SOH A-26 Invader, the story continues ...

[Daveroo]

ave any of you watched Kermit weeks 2 part youtube video of his A-26 from October 2017?..its been at aero trader for 25 years he said,carl schull told him it will be running in about 4 months and be totally done for Oshkosh 2018.i learned alot about the plane from those two short vids.little things like how the rear turrets work,and he climbs into the gunner position and shows it all on cam.and they give a full but short discussion on how the bomb racks work,weeks usually sounds as though he is a total aircraft authority,but when he was talking to tony and carl ( nope i dont know them,but seems i cant spell their last names soooo) he almost seemed to be an amiture...meaning those two men know what theyre doing..truly..

 

[mal998]

What's your rate?

ah, a couple of beers, maybe?

 

[roger-wilco-66]

I'll be your first customer under these cirumstances, Mal


Cheers (I always write this, but here it's truly literally),

Mark

 

[DaveQ]

I now have the Mk. 82 model from Mark and this is the initial loadout - as common for the Nimrods, three finned BLU-27's on the inners plus a Mk 82 on the outers. The BLU's are for demo purposes only; they will be replaced by Mark's when ready.

Lots of progress with the K though the VC still requires attention.

DaveQ

 

[MZee1960]

Looking very nice, Dave ! Can't wait !

 

[DaveQ]

I've made a start on the A/B-26's while the K's VC and other bits are being worked on, and I've redone A-26C 44-35710 'Hard to Get' currently at Cavanaugh Museum in Addison TX. What I can't seem to find out is if this scheme is an invention or whether this aircraft (or any other) carried it. The aircraft was taken on charge in May '45 and the scheme appears to be from the 10th TRS, 69th Reconnaissance Group, Nancy, France 1945. But if it ever served with that unit it didn't do 13 missions and destroy three aircraft and one train in eight days max!! Anybody any ideas what the serial actually was??

DaveQ

 

[jankees]

according to the Osprey book on Invader units by Jim Roeder, aircraft #58 was 44-34486, and not this aircraft, so I am assuming that this is an imaginary paint scheme. I did discover that this aircraft, 44-35710, was based in the Netherlands for a few years, and the owners tried to register it in Belgium as OO-INV, but when that failed it went back to the states.
Nice paint scheme though!

 

[DaveQ]

according to the Osprey book on Invader units by Jim Roeder, aircraft #58 was 44-34486, and not this aircraft, so I am assuming that this is an imaginary paint scheme. I did discover that this aircraft, 44-35710, was based in the Netherlands for a few years, and the owners tried to register it in Belgium as OO-INV, but when that failed it went back to the states.
Nice paint scheme though!

Many thanks for your time Jankees. Yes this aircraft was in the Netherlands for a time but subsequently went to Addison. It was flying at Duxford in 2001 I believe but now is de-registered and on static display. Wings Palette, the Russian archive, also gives '58' the serial 44-34486 but on an A-26B with a 6-gun nose and no nose-art. Since I don't know the 69th RG's coding system I don't know whether the '58' is the individual aircraft number or a unit designation. Certainly none of the 69th's squadrons was 58 (10th, 102nd, 111th.). Currently operates Q-4 Global Hawks.

DaveQ

 

[roger-wilco-66]

Finishing up the last weapon, a LAU-3 pod for the 2.75 inch rockets.

I'm basically done with the weapon pack, just some material adjustments and translation is left to be done.
So the A26 weapons pack will be out, hopefully during the next week.


Cheers,
Mark

 

[stovall]

Looking really good Mark, can't wait to fly the Invader with your weapons added. Great job!!!!

 

[Roger]

Mark, those look amazingly real!

 

[roger-wilco-66]

Thanks, and thanks to the wonders of modern design techniques. I just wish the sims would catch up with these materials and a common lighting standard would be defined, so that texture translation work would be minimal. I'm afraid that some of that glamour you can see above will be lost, but we'll see.


Cheers,
Mark

 

[MZee1960]

Looking forward to the K release !

 

[DennyA]

Yes, certainly. As I said, it took me several hours to do this looking-up:

(GREAT INFO SNIPPED)

Hopefully this helps sort things out a bit.

Thank you sooo much for saving me those hours, @MZee1960!

Followed your instructions and I have the A-26 up and running in P3D V4.1 while I wait on the fantastic enhancements I see above. Everything seems great, with one minor issue: The tires have a mirror-level reflectivity. (I can ignore this from inside the plane. )

*EDIT: @Roger, you mention the tire/mirror issue and "Steve's fixer" to fix that. Is that "Steve's DX10 Scenery Fixer?" Alas, that's no longer available for sale as far as I can find. Is there another tool/solution? Is this something you have to run the model through?

 

[DaveQ]

Work continues on the K. The cockpit interior is being completely rebuilt by gman5250 at the moment (and 'rushes' look stunning!), and Mark is nearing completion of his awesome weapons. Gman has also 'refurbished' the external model to fix a couple of snags - the prop rotation and the castoring of the nosewheel. This has had to be done from scratch because the source files have sadly been lost in a crash... Here is a Nimrod as a taster. Forget the yellow gunsight - will be fixed!!

DaveQ

 

[strykerpsg]

Work continues on the K. The cockpit interior is being completely rebuilt by gman5250 at the moment (and 'rushes' look stunning!), and Mark is nearing completion of his awesome weapons. Gman has also 'refurbished' the external model to fix a couple of snags - the prop rotation and the castoring of the nosewheel. This has had to be done from scratch because the source files have sadly been lost in a crash... Here is a Nimrod as a taster. Forget the yellow gunsight - will be fixed!!

DaveQ

Beautiful update Dave. I was fortunate to see one of these as a kid growing up. They just look so menacing and powerful with the SEA camo, black and HMG armed noses. Definitely going to wear this one out on Gman's SEA scenery.

 

[gman5250]

Dave and JensOle invited me in on the K conversion to fix a few anomalies in the model.

As it turned out, it was necessary to revive a lost model from the remaining pieces. I checked with Milton Shupe and confirmed that John Terrell's original K conversion was lost in a computer crash, but I had enough pieces to completely rebuild the model in Gmax, and as it turns out a complete 3DSMax model. In doing the work, the team permitted me to make some major modifications on the interior. This is not a complete VC, like the Tigercat, but it is comprehensive.

At this stage, I am completely rebuilding the panel and adding some knobs, switches and boxes. I'll probably be rebuilding the console, as it is quite different in the K, versus the A-26 single pilot model. I also animated the pilots and added modeled radials.

My mods are being tested as of this writing, so we decided to preview the new model here as a bit of a teaser while the work is being finalized. Still a WIP, but coming into focus.

 

[gman5250]

 

[Sundog]

Wow, that is looking amazing! Thanks guys for doing all of these updates.

 

[Milton Shupe]

Now that really needed to be done Gordon; thanks for going the extra mile.