aeropilot

9 South African military bare metal 4K liveries for Carenado's C185 
(and 1 bonus grey livery  )

Get the red-stripe liveries for #747 and #731 here, and the "Sandra" #715 livery here.

This all started two years ago as an attempt on a single livery. Even though I've never visited Africa, one of my silly dreams is to save enough money to go flying there, so I decided to paint a South African Air Force bare-metal Cessna 185 for my flights in X-Plane. I never painted a livery before or worked with graphic editors, so I had to learn Gimp. I started on aircraft #748 because the clearest image on Google was of that airplane. However, in the last two years I almost gave up because I was distracted by school, and getting the bare-metal to look realistic was impossible. I should not have chosen bare metal for my first livery, or chose a very obscure aircraft in a very obscure air force. Getting enough photo references required extensive digging through the corners of the internet. Last week I tried at the livery again and I decided to multiply a metallic texture layer into the livery. Things looked much better, and once I got the bare metal to look semi-realistic things sort of exploded.

When I was finished with #748's current livery (it's now based in Zwartkop's SAAF Museum), I decided, heck, why not paint the 3 other variations of the liveries it wore in the past too. Through the years there were minor variations in the squadron seal, or whether the SAAF Castle was painted on or not, etc. Well, now that I've painted #748, I might as well paint #753, which had red wingtips and spinner and different fonts for its tail number. Then I decided I might as well paint both #729 and #730, because they were similar to #753 with minor variations. Then I decided to paint #711, which had almost the same markings but with a grey base instead. Needless to say, this took way a huge lot of research.

I then went on to paint #747, #731, and #715, which are completely different liveries (they look civilian). I'll upload them soon and link them here. 

So I spent two years trying to paint #748, and in the last three days in a frenzy I painted 14 other liveries of 8 different planes. If that's not insanity I'm not sure what is.

Cessna 185A, -D, and mainly -Es were delivered to South Africa in the '60s. During the border wars in South West Africa  they were used by the South African Army's 41st and 42nd Army Air Recon Squadron as observer planes to spot and mark enemy artillery with smoke rockets for SAAF's Mirages (fun fact, the Angolans had Soviet Katyushas, which forced the SADF to design the G5 Howitzer). They were based in AFB Rundu, Katima Mulilo, and Ondangwa (Northern Namibia). The planes were originally bare-metal, with "SA LEËR/SA ARMY" written on the side, but the text was removed when the squadron was transferred into the air force in the late 60s. They were repainted in camouflage by the mid 70s, and many served with the South African Police. Then, some were used as trainers for the 84th Light Aircraft Flight School in AFB Ondangwa (so close to the front!) until 1988 before being transferred to AFB Zwartkop. Before retirement in 2006 they were used as border patrol aircraft either at Messina (near Zimbabwe's border) or Macadamia (near Mozambique and Swaziland's borders) for 44th Sqn (since 42nd had been disbanded and incorporated into 44's B flight, with A flight being Bosboks).

Liveries included are:
#711 SAAF 1968-70s (Light Grey)
#729 SA Leër Pre-1968 (Bare Metal)
#729 SAAF 1968-70s (Bare Metal) *this plane later crash landed in April 13, 2000 in Mozambique territory, killing 2nd Lt. Andrew Patrick Leith and seriously injuring 3 others. 
#730 SA Leër Pre-1968 (Bare Metal)
#730 SAAF 1968-Jan 25, 1977 Written Off at Musina, Limpopo (Bare Metal)
#748 SAAF 1994-1995 42nd Sqd 50th Anniversary 1994-1995 (Bare Metal)
#748 SAAF 1996-1998 President's Trophy Air Race (Military Markings Removed)
#748 SAAF 2011 Zwartkop Museum Static Exhibit for a pilot's reunion (Red Spinner, Bare Metal)
#748 SAAF 2015 Wings Over Zwartkop Airshow, restored to flying status! (Bare Metal)
#753 SAAF (Bare Metal, Red Spinner and Wingtips)
They look very similar, but each livery is different (which caused a lot of hassle on my part!)

To install, just open the .zip and drop the folders inside the livery folder. These are 4k textures, so they only work with X-Plane 10. If I'm not feeling lazy later I might convert them to 2k textures for the folks with X-Plane 9.

