In reply to Bill and Graham on colour schemes......
I was talking to Graham (G-EMIN), our resident flight sim expert just last
weekend on this subject. I recently bought a package called Flight Shop that
allows you to create custom aircraft for MS Flight Sim (5.x). Now I'm not saying
in any way that this is a substitute for a professional CAD package, but it
might be a good (cheap) compromise between a desk top paint package and top of
the range software. However once you are happy with your aircraft you can then
go and 'fly' it ! Something even CAD packages can't do. <g>
The package allows you to build a wire frame model of your design (sorry Ivan's)
and then generate a solid model in any colour scheme you like. The down side is
of course the effort required to input the many hundreds if x,y,z co-ordinates
required to get an accurate representation of the aircraft. Ideally if the
factory were willing to release the co-ordinates, it would make life a great
deal easier.
I haven't tried to use the software yet but Graham (G-EMIN) has. The input
interface apparently leaves a lot to be desired, but looking at the sample
designs I think the effort would be well worth it.
As I have said the hard bit is inputting your data in the first place. Now,
subject to getting the factories co-operation, we could take a divide and
conquer approach. The software builds aircraft in stages (sound familiar ?) from
subassemblies. If three or four of us got together, each taking on a different
subassembly e.g. a wing, an elevator the rudder, the canopy and the fuzz ! etc.
I think it would be achievable.
MS flight sim 5 is a great fun piece of software to have anyway. If you could
fly around in your own Europa, painted exactly as you want it to be, I think it
could make it even better.
Seriously though folks, remember Pete Kember's rainbow at Cranfield. Apparently
he was not a happy man when it came back from the paint shop. Even a crude
bitmap screen shot could have avoided that misunderstanding of the
specification.
Best Wishes
Pete Thomas
#191
100335.3566@compuserve.com
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