FS2004 Screenshots Here!!!

[mav]

Seafireiiic

 

[daypharris]

 

[ian elliot]

Thats a very nice Goose daypharris

 

[daypharris]

Hi Ian, many thanks for nice comment. Hard to find good pictures of this goose in US navy liveries. I'm going to give this one a try;

daypharris

 

[huub vink]

Hey Huub you forgot the one by Restauravia

Ttfn

Pete

You're right. But strange enough I have never installed it. Most likely as I'm quite satisfied with the model by Akemi. But thanks for the reminder, I will definitely have a look at the Restauravia one.

@Dapharris, Very nice repaint and hope you succeed to to do the second one.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[daypharris]

Work In Progress, not spot on but quite happy with result. No mercy regarding painting wing and tail. Some knowed issues with Lyons Goose. Colors just a wild guess..

daypharris
(Dag Farestveit)

 

[huub vink]

Looks really nice Dag. Personally I would go for a bit less blue (bit more greyish) colour on the top. But as said, it's really nice.

(I know the limitations of this model, so definitely a good job, within the possibilities.)

Cheers,
Huub

 

[Jorge]

Really looking good!

For what it's worth, I found this site a while ago. Thought I'd share with you for the paint:

http://www.banksofthesusquehanna.com/Color_Charts/

If you click on the "USN Aircraft Colors" option it will take you to the USN page for aircraft. There are various combinations to include the pre-war high visibility colors. Granted, the RGB values are a best guess as well, but they look fairly well on some of the experiments I've done so far.

Here's the 1940, 1941, and 1942 "two-tone" scheme with "Blue Gray" upper and "Light Gray" lower. It might be what you were looking for here.

Non-Specular Blue Gray: rgb = 111,138,145
Light Gray: rgb = 182,181,176

It also has values for the insignia during the various eras as well as those of the USAAC as well.

Hope this helps!

Jorge

 

[Mick]

Hmmmm... I dunno... about some of them anyway.

I looked at his "Dark Sea Blue" in the wartime colors and it isn't even close - it's not blue at all, it's gray with just a hint of a smidgen of a blue cast.

I have some serious doubts about some of his pre-war colors too. Willow Green and True Blue both look a little too dark, and Insignia Blue isn't even close, it has a purple cast that might be close to Admiral Blue but not to Insignia Blue. His Insignia Red is much too dark, sort of a brick red that looks even darker than the toned-down wartime version of that color, more like the wartime RAF version of roundel red. The Aluminum and Silver Gray colors look very different, whereas the Navy made a very good job of of making them look as much alike as possible, virtually indistinguishable at any distance. The idea was to come up with a gray that would match silver as closely as possible in order to make planes look overall silver at a time when silver paint adhered poorly to metal surfaces. And neither of the colors on the website look at all like silver, not even a silvery gray.

Many of the other colors look pretty good to me, but enough of the ones I'm very familiar with are so far off that I wouldn't trust any of them as a reference for the ones I'm not so familiar with.

I get my information about Navy aviation colors from Major John Elliott's series of Monogram Color Guides, which contain color chips matched to the actual ceramic color tiles made by the Navy in those days, stored carefully and still available to researchers today. They were expected to have a color-fast life of well over a hundred years, and they weren't even close to being that old when they chips in the books were matched to them.

Anyone who wants to paint US Navy planes should have a set of those books, but alas, they are long out of print and have become rare books, unavailable except at outrageous collector prices if at all.

 

[huub vink]

Colours are often a reason for interesting discussions. When the current model paint manufactures like Humbrol, Revell, Tamiya, Vallejo, AK, etc can't dome to an agreement what shade a colour actually was, how can we?

But I think the aircraft had NS Blue Grey upper surfaces and NS Light Grey under surfaces according to the specification M-485a from the Bureau of Aeronautics.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[Motormouse]

Colours are often a reason for interesting discussions. When the current model paint manufactures like Humbrol, Revell, Tamiya, Vallejo, AK, etc can't dome to an agreement what shade a colour actually was, how can we?

But I think the aircraft had NS Blue Grey upper surfaces and NS Light Grey under surfaces according to the specification M-485a from the Bureau of Aeronautics.

Cheers,
Huub

The colours should have a federal standard ( FS ) number
Which can then be cross referenced to RGB

Ttfn

Pete

 

[Motormouse]

Colours are often a reason for interesting discussions. When the current model paint manufactures like Humbrol, Revell, Tamiya, Vallejo, AK, etc can't dome to an agreement what shade a colour actually was, how can we?

But I think the aircraft had NS Blue Grey upper surfaces and NS Light Grey under surfaces according to the specification M-485a from the Bureau of Aeronautics.

Cheers,
Huub

The colours should have a federal standard ( FS ) number
Which can then be cross referenced to RGB

Like so


http://www.pmcn.de/English/Colors_US_Navy_1941-1945/Colors_US_Navy_1941-1945.htm

Ttfn

Pete

 

[huub vink]

Pete,

I'm afraid the Federal standard was not introduced until 1956! And all I know was that most colours from the BuAer specification M-485 didn't even match with the colours specified in the ANA Bulletin No.157 which was introduced as its successor in September 1943.

As said colours are always a good source for a nice discussion. And even when you have the standard in your hands the real shade remains a guess. I had paint chips from the wings and fuselage the wreck from the same Bf109-G6. The wings were excavated long before the fuselage was. The RLM74 from the fuselage was half as dark as the RLM74 found on the wings.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[daypharris]

Hi folks, many thanks for inputs, affort and interest regarding colorscheme. I agree you Huub about a bit less blue, probably also too green? 13 red-white stripes added the tail-rudder. Looks so much better!! Those grey-blue Grumman Wildcats from Pete's link where helpful.. ( http://www.pmcn.de/English/USN Markings II/USN Markings II.htm ) Nothing is more inspiring than such a good polite and friendly discussion!

Cheers
daypharris
Dag

 

[daypharris]

It is probably still a bit too dark I think. Did make a extra copy/backup of "g211.bmp", done some tweaking/adjusting as far as possible, resulting this.. This is the final result for me


daypharris

 

[huub vink]

Well all I have to add is : "I like it"

Cheers,
Huub

 

[ian elliot]

I know absolute zero about USN colors or markings, but it reminds me of the Atlantic theater colors. Great paint by the way, defiantly take a copy

 

[Mick]

... When the current model paint manufactures like Humbrol, Revell, Tamiya, Vallejo, AK, etc can't dome to an agreement what shade a colour actually was, how can we?..
But I think the aircraft had NS Blue Grey upper surfaces and NS Light Grey under surfaces according to the specification M-485a from the Bureau of Aeronautics.
Cheers,
Huub

As for model paints and decals, I think some of the reason is just laziness about doing the research, or more likely just ignorance of the available reference sources. How many model paint or decal makers - especially those outside the US - ever heard of those ceramic plates of pre-WW2 and wartime US Navy colors? Probably none of them. And if they heard of them, how many have the resources to travel to the National Bureau of Standards in Washington DC to look at them? Again, probably none. I can't blame them for not being aware of something so obscure.

It doesn't help that some colors changed without their names being changed. For example, pre-WW2 Insignia Blue was a somewhat bright blue, lighter in comparison to what came later. As war looked more likely and camouflage was adopted, a considerably darker blue was used, but it was still called Insignia Blue. After the war it got a little lighter again, but not as light as it was before the war. Insignia Red got a little darker during the war too, though nothing like the degree of darkening that happened to the RAF roundel.

And there was a mystery color that they never made a ceramic plate of: Admiral Blue, the color used on VIP aircraft assigned to admirals and some captains. All we know is that those who were there remembered it as being a somewhat darker and a little more purple than insignia blue, maybe a sort of Royal Blue, but the exact shade is lost to history. Not that this ever stopped me from painting a model in the Navy's VIP livery. (On plastic I used Pactra glossy Royal Blue. On digital models I wing it as best I can - and a lot of my earliest paint jobs got it much too bright and purple-ish)

Maybe there's a financial aspect too, like minimizing the number of colors on a decal sheet? In my plastic modeling days I often grumbled about how generations of Airfix and Frog decal artists seemed to be convinced that the American national colors were Red, White & Black. But maybe it wasn't the artists - maybe it was some penny-pinching accountant telling them not to use so many colors of ink.

Huub, you might be right about those colors on that Goose, but there is another possibility. There was a wartime color referred to as "PBY Blue." I don't know it's official name, if it had one. It was a but brighter, lighter and blue-er than the Blue-Gray color used in the early blue-gray over light gray camouflage. It was intended for flying boats and amphibians such as the PBY, which is how it got its colloquial name. The goose might have worn that as its top color. You can see good versions of that color on Shessi's latest PBY and on the earlier Goose paint job.

 

[Mick]

The colours should have a federal standard ( FS ) number
Which can then be cross referenced to RGB
Ttfn
Pete

Yes, they should, and in fact they do. The trouble is that the federal standards were developed long after those colors were no longer in use, and they are only approximations anyway. FS595 was created so that government agencies wold have an easy way to tell paint manufacturers what colors they wanted, but they were close approximations at best and not meant to be precise records. The feds don't worry much about the exact, precise shade of green or gray that goes on its filing cabinets and other furnishings, and the FS standards were created mainly for that sort of stuff.

There are other and more exact color standards, like the well-known British one that I can't remember the name of right now, and there are others too, but none of them existed when these colors were being made into paint and used on aircraft, so we can't be certain that they are accurately based on the actual paint color in use in those days.

The ceramic plates are absolutely correct and reliable, but they are only accessible to those who have the resources to travel to examine them in person. One might think to photograph them but even the best cameras and films don't record colors perfectly, and if the photos were transmitted to someone else over the Interweb there are sources of potential corruption between sender and recipient, and what the colors look like to the recipient depends a lot on their monitor settings, monitor quality, video card quality and settings, and whatnot.

Pinning down a color can be a very frustrating business! It's hard to criticize modelers too much when major museums often get it wrong!

 

[Mick]

For what it's worth, I think the earlier Goose paint has the color colloquially called "PBY Blue," and I think that same color might be right for the later paint job too.

The frustrating thing about colors is that there is always a correct answer, but we might not be able to find it! On the airplane at that time the color looked a certain way and no other, but all the research in the world might not be enough to figure it out in a particular situation.