I'm still not completely satisfied with the bare-metal though, but my skills are still quite limited. I almost thought it was impossible for X-Plane to render bare metal until I saw RocLobster's Bare Metal liveries for the Cessna 170 at the .org, and my eyes popped out of my sockets....RocLobster, you're a wizard.

If you are unsure which one to fly first, I highly recommend #748 SAAF 2015 just because I spent the most time on that one

Since the total file size is half a GB, if you want to download the liveries individually I made the same entry at the .org but uploaded them in separate zips (taking advantage of their upload size limit ha).

Please please please tell me if there's anything I should fix and I'll try to within my abilities. But please be gentle; these are my first liveries!
 

4 South African military red-stripes 4K liveries for Carenado's C185

After I finished painting the bare-metal SAAF liveries, I decided to paint #747 and #731. This is my first time making a livery with stripes, and it was a bit of work to get the stripes aligned. The livery actually exceeded my expectations, but if there are any problems you find, please tell me!!

Liveries included are:
SAAF ZS-JLY Before Dec 7th 1981
SAAF #731 (ZS-JLY was re-registered to #731 on Dec 7th 1981)
SAAF ZS-JLX Before Dec 7th 1981
SAAF #747 (ZS-JLX was re-registered to #747 on Dec 7th 1981)

The liveries may look the same, but #747/ZS-JLX features the 44th Squadron Springbok insignia and some sort of cover over the passenger door.

To install just open the zip file and drop the contents into the liveries folder. The liveries are 4k so they only work with X-Plane 10.

If you haven't already, get my 10 SAAF bare-metal liveries (#729, #730, #748, and #753) here!
There you can also learn about my story of how I accidentally painted the entire photographed non-camo fleet of SAAF's C185s.

Also, check out the SAAF "Sandra" twin blue-stripe livery (#715) here.

Enjoy

South African Air Force "Sandra" 4K livery for Carenado's C185

My last livery in my painting frenzy (I hope). SAAF C185 #715 is nicknamed by 44 Sqn as "Sandra" apparently as a tribute to Lt Gen Roelof Jacobus Beukes' wife. Who is Sandra Beukes? No idea. What happened to her? No idea. Who is Roelf Beukes? Important enough for a short wiki page, he was once chief of the SAAF until 2005. Why is the plane known by 44 sqn as "the little aircraft with a big heart?" No idea. That's all the info I got from a very obscure 2005 copy of a SAAF's Ad Astra magazine, Wikipedia, and whoswho.co.za This was a rather hard livery to make due to since I'm a beginner, but I think it turned out ok. But if there are any problems please tell me!

To install, just open the zip and drop the folder inside the liveries folder. The textures are 4K so they only work with X-Plane 10.

If you haven't already, get my 10 SAAF bare-metal liveries (#729, #730, #748, and #753) here! 
There you can also learn about my story of how I accidentally painted the entire photographed non-camo fleet of SAAF's C185s.

Also, check out my 4 SAAF red-stripe liveries (#731 and #747) here.

Hope you enjoy 

Basically the default x-plane 10 747, but with many corrections to its animation and an overhauled flight model.
I could not stand the inaccuracies of the default XP10 747, and I have waited for quite a while for someone at Laminar to fix them. A lot of data in PlaneMaker is totally off, including the outrageously high SFC (at 0.600) which made my plane crash at the tip of Hokkaido while I flew from LAX to TPE. The animation of the slats were disgusting too. And the last wire was the fact that roll spoilers aren’t animated. So one day I woke up and decided to fix them myself. This file was uploaded onto the org a week ago, but here it is. The objects here are much more refined than the ones I uploaded on the org, with edited landing gears, wings, and horizontal stabilizers.
​Includes four aircraft, one for each type of engine!
PW4056 PW4062
GE CF6-80C2B5F (higher thrust, higher SFC)
GE CF6-80C2B1F (lower thrust, lower SFC)

