Nils's kind of ok repaints

[Nilsfr91]

Here is the completed pack, going from the first pair of -400's delivered in early 1991 to the few ones that were repainted in the 2009 livery and flew for AF until 2016.



The pack is very (maybe too much) detailed, mostly with the 90's as there was multiple attempts of test liveries before the airline settled with the barcode livery used until the rebranding of 2009, some Air France Asie colors and soccer World Cup 1998 stickers but also with the 2000's mainly as 3 brand new frames were delivered to AF in 2003/2004 with different engines/antennas configurations. There is as well slight changes in the livery, there was a cohabitation era when some planes got the then new AF-KLM stickers and crevette logos in 2006 but most of the fleet kept the older livery until 2008-2009.

There's also some detailing with frames having different looking tail logos as the main fleet, F-GEXA and F-GEXB were older-built -400's originally delivered to UTA in 1989/1990 and kept a different front cabin config as the F-GITx and F-GISx fleet (3 windows blocked after the n°1 doors compared for 2 windows for the rest).



Then there is the part of the fleet that got to be repainted in the 2009 colors. 9 of them were repainted between early 2010 and mid 2011: F-GEXB,F-GISC,F-GISD,F-GITD,F-GITE,F-GITF,F-GITH,F-GITI and F-GITJ. There are all represented in the pack just for the sake of detail, but also because the -400M's didn't last long with those colors (F-GISC and F-GISD left the fleet in mid/late 2012, F-GEXB in late 2014), and then the regular -400 were a mix of some of the ones built in 1991/1992 and the trio build in 2003. At least now there's the whole "NC" fleet out there again for the FAIB model.

In total the pack is 44 variations heavy, the ZIP file contains 3 others divided by decades: old colors 1991 to 2000, old colors 2000 to 2011 and "new" colors 2010 to 2016.

There's some small little things in the history of that fleet that are notable: a 7th full pax was supposed to be delivered to AFR in early 1993 reg F-GITG, but the airline being in deeeeeep financial trouble because of existing ones in the late 80's + the forced 3 way AFR-ITF-UTA merger meant that apparently some planes never got delivered/never flew for AF, F-GITG was reg F-OGTG and stored until sold to Royal Air Maroc as CN-RGA (by the way CN-RGA is still flying around for the Moroccan Gov/Crown). The second thing was that apparently the whole pax fleet was supposed to be retired by 2009/2010 as it was expected that by that time most of the A380 fleet and the additional 777-300ER's would have been delivered, a bit of that strategy was seen when a bunch of the -400M's were converted as BCF's in 2007 and the 3 older F-GITx planes were effectively retired in 2009/2010, F-GEXB got stored in late 09. But I guess that the combination of the delays in the A380's deliveries and the 2008/2009 financial crisis recovery meant the fleet was kept around to keep high capacity on some routes alongside the 777's, hell even F-GEXB was brought out of storage and repainted. The fleet was kept around on high demand routes: MRU until 2013 with some exceptions in 2014/2015, then MEX/ATL/BOS/MIA/YUL/YYZ an GIG until 2015/2016. There was a big exception in 2012 when one or two of them were based in ORY to boost frequencies to FDF/PTP and RUN.

Anyways lol, here's the thumbnail:

[Nilsfr91]

Already working on the 747-200SUD and -300, but I found just one picture of F-GETB circa very late 1991 (just post UTA merger) wearing only Air France titles in the 80's blue but in a placement similar to F-GITA and F-GITB in 1991 but bolder, without the tail logo and tail reg. Here's the photo:



Problem: it's the only photo of F-GETB in that livery, I couldn't find any