with my name on it. And the watch on the VC has my initials. With the TravelAir pack, I got a hanger with my name under Pilot on Duty on a sign.

I'm attaching screenshots of the "repaint" I did of the S43. I did a little cut and paste to get the Sikorsky emblem on the tail and the Merc Air wings on the nose as well as played with the alpha layer to get a bit more shine. That's the best I could do on repainting it.
 
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