Swingman's Duck Skins?

Other than those it came with, the only other one (so far) is a French Aeronavale scheme by Mike Delizee (should find it at flightsim.com)

wonder why the repainters haven't jumped on this one?

ttfn

Pete
 
I think the reason there aren't any more repaints is that the base textures are extremely difficult to work with because of all the painted-on detail - and they're the wrong base color for any authentic pre-war skins. The original paint jobs have pre-war markings over a basic color scheme of overall light gray, and that's completely wrong. There was a period in the late 1920s and early thirties when the Navy painted its planes with light gray on the metal surfaces (only) but that practice ended well before the first Duck rolled out of the prototype shop. Fabric surfaces like the wings were never painted gray until the introduction of camouflage just before WW2.

One of the skins that comes with the plane depicts a Duck in the Philippines very early in the war, and overall gray is correct for that period. One could change some markings and make other early war skins, but they wouldn't look much different, and that very briefly used overall light gray scheme was, to me at least, the most boring color scheme the Navy ever used.

There is also a skin depicting the plane from the movie Murphy's War, a civilian British livery that's probably unique to the movie, but the overall color is a shade of blue that wouldn't serve as a basis of any authentic wartime camouflage schemes, not even the late war and post war overall Dark Sea Blue scheme.

Ever since I downloaded the plane I've wanted to paint at least one authentic pre-war skin, but the prospect is daunting. There are no less than seven separate texture files for just the fuselage/float alone, but the big thing is all the painted-on detail. Changing the colors without losing all that beautiful detail would be a major job, perhaps beyond my skills. Several times I've dug out the model and tried to get started, only to throw up my hands and put the job aside for another time.

It's sad, because the Duck is one of my all time favorite pre-war Navy planes, and pre-war Navy is my all time favorite modeling genre. It pains me that the only accurate skins that come with the plane are the wartime one I mentioned above, the fictional movie skin, and one that depicts a contemporary civilian warbird in that grossly incorrect overall gray scheme. Augh!!!!!

Some day I suppose I'll get around to working up a base scheme in authentic silver paint (a color that's always given me fits anyway - I find it extremely difficult to depict metallic silver paint without having it look like bare metal.) But it might be a very long time before I manage it, so I sure hope someone else will get to it first. But it's been a long time and nobody's done so yet...

Of course it wouldn't be necessary to depict metallic silver if one were to paint wartime camo schemes or late/post war dark sea blue skins, but there would still be the more difficult matter of all that painted-on detail. (sigh)
 
OK, so it took this thread to remind me that I've been wanting to paint this plane for almost five years, and it took me almost five months more to really get started.

The problem was that all pre-war Ducks were finished in aluminized silver lacquer, a finish that I've never been able to paint to my satisfaction. And since the original skins all had an incorrect base color of gray, I had to replace the base color before I started to fiddle with markings. Worse, Swingman's textures include excellent detail that would be lost if I replaced his gray with my silver. The only way I could make the plane look silver was by making the textures reflective, which I think looks too much like bare metal, which I wanted to avoid.

Well, I finally figured something out. I was over-thinking the problem. The Navy painted its planes in aluminized silver lacquer because it was the paint that most closely matched bare metal, which they had found though testing was a better sky camouflage than any color of paint. So the planes really looked quite a lot like bare metal. In some photos you can't tell the difference. So I decided to go ahead and make the textures reflective.

I still think they look a bit too much like bare metal, but at least they're silver - the correct color!

So, despite being slowed by holiday madness, I've limbered up the spray can and started painting the Duck. I hope to have some skins ready for upload soon. The Duck is one of my favorite planes, so I will probably overdo it...

Meanwhile, here's a work in progress to whet the appetite:

 
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