STILL having fun with Lockeeds most beautiful airplane!
With eight individual paints of 1940-1950's TWA Connies (no Supers.. just the sexy sleek original fuselage) in the hangar, the work continues.
I have a good paint kit, based on the original templates that I'm working from, which lets me 'tweak' individual names, markings and window layouts as needed, including the alpha channel. Once this was done, the process of depicting a Connie.. either L-49 or 749 to represent one from every year from the beginning of their service, (as Transcontinental and Western Airlines) through to their eventual retirement from service as TWA evolved in the post war years, with paint, livery, and name changes in the fleet providing a nice collection of airplanes.
I still need to do the original converted C-69 scheme, and am working on the livery graphics and developing the custom font.. and TRYING to collect enough suitable reference so I get this as close as possible, but I'll get there.
But this morning, with rain and cool temps outside, I took a step backward, and did a new fuselage paint template, with various aluminium panels given subtle differences in tone, basing the look on a combination of the photos I've collected for this little project.
Here is a quick screenshot of the yet unadorned fuselage.
And I would like to thank Manfred Jahn and team for providing us with a VERY nice collection of three tailed birds... They may be getting a ,little old now, but still a joy to fly...and look at!!!
Now.. if I could just get him to do a new mdl. file with the rotating beacons removed!!!...the ONLY glaring little 'non-1940's' bit of equipment I can find on the L-49...
cheers
oh.. ps.. I'm doing all of my painting on 2048 X 2048 psd's in Photoshop, then reducing them to 1024 pixels for FS9, so.. if anyone has figured out a way to port over this airplane to FSX, the look should be a little crisper.
I made many trips to Chino and the He162 was always one of the highlights of my visits.Good to see POF's 162 in the air!
