PBY Paints

Mick

Mick

SOH-CM-2025
Well, I wasn't going to paint anymore airplanes, and I wasn't even going to install any more planes until I had my Golden Wings and FS1954 all set up on my present confuter. But I got tired of working with scenery and such, so I decided to check out one new (to me) airplane: Alpha Simulations' PBY Catalina. I'd downloaded it back when it first became payware, but I hadn't even looked inside the zip file.

I installed the PBY and since interwar US Navy is my favorite aircraft genre, I immediately checked out the pre-WW2 Navy flying boat. I saw that it needed a lot of work to make it look authentic, so I got out the paintbrush and:

Corrected the font for the identification group on the forward fuselage to something approximating the correct font.

Removed the yellow from:

- the bottoms of the wings (except the mandated 5% wrap-around at the leading edge)

- the tops and bottoms of the stabilizers

- the float struts and outboard sides of the floats.

Replaced the shiny, polished natural metal wing walk area with a matte dark gray non-skid surface.

Removed the walkway area and walkway stripe marking from the bottoms of the wings.

Put the section color on the front half of the cowlings.

Put the aircraft number on the bottoms of the wings.

Put the squadron marking (black band) on the horizontal tail.

Removed the squadron marking (black band) from where it extended beyond the bottom of the rudder and onto the fuselage at the tip of the tail.

Added the waterline stripe.

Made the outer float strut silver and lightened the shadowed part of it to match the bottom of the wing.

Replaced the red, gray & black national insignia with red, white & blue ones.

Well, that was all I really had to do, but I went a bit further:

As long as I had to fiddle with the characters in the identification group on the nose, I decided to make the plane a section leader. I added the section leader's band, put the section color on the entire forward half of the cowl instead of just the upper or lower part, and made all four section leaders, changing the section colors and aircraft numbers as appropriate.

Here's one of them:

View attachment 8964

After I made the four section leaders of VP-14, I made a new tail with solid white tail feathers, edited the identification groups and made the four section leaders of VP-52, the only other squadron to operate the -5 in pre-war colors before the advent of camouflage.

Here's one:

View attachment 8965

With both of those Navy squadrons done, I just had to add a paint of the Coast Guard's V-189, their first Catalina and the only one to wear the service's pre-war livery:

View attachment 8966

I'm not big on the WW2 era in FS, but I saw a beautiful original WW2 color photo in an old Airpower magazine of a PBY in that very attractive mid-to-late war "PBY Blue" over Light Gull Gray scheme, and wearing the mid-1943 national insignia with the red border that I've always been partial to. The plane was pristine and unmarked except for the national insignia, and it shared a ramp with a line of equally anonymous Lockheed PV Venturas in the same livery, so I suppose the photo was taken at some patrol plane replacement depot.

View attachment 8967

After the Golden Age, the era that appeals to me most is the Classic Era, the late 1940s and early 1950s, so I just had have a couple Navy planes from that period in beautiful overall Dark Sea Blue. I painted a Naval Air Reserve bird from NAS Squantum:

View attachment 8968

... and a rescue bird from NAS Quonset Point:

View attachment 8969

Of course I had to add a Coast Guard plane from that era:

View attachment 8970

The Air Force kept its OV-10A for a while after the war, and some of them were pretty snazzy. Alpha Sims gave us one of them and it looks nice, but I knew that some of those planes carrier arctic red over their PBY Blue and Light Gull Gray schemes, so I modified the stock paint to produce this one, of a plane from the 4th Rescue Squadron:

View attachment 8971

Another pretty USAF OV-10A belonged to the Alaska Division of the Air Transport Command in 1946:

View attachment 8972

The modern era doesn't appeal to me much, and I have nothing against Alpha Sims' house colors, but I really wanted an authentic paint for the model with the frameless waist blisters. Plane Sailing's G-PBYA "Miss Pickup" filled that need:

View attachment 8973

My search for a good subject for a warbird paint also led me to this plane wearing a Coast Guard livery similar to that applied to the USCG's HU-16 fleet long after the service's PBYs were retired:

View attachment 8974

Finally, I did this plane in its bogus but attractive livery:

View attachment 8975

Anyway, now I'm finished with the PBY, and hopefully with painting airplanes - at least until I get my FS installations set up the way I want them.

I'm posting this to ask if anyone would be interested in any of these paints. I know the Alpha Sims PBY has been around for years, so I wonder if there's still interest in it. If anyone wants these paints I'll upload them to the library, so let me know if you're interested.
 
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ALL of them, Mick. One of my favorite planes to fly and good paints for it are always welcome. Beautiful work, man!

LA
 
Awesome job on the Repaints, Mick! I especially like the 'PBY Blue' texture midway down your list; would be honored to use that one as my new Livery for the AlphaSim Cat!

:encouragement:
 
Well, I see there's still interest in the Alpha PBY.

I'll start putting the paints up now. If it takes too long to get them all in the pipe, I'll put the rest up tomorrow.

Now to re-train myself on how to upload files...

Paul, it's great to hear from you! I meant to write after I read your interview on FlightSim, but somehow just haven't gotten to it yet.
 
Mick:

They look great (and I have this plane) so I vote for ALL of them. Thank You, sir !!
 
OK, they all just went up the pipe.

Well, I think they did. I haven't done this in years, so I won't be sure I did it right until I check tomorrow and see if they're on the latest files list.

I didn't delete anything, so if I messed it up, I can try again tomorrow.
 
