FSX
I uploaded my rendition of the Short Shetland to simviation and flightsim this afternoon. It is already up at Flightsim and should be at simviation soon.
The Short Shetland was a very large flying boat intended for long range patrol duties. It was to be a replacement for the iconic Short Sunderland. It had a wingspan of 150 feet and a length of 110 feet which made it the largest flying boat made in the UK up to then. Two prototypes were built and it first flew in late 1944. However, the Sunderland continued to perform beyond expectations, the eminent end of the war and the fact patrol flights were being taken over by long range land planes led to no interest in the Shetland. The prototypes were retired with only 90 flight hours between the two.
Almost all the reference data I used for this project was from the Feb, 2013 issue of Aeroplane Monthly magazine.
This is a native FSX Aceleration project. It is modeled after the military prototype which had fake turrets and a camo paint scheme. It has all the usual animations. The textures are in DXT5.DDS format. The landing lights are under the wings and swing down when illuminated. Most of my VC's have been called on the sparse side but that is politically correct for this project. The photo I have which was taken behind the pilot and copilots seats show the cockpit was indeed sparse. However, there are the usual flight and engine instruments so the plane was controllable. I assume there were many more engine and data recording instruments at other stations but I have no data on them so I didn't attempt to model them. All the instruments and controls in the VC are either directly identified or have tool tip ID. The panel instruments are illuminated for night ops. Most of the gauges are default, but I put them all in one .cab file for convenience. I didn't add pilot figures to this model because (in IMHO) they are hardly visible at all let alone to any detail on a project of this size. Also, I just don't really care for figures in the VC. All the photo's I have of the Shetland show it was a little the worse for wear, so I did not add any shine to the textures. In fact, I created a dirty layer which I call "grunge" and added it to the top of the textures with a very low opacity. This was a very large heavy aircraft so it does need a long take-off run to get airborne. It will rotate with up elevator when it gets to 100-105 knots. It also does not want to slow down very fast when it lands so I added thrust reverse. After landing just hit Ctrl+F2, wait a few seconds and advance the throttles and it slows down very well. Come out of reverse thrust by hitting Ctrl+F4. You can see the prop pitch levers in the VC move when you do reverse and back. I have included a sound file for a P & W R2800 engine. The real Shetland had Bristol Centaurus engines. There is a good Centaurus sound file out there but it just doesn't sit well with the Shetland; it works great with my Sea Fury. (one engine vs. four?)
Best, Paul
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Originally Posted by TARPSBird
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