New Repaint Created: FSP A340-300 Mandarin Airlines

I've created another repaint for the FSPainter Airbus A340-300. It represents the aircraft owned by China Airlines which is painted in their subsidiary Mandarin Airlines' livery, registration number B-18851. This plane is operated from Taipei to destinations throughout Asia and internationally. It also apparently flies charters to the Chinese mainland.

The colors of this aircraft have been matched to the AI Aardvark B737-800 available on avsim (aia_mandarin_airlines_b737-800.zip). It also fits right into the China Airlines Summer 2007 flightplans created by dustEagle, which are also available on avsim (chinaairlines-cal-rochina-su07.zip).

Completing this took a little longer than I expected - mostly because I had to recreate the logo as vector artwork - but I'm happy with the results. Plus, now I can use that logo wherever I may want to in the future.

A couple of things I noticed while doing this:

1. The FSPainter texture layout really leaves a lot to be desired. I've only done a couple of Aardvark paints and a few CDAI ones, but the difference in resolution is pretty substantial. The 3D model is OK, but there seems to be a lot of wasted space in the texture files.
2. On the A330/A340 textures, the 2 fuselage sides are not exact mirror images of each other either - it's not off by much, but still...
3. The window layout in the paintkit is incorrect. There aren't enough windows. That's why the titles and registrations don't match the pictures perfectly - there's no way to do it that I can see, short of creating an entirely new set of windows.
   

I'm sure it's been said before, but I think we would all use and appreciate a new set of widebody Airbus AI models. When those appear on the scene, the artwork I used for this repaint can be easily applied to the new aircraft.

Below is the full set of screenshots. The file is on Avsim: fsp_a340-300_mda.zip.















For some comparison shots, have a look at these photos on airliners.net (especially this one compared to the 7th in the list above).

New Repaint Created: AIA B727-100 US Department of Justice (Fleet)

I've created another couple of repaints for the AI Aardvark B727-100. They represent the two aircraft owned by the United States Department of Justice, registration numbers N113 and N530KF. These planes are part of the JPATS fleet (also known as "Con-Air") and are operated by the United States Marshals Service throughout the USA and internationally.

I found several pictures of these planes (1) (2) on airliners.net that I used to lay out the livery. They are basically the same - only the color of the wide stripes and registrations differ. Below are the preview shots; feedback and constructive comments are welcome.

Side note: These aircraft would also look pretty good as generic VIP/business aircraft - at least on the outside. The scenery in these shots is MegaCity Phoenix.

The file is on Avsim: aia_b727-100_usdoj_fleet.zip.

N113:





N530KF:









It took about 2 hours of work until I was happy with the results. The tricky parts were getting the colors right and lining up/scaling the fuselage stripes as they curve upwards in the rear of the aircraft. Tools used: Illustrator, Photoshop, and DXTBMP.

New AFCAD Created: KMZJ (Pinal Airpark/Marana, AZ)

Ever seen pictures of the aircraft boneyards? In addition to Mohave (KMHV) and Victorville (KVCV), there's a big one about 30 miles northwest of Tucson, Arizona. The Pinal Airpark is home to the Evergreen Air Center and has an assortment of planes parked in the desert awaiting their fate. Some are there seasonally, others are in long-term storage, and yet others will be parted out and recycled.

I've created an afcad with 130 parking spots arranged to closely resemble what I saw on Google maps at Pinal airpark. I also put together a traffic file to populate the airport with a selection of 125 AI aircraft I have installed. I made no attempt to match this to any real-world photos, but I think the list is pretty sensible. There won't be any A340-500 aircraft here, for example.

Each aircraft will do VFR touch-and-goes at Marana for 15 minutes two times during the week. These times were generated in Excel and are randomized for each aircraft. That will keep the traffic intensity to a minimum. By removing some of the flightplans, the number of aircraft can be reduced if there's a problem with frame rates.

Note that I didn't create any scenery per se - everything that's here was done with AFCAD 2.21. There is an Army helicopter facility on the north side of the field that I haven't tried to replicate... perhaps at some point in the future I'll put something together.

The file is on Avsim: afcad_kmzj_boneyard.zip.

Here is the full set of screenshots: