Finistair Aviation

[tgycgijoes]

I completed the FSHub Challenge flying to the Canne Film Festival. I wanted to fly my Carenado Cessna Grand Caravan and Googled what Airlines in France were using this aircraft. I discovered Finistair Aviation. In searching for photos I discovered that Jan Kees Blom did a repaint for the Carenado Grand Caravan F-GJFI back in 2011 of the livery they were using at that time. I found it over at Avsim. (A really nice job). I am doing a repaint I will share here of their current livery. This is the 2011 livery:


This is a real photo of their current livery:

 

[tgycgijoes]

Working away slowly but surely. I got support with information from Textron aviation over the weekend and from the chief pilot at Finistair this morning with photos and actual decal info sheets detailing the decals on the nosewheel fairing. Here is a screenshot of what I just finished:

My only objection to Carenado's texture sheets is that some of the parts (like Microsoft did and FSX and P3D does) is use one part for both left and right sides and then type that is attached is mirrored on the other side depending on which one. There is no way around that beyond a total redo in Blender IMO which is waaaaay beyond my skills. I'll just deal with it. I am repainting in Adobe Photoshop and enlarging the texture sheets to 4096x4096 as I usually do. Then when I share the repaint I reduce them to 2048x2048 like Carenado to save space.

 

[tgycgijoes]

Yesterday and today were really productive work days despite Carenado and their confusing files. (Jan Kees knows what I mean he did a repaint for this aircraft). Anyway, here are two screen shots that I just took of the progress. I want to thank Textron Aviation and Finistair's chief pilot for their assistance with the decals making this as authentic as possible. Check out the TKS decal on the cargo pod.

 

[tgycgijoes]

I noticed that I will have to tweak the blue "stripe" after looking at the photo. Then I have to do the aft sections and finally the vertical stab artwork. Once I started the "stripes" I remembered how I did them. I watched two youtube videos that did not help me at all. These were done by me by hand.

 

[tgycgijoes]

Here is a full day's work today. For anyone who has ever tried to work with a Carenado repaint texture, you are well aware of how much fun it is...NOT. Anyway, here are two screenshots. Now next week when I have time I will finish tweaking a click at a time...load in MDCx...click again ad infinitum until they line up. That is the tedious part but on the whole I like how it came out. When the stripes that are on three sections for each side I'll post a finished photo and upload it here.

 

[tgycgijoes]

YAY!!! I spent the rest of the afternoon after I finished programming my Christian Radio Show for next week tweaking the stripes and I think that they are done as good as they can be. I have to do the spec textures and I will pack it up and upload it in the Resources to share with anyone who has the Carenado Grand Caravan.

 

[tgycgijoes]

Now that the repaint is complete, I was going to create the Brest-Bretange airport which is the hub for Finistair until I saw the modern terminal and that I could buy the whole airport WITH the fancy terminal for $15.00. It was created in 2019 but that's ok. Google Earth shows it hasn't changed. If any, its inside cosmetic. Here are a couple screenshots of the Finistair Hanger that I created and if I can will replace the 2010 one for myself.

 

[tgycgijoes]

I sent the screenshot above to the chief pilot, Patrick, of Finistair to show him the finished product. He replied this morning of how good he felt it looked and I was very pleased. It seems that they also fly to LFSE, Epinol-Dongeville airport. I was able to find a free version of it at Flyaway Aviation which I downloaded. Patrick is also going to send me some photos of LFSE that he offered to take. I will probably check this out on Google Earth and post here. It is really very interesting: single grass runway and dirt taxiways. The runway is marked by concrete cones which I have in the Small Airway addons.