Conspicuous by Their Absence

[hubbabubba]

I like my aircraft, and other ground and sea vehicles for that matter, "not bouncy". So a short tutorial would not be a waste of of time.

The "stock" Fw190A does have a slight touch of "ground jitterbugs" if I recall. Building ships and ground vehicles, I'm frequently confronted to that problem.

I usually fiddle around until I get it right, but I wouldn't mind having preset parameters that would shorten the job.

In the meantime; with impatience!!!

 

[Ivan]

Landing Gear Tuning

Hello Hubbabubba,

I hadn't even thought of this subject as applied to non-aeroplanes. Some of the ideas don't apply all that well, but perhaps you can find something useful anyway.

Considering the amount of work for a real tutorial, the lack of an audience and the fact that you probably know about 95% of what I would be presenting, I will hold off on actually doing a tutorial and just send you the notes I have along with an explanation for how to use them.

I keep a stenographers notebook with a lot of handwritten notes regarding various aspects of tuning AIR files and these notes are based on experiments from back in 2006 or 2007 from the dates I wrote down.

Recently I encountered a few not so well behaving aircraft and since I didn't own them and could not easily alter the visual models and also didn't want to spend too much time doing the tuning, I went back to these notes and also found out that some of the advice I had given wasn't completely correct.

Check your email soon.
- Ivan.

 

[hubbabubba]

Hello Hubbabubba,

I hadn't even thought of this subject as applied to non-aeroplanes. Some of the ideas don't apply all that well, but perhaps you can find something useful anyway.

Considering the amount of work for a real tutorial, the lack of an audience and the fact that you probably know about 95% of what I would be presenting, I will hold off on actually doing a tutorial and just send you the notes I have along with an explanation for how to use them.

I keep a stenographers notebook with a lot of handwritten notes regarding various aspects of tuning AIR files and these notes are based on experiments from back in 2006 or 2007 from the dates I wrote down.

Recently I encountered a few not so well behaving aircraft and since I didn't own them and could not easily alter the visual models and also didn't want to spend too much time doing the tuning, I went back to these notes and also found out that some of the advice I had given wasn't completely correct.

Check your email soon.
- Ivan.

Got it, thanks

 

[Ivan]

Great.
Lemme know if it works for your applications too.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Renamed Aeroplane

I found out a little while back that my designation for this aircraft was not correct.
Some references call this aeroplane a Kawasaki Ki-61-I-KAIc (c = Hei).
Apparently there was some documentation found back in the 1970s that showed that while the original long fuselage change may have gotten a "Kaizo" (modified) designation, it was later renamed the Ki-61-Id (d = Tei).
I actually finished up the visual for this critter back in 2005 and SCASMed and created the AIR file a couple years after that.
To do the renaming properly, I needed to rename some textures and such and had to revisit the AF99 project as well as the SCASM code.

As long as I was there, I decided to check out how it compared with my notes regarding Landing Gear and found that although it didn't noticeably bounce, a lot of things didn't follow my current formula.
The DP file also did not follow recent changes to hitting power and ammunition weight.
In addition, I found that my guess as to the weight of the aircraft was probably off by 300-400 pounds. Apparently this aeroplane was quite heavily armoured as compared with its predecessors.

I decided only to do a couple changes which resulted in a noticeable bounce which was not hard to correct. At least I THOUGHT it was easy. (There was no noticeable bounce.)
Just to confirm, I decided to leave it in the simulator overnight. This is the result: Last night it started off aligned in the direction of the runway stripes. This morning it had rotated noticeably. Perhaps it even rotated more than one complete revolution.

Cool, Huh?
- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Any interest in a P-40N for CFS?

- Ivan.

 

[No Dice]

I am,
Can I have it by my birthday, August 23rd 2013

Luv ya dude,

Dave

 

[Ivan]

Project changes don't look difficult but look to be quite tedious, so I can't see how it can be done in three weeks.
I also expect to be involved with other stuff for two of the next three weeks.

BTW, Is there a better version? I had always thot the N model was a bit ugly but I also notice that I don't happen to have a decent N version for CFS and this looks like a very easy project except for the paint.

The first step of this conversion would be to go from a short tail to a long tail P-40 which covers a lot of stuff between the E and the N models, so is there another version that is prefered?

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Cutting and Splicing

Here is what happens when the Tail pieces on the P-40E are shifted 1.64 feet aft. References say the lengthening was 20 inches, but I am getting only 19.68 inches for a new overall length of 33.22 feet (according to America's Hundred Thousand).

I haven't done too much with this project except for minor visual improvements since it was first released just over 8 years ago. In some ways I believe I did pretty well on the original, but the tail section here is probably the worst part of the P-40E.

Luckily, the changes on the real aircraft were not terribly extensive:
The Fin and Rudder were moved aft, but even the Tail Gear did not move nor did the Horizontal Stabilizer.

Perhaps this project deserves its own thread.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Airacobra?

The only one I have ever seen around is Eric Johnson's project from way way back. I am somewhat surprised that this aeroplane has never received more recent treatment. Nothing wrong with EJ's P-39 considering the limitations of the design tools and simulators of the time but I AM surprised that no one else has pursued this subject further.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Looks like we lost all our attachments yet again.

This is very disappointing.....

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

yup, even the avatars and sig pics are gone

Conspicuous by Their Absence

as per usual, i wish i would've saved.
woulda, shoulda, coulda, didn't.
...so it goes.

but wait! we've all got a nifty new contribution box.

don't get me wrong.
i am very thankful that the site is back
and that the posts were not lost.
i do understand that it costs a lot to keep this joint up and running.

just a thought...if there's any interest,
i could set up a cfs1 developers page over at the aac forum
http://alliedaircorps.proboards.com/
granted, it's awful quiet there and it ain't as fancy as the outhouse,
but, it could sure use the company and might be a decent back up.
not to mention, it's free and i don't recall it ever going down.

 

[smilo]

well, i decided, what the heck....so, i went ahead
and made a new CFS Design board at the AAC forum;
http://alliedaircorps.proboards.com/
it's very basic, but it should do the job.

 

[No Dice]

I second the motion, great idea smilo

PS, I think the pay pal thingy is a bit much, just my 1 cent worth. I always give...so why blast it in my face.

Dave

 

[Ivan]

This place seems kinda barren without any images, so I thot I would post a screenshot of a project I am revisiting.
My son really likes this FW 190 (Because it is GREEN) and wanted it customised for him. Note the Leaf on the fin.

Sometimes revisiting an old project is painful.
Things I just do today without thinking were not even in consideration back then.
This is one of the first aircraft I ever built and over the last couple days it just got Landing Gear Wells and Flap Wells.
The textures have not been adjusted yet for the revised shape of the Landing Gear Doors, but I still think it looks good.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Strafing Run

Here are a couple screenshots I found on a flash drive I had not accessed in a while.
This is from my Head-To-Head setup in my living room. I believe it was a demonstration by me for my kids.
I still think they look pretty good though.

Enjoy!
- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Northern Virginia IPMS Show

Hello All,

This is nearly a duplicate post from one in the "Other Hobbies" area, but with a bit more detail because I know the audience a bit better.
The local IPMS club had its annual show yesterday (Saturday) and I attended with my son. He seemed to be quite interested in finding a model of the FW 190 which is his favourite Aeroplane. (I believe he likes it because it is mostly green and that is his favourite colour.) It is CFS aeroplane he flies the most.

We poked around a lot and I took a few pictures and eventually found the 1:72 Airfix FW 190A. It wasn't terribly expensive at $7 but also wasn't as cheap as I would have expected at the Show/Sale. It ISN'T the old Airfix / MPC kit that I used to build my CFS model. The new one has very fine recessed panel lines and pretty good detail.

We walked around quite a bit more and eventually found a few more model kits of the FW 190. At the end of the day, we had an additional Hasegawa kit and a Hobby Boss FW 190D which wasn't all that bad for around $15 for everything. I bought a few more kits than he did, but most of mine were bought in the last half hour of the show when some of the vendors were selling as much as they could for $1 or $2 per kit, so I actually spent less money than he did.

Michael actually started putting the Hobby Boss kit together when we were driving home and it makes a pretty reasonable model for what is mostly a snap-together kit. It needs some glue to be really done properly though.

Smilo, I almost bought a 1:72 scale P-70 night fighter but it had already been started so I had to pass on it. There were some pretty decent AMT / Ertl 1:48 A-20s for around the $20 range but I didn't want to spend that much.

Here is a Wildcat on display that I thought looked pretty good. My camera should have been set a bit better and if we were not in such a hurry, I would have taken more time to get things right. I decided to post it along with some screenshots of my F4F-4.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

Revisiting Another Old Project

Hello All,

The original purpose of this thread was to discuss building aeroplanes that we might expect to see in CFS but surprisingly have not. Here is an aircraft that I built many years back (around 2002 or 2003) for no very good reason. It didn't perform any particularly important duties and in fact was never very common.

It was released well over 10 years ago but seems to have disappeared off the downloads list. I have hesitated for a re-release because of a rather silly issue that I did not know how to fix: The animation for the landing gear did not work. It went instantly up or down even though the animation looked fine within Aircraft Animator.

Another disconcerting thing was that although the AF99 build would complete and the model LOOKED fine, it would always hit an error during the build.

Last night, I deleted pieces from the project until the error went away and finally figured out what the build error was all about. Apparently one of the components the front framing on the pod was a single AF99 component with 92 parts. Considering the limit is 50 parts, I am amazed that it built at all.

I also decided to fix a few simple things such as the propeller animation which actually involves changing some AIR file parameters and added a rotating engine fan. SOMETHING in that process affected the animation and now the gear retraction works! Mastery is being able to do something on demand. In this case, I actually have no clue as to why things now work.

The next thing to decide is whether or not it is worth a re-release and how much should be fixed before that. This IS a cool looking aeroplane and there is only one other available for CFS that I know of. Then again, I was reworking this project only because of the animation problem. My only recent use for this project had been to test different parameters to use for flexible gun mounts.

- Ivan.

 

[No Dice]

If you release it, I will make it available to the masses,

Dave

 

[Ivan]

Thanks No Dice,

This project still needs a bit of work to be closer to current standards even though it has been released before. As with the original, it is competing for shop space with other projects. I think you will like the others though. They are actually much closer to releasable than this one is. All each of the others needs is a decent paint job and I finally believe I have a workable (for me) solution.

Near as I can tell, there IS another Blohm & Voss BV 141B series aircraft out there. Here are a couple screenshots of the other aeroplane.

- Ivan.