Conspicuous by Their Absence

yes, Pol is definitely a true artist and friend.
...miss that guy.

i've got a black le'homme p-51
that he did for me long ago.

also, his repaints of the cfs stockers
are all way above par.
out of all the fw190 repaints i've seen,
his is the one i use exclusively.
 
This thread does tend to ramble quite a lot.

The original purpose of this thread as I saw it was to discuss those aircraft of significance in history that had never been developed for Combat Flight Simulator. CFS started as a European Theater of Operations kind of thing but MTO and PTO subjects have received attention as well. Some famous aircraft have never been developed. Others have been developed but not done to the standard they deserve.

At the moment, I have been looking at a few different subjects: The N1K2-J Shiden-KAI which seems to have come in more variations than I expected. The J2M Raiden which has had only one strangely scaled example done. The Yak-1 had had a payware example done which doesn't look bad but has some odd proportions at least in the Freeware AI version that is available.

I can think of LOTS more fairly famous aircraft that have never been done properly for CFS, but as I commented on earlier, I tend to go after subjects that I would like to own or fly, so added to this list are the Me 109G/K, P-38J Lightning and the P-6E Hawk.

- Ivan.
 
Its great to get back on track as regards the thread of this blog, it's so long ago that we all listed our own personal desires. Can we relist what each of us would like to appear. My own is a merlin Halifax but I do believe that almost an entire era is missing bar a handful of examples. I am refering to between WW1 and WW2. What say you?
 
Hello Womble55,

Glad to see you are back.

The Halifax was mentioned in the first message of this thread. I don't really know the significance of the Merlin version of he Halifax though. I have done almost no research on that plane. I presume that the typical Bristol Hercules was an alternate engine?

Agreed, between the wars planes are horribly neglected.

- Ivan.
 
Womble probably knows more about it than I do but I think most Merlin engines went to power Lancasters. A quick look through the web shows that the original Halifaxs had Merlins - these were beefed up to develop more power but they switched to Hercules engines. Later in the War they went back to Merlins, probably supply had caught up with demand.

Dave
 
Perhaps they were really using Packard Merlins by the end of the war?

What do you all consider the "Definitive" version of the Halifax?

- Ivan.
 
Yet another aircraft is making it back to the research stage: The Ki-61-I-KAIc and its younger brother, the Ki-61-II-KAIa. If I had known there would be a follow-on to the original (not yet released), I would have taken more care to use a CoG that is easier to locate in drawings.

- Ivan.
 
Off the top of my head, I think there were two main reasons why the Halifax was re-engined with the Hercules. One, even though the Merlin used in the Halifax was a different type, the majority of production was geared towards the Hurricane and Spitfire production. Secondly, the Halifax was underpowered with the Merlins, even with drastic measures in weight removal. The Merlin, On a good day, would chuck out around a 1000 to 1200hp wereas the Hercules was rated at 1600hp, more with 100 octane fuel. A similar scheme was implemented with the Avro Lacaster in that to safeguard the supply of Merlins, the prototype had four Bristol Hercules's fitted, making it the prototype of the Mk2. The supply never wavered though and the aircraft industry was saved from possible disaster by the manufacture of Packard Merlins.
 
I figure the bomber versions of the Merlin were probably very similar to the ones in Hurricanes and P-40s. If the Hercules was such a nice fit, why didn't more bombers use them?

Just finished my first week without the rest of my vacationing family.
In theory, I had a lot more free time. In reality, with work, it isn't very different.
I have accomplished almost nothing up to this point.

- Ivan.
 
The Merlins in the Hurricanes and P40s were different in several details, mainly fuel carb and supercharger and were intended for maximum power in short bursts. The Merlins in Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Lancasters were designed for long periods of cruising with the occasional throttles through the gate.
Hercules conversions werent nessessary, after all there were a shed load of Lancaster mk1 with RR Merlins and Lancaster mk3 with Packard Merlins. Incidently, did you know that there were many Mk1 Lancasters fitted with Packard Merlins during their service making them, technically, Mk3s and vice versa. There was also a few examples with both RR and Packard Merlins at the same time, what mark no would you accredit to those
 
Bachelorhood

Today is the last day of my bachelorhood. Anna Honey and the little ones should be getting on a plane in Beijing in a couple hours and be here in about a day. I now need to straighten up the house quite a LOT. The residue from assembling a Drill Press still remains in my living room.

My accomplishments in the Flight Sim area were pretty much limited to a rather cool program to move AF99 projects.

I wonder if there was any noticeable performance difference between the RR and Packard Merlins. I thought that there was. It would be interesting if the engine installations were asymmetrical and caused the aircraft to pull to one side when cruising.

BTW, the same kind of thing applied to Spitfires. The Mk.IX had a RR Merlin. The Mk.XVI had a Packard Merlin, so these days on an overhaul when the other engine is substituted, what do you call the result?

- Ivan.
 
Hello No Dice,

I would be glad to share it.... In time. There are actually about 10 utilities of various types that I have written for AF99 development and even a couple for messing around with SCASM coding.

With this utility, it does pretty much what I intend, but it fails one of my tests. I figure that any move-something utility needs to be able to leave the target exactly the way it started if used to move something one direction and then to move it back to the original location. This program doesn't quite do that yet, though the resulding AFA file is completely "Production Ready". I don't know if the issue is my program or just that AF99 itself isn't consistent.

Anna Honey sent me an email while I was eating dinner and watching a movie. She and kids left for the airport about 10:00 PM my time. Time is almost 11:30 PM. I figure I have about an hour tonight to clean up. I know I won't have much time tomorrow. Need to cook some simple stuff for them when they get home.

- Ivan.
 
The Rolls Royce Merlin was built using British threads....BSF, BSW, BA and I daresay Rolls Royce's own, whereas the Packard Merlin was redesigned to use threads common to the USA. even though the two engines were dimensionally similar and fitted without many problems. The problems came when the service crews got their hands on them, the tools were totally incompatable. You could'nt use the toolkit from a Packard Merlin to service a Rolls Royce Merlin. Similarly the spares were also different and incompatable. I bet the service crew that had a Lancaster with both types of Merlins pulled a few hairs out. I daresay the language reflected this as well.
 
I once saw an exploded view of the RR Merlin compared to the Packard Merlin. Although functionally the design was pretty much the same, things like multi piece intake manifolds were not separated the same way. Even different marks of the RR Merlin had differences of this type from each other. Now I just need to remember which book I saw this in.

- Ivan.
 
All this goes to prove that our hobby is'nt as straight forward as we think when we start on a project. I was looking on the internet last night after work (01:00hrs GMT) and there are a lot of people out there that think they know the details but actually know diddly squat. I always have tried to get more than one source for my info, drawings, paint schemes etc. I find that the research can take as long as the construction of the model but hey.....its the knowledge that we got it right at the end of the day.Another useless piece of info for anyone building a B17. There was one example that had the top decking removed, leaving open cockpits, it was used as a squadron hack. The best bit is though, due to the unorthodox mods, this Fortress was actually faster than the B24, a fact utilised on many occasions by flying past an unsuspecting B24 with half of the crew with their backsides hanging out of the windows. Cold or what!
 
There wasn't just the squadron hack B-17 that had the top decking removed. For Project Aphrodite, war weary B-17s had the top decking removed and were loaded with explosives. A pilot (and copilot I believe) would execute the take-off and then bale out. The B-17 "Roadster" would then be flown by radio control to act as a guided missile.

Joseph Kennedy (JFK's older brother) was killed flying one of these when it exploded before he could bale out.

Your roadster puts a new meaning to "Freeze your A$$ Off."

I do a LOT of research, but most of it doesn't really translate into a project. The details about Packard versus Rolls Royce Merlin is useful for a mechanic or a student of history but it isn't something that does much for a CFS aircraft. The recent research has been for a Ki-61-II and although lots of folks have drawn the profiles, they tend to disagree on detail and even the dimensions are contradictory. I believe at this point I have enough for a pretty fair model though anyone who cares to nitpick will probably find some dimensions wrong.

What is your latest project? I have about a half dozen going at the moment.

- Ivan.
 
Lazy Flying

I did some texturing over the last couple days but afterward was testing out this old project.

- Ivan.
 
My current projects are a Bristol Bombay, almost done, just the cockpit to sort out. A Handley Page Hastings, I,m fast running out of available parts but it will fly. I,m dabbling with the two Blohm und Voss six engine flying boats, I cant get the order right to display the six engine correctly. A Short Shetland, this displays ok, just a few tweeks to get it right. Also buried in the projects file is a Singapore, a Lerwick, a Vernon, a Valentia, a Hinaidi, a Hyderabad, a Gordon, a Harrow, a Varsity, an Albacore plus many others. I'm gradually solving problems so watch this space.
 
The BV 222 Wiking should be interesting. Does a CFS AIR file actually handle 6 engines?

You have more aircraft projects going than I do at the moment.
Is there a common theme to your projects?

- Ivan.
 
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