Very nice work (as always) Mick, and on an aircraft I have always felt was 'under-painted'.
My late Father flew RAAF 'Cats' all over the Pacific from late 1942, and his log book is very 'interesting' to say the least.
A few observations on RAAF paint jobs, initially they were finished in the Consolidated interpretation of the RAF 'Earth, Green and Light Blue (or Sky) scheme, rapidly replaced by USN 'Blue over Grey'.
As most operations were flown in darkness, overall Black was applied as standard, while one variation tested on several aircraft was a medium/light grey disruptive pattern on the upper surface of the mainplane only.
The noted Australian artist Norman Lindsay came up with that scheme.
Dad flew one that has featured in several publications as an 'Authentic' scheme, USN Blue-Grey over Black, which was a genuine RAAF Catalina paint job but only for some 24 hours!
She was a brand new replacement, arriving in the USN scheme, due to a shortage of aircraft for operations at the time, a hasty coat of black was applied to the under surfaces, a brief check flight and off the same evening to lay mines in Truk Lagoon (another interesting Op BTW), a location in which it would have been unwise to fly up and down at low altitude while one's aircraft sported an almost 'White' under surface!!!!
The following day a complete 'Black Cat' scheme was properly applied.
:encouragement:
 
You've done a great set of paints Mick :applause:

Looks like I'll have to reinstall the old Cat again :jump:

Thanks for your effort.

Pete.
 
Looks like some crackers there Mick, look forward to getting my hands on them. And you've saved me another job as the Plane Sailing bird has been on my To Do list for ages.
 
wombat666 said:
... My late Father flew RAAF 'Cats' all over the Pacific from late 1942, and his log book is very 'interesting' to say the least...
:encouragement:
Click to expand...

Thanks for an interesting tale! One of the things I like about FS and SOH is that fiddling with model planes often gives us opportunities to learn more about real planes and the people who flew them.
 
Hmmm... a minor issue has shown itself.

Making the screenies revealed something I hadn't really noticed until I saw pictures of more than one paint at a time. The props look terrible on the classic era Coast Guard paint.

Those textures are slightly reflective, to give the plane that slight hint of reflectivity that characterizes aluminized silver paint, and I made a reflective model for that paint. Alas, the stock AlphaSims props don't work very well with the reflective model.4R that I included with the paint.

This is a mystery to me, since the prop textures are the exact same ones included in the stock pre-WW2 US Navy textures, and that paint works with a stock reflective flying boat model. It makes no sense at all, but there it is.

After an hour of fiddling with those prop textures, I'm convinced that it's beyond my capability to fix this incompatibility, and maybe it's just not possible at all.

There is a semi-solution. If you really hate how those props look (like I do) just edit your aircraft.cfg file so that this paint uses the regular model=4 instead of model=4R. The silver paint won't look quite so aluminized, but the props will look fine. I wish I could have it both ways, but I guess I'll settle for having the props look good.
 
Assuming that your prop textures are in their own separate file, there is at least one set of 3 and 4-blade replacement textures of a general replacement file floating around in cyberspace. I have a copy of the file and have used them several times and they work fine in FSX Acceleration.

Or one could just select some from another aircraft model and use them.
 
glh said:
Assuming that your prop textures are in their own separate file, there is at least one set of 3 and 4-blade replacement textures of a general replacement file floating around in cyberspace. I have a copy of the file and have used them several times and they work fine in FSX Acceleration.

Or one could just select some from another aircraft model and use them.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I may do some searching around, and some trial and error with props from other planes.
 
Curious... I tried a couple of other prop texture sets, appropriately renamed of course, and they looked the same. So I tried no prop textures at all and the props still looked the same, except without the yellow tips.

That's all the fiddling I'm up for. I'm just going to use that paint with the regular, non-reflective model. The aluminized paint doesn't have that little sheen about it, but it still looks silver, and the props look good.
 
Mick, your paints look great.

The PBY's always been a favorite of mine. It definitely seems to be lacking repaints; these will help fill a need I've felt for a while.

Now I'm eagerly waiting for them to show up in the library.

Thanks,

PF
 
Mick:

The following are excerpts from the read-me file of the FSX prop texture sets that I have.

The file names are highlighted in RED (I believe these are the names). So far, they have
worked for my requirements but I am not real fussy about how they look when turning in flight.
I am using FSX Acceleration.

If someone gets picky with you, just tell them, "Fine. Pay me and I'll make you some EXACT
replicas !!"

Prop_Texture_3-Pack-1:

Propeller texture 3-pack for FS2004 aircraft when used in FSX.
Your choice of 2-blade, 3-blade, or 4-blade propeller textures.
Subtle and as transparent as I could make them, these props will
make many FS2004 airplanes more FSX friendly.

Saved as 32 bit bitmaps, but easily converted via your DXTBMP program
to DXT3 or even DDS textures. I've tested all these prop textures as
32 bit bitmaps, DXT3 bitmaps, and DDS (32 bit) textures in FSX SP2 and all
work fine. Easy installation instructions. I offer these to the
flight sim community as PUBLIC DOMAIN. Use them in any way that you
please! No restrictions.

By Tom Tiedman.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
FSX_Propdisks:

FSX Prop discs for the Lockheed L-1649A Starliner

The directory FSX_propdisks contains a range of replacement texture
files for you to try out on your FSX setup. Due to the number of FSX
variants it is difficult to say which one will work and which one won't.
The default propdisk.bmp contained in the texture folder will be too
dark and ungainly in FSX.

=================== // deleted // ==================================

Note, we have not managed to create a replacement prop disc that does
not cast a solid shadow.


Textures created by Diego Barreto and Nick Cooper.
 
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