Here's the very long list of modifications:
Accurate SFC for PW4056, PW4062, GE CF6-80C2B1F, and GE CF6-80C2B5F. Information from http://www.jet-engin.../civtfspec.html , a complete chart of every engine out there.
The PW4056 has 56,750 lbs of thrust, with sea level SFC at 0.320 and high altitude SFC at 0.572. This is the one that is used on the default United livery.
The PW4062 has 63,300 lbs of thrust, with sea level SFC at 0.335 and high altitude SFC at 0.587
The CF6-80C2B1F has 57,160 lbs of thrust with sea level SFC at 0.316 and high altitude SFC at 0.564. Used on China Airlines, JAL, KLM, Lufthansa, Eva Air, and a bunch of others.
The CF6-80C2B5F has 62,100 lbs of thrust with sea level SFC at 0.323 and high altitude SFC at 0.571
Bypass ratio 4.9 for PW engines and 5.2 for GE engines.
[*]I learned AC3D and tilted all landing gears at the right angles.
[*]Horizontal Tail moves with trim.
[*]Radii of gyration edited.
[*]Landing gear damping edited.
[*]Flaps coefficient dropped from 2.5 to 1.2
[*]Landing gear deployment time edited.
[*]Resized outboard ailerons in flight model from 20% into 30% of chord to match real size.
[*]Outboard aileron deflection now 15 degrees down and 20 degrees up.
[*]Outboard aileron locks past 270 KIAS, just like the real thing. Now while flying at high speed roll rate is slow because you only have the inboards. This is implemented in the flight model and the wing object.
[*]Accurate engine data, different for each engine, including bypass ratio, max RPM, thrust, critical altitude, and a bunch of other tweaks.
[*]Complex spoiler and speedbrakes fully modeled in flightmodel and object. There are six speedbrakes on each wing:
[*]The outmost two (1 and 2) only act as roll spoilers in flight at 45 degrees, but acts as speedbrake at 45 degrees on ground.
[*]Spoilers 3 and 4 act both as flight and ground speedbrakes and roll spoilers at 45 degrees.
[*]Spoiler 5 act as roll spoiler and flight speedbrakes at only 20 degrees, but ground speedbrakes at 45 degrees.
[*]Spoiler 6 does not act as roll spoiler, but only speedbrakes at 20 degrees.
[*]Now the roll spoilers move visually in wing obj. Before the objects only moved with speedbrakes, not spoilers.
[*]The kruger-flaps looked retarded on the default 747 because they only opened up half way. They look less retarded now because I edited the animation and they open up fully. The kruger-flaps were not modeled correctly, so they still look some-what stupid.
[*]In the real 747, the inboard kruger flaps open at flaps 1 while the outboard at flaps 5. This is now modeled in the flight model and the object animation by editing the obj file with a text document. This took an agonizing three hours.
[*]The horizontal tail and vertical tail had too thick airfoils. I changed the vertical stabilizer to NACA 0006 and the horizontal stabilizers to NACA 64-209 inverted at the root and NACA 64-206 inverted at the tip. And I have different airfoils for the h. stab at low and high Reynolds!
[*]The winglets had thick symmetrical airfoils, but in the real thing they produce lift so they are not just wing fences, so I used NACA 64-206 airfoil.
[*]Vertical tail sweep slightly refined.
[*]Autopilot rings when approaching target altitude.
[*]Stall warning alpha raised from 10 to 15.
[*]Flap limits refined.
[*]Maximum control deflection time is 0.5 seconds.
[*]Center tank pump pressure increased so it will empty first.
[*]System numbers modified.


Installation:


Installation:

Make four copies of the default 747. Name each folder (after engine type):

​CF6-80C2B5F
CF6-80C2B1F
PW4062
PW4056
​Now, open up the download. Then open one of the subfolder (example, PW4062).
You should see 747-400 United under the PW4062 folder. Copy that and drop it into the folder named PW4062 you have created. Click yes for replace.
Copy the contents of the object folder into the objects folder inside the folder you created. Click yes for replace.
Copy the airfoil folder into the folder you have created.
Repeat these steps for other engines.




Incredible thanks to CWilliams for posting this great page: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=61457.
Dedicated to Pierre Lavaux who showed me that page, and Peter Tram, and the whole of X-Plane Aviators for their support.
Thanks to Mohammad Gazzawi / Sergio Santagada / Javier Rollon for the basic 747.
Do not distribute the obj file or acf file without my permission. Contact me first at jeffreynasa@hotmail.com
Pierre Lavaux is working on the custom sounds for the next update, and Alex Reichert is working on the systems too. I would think these would be included for the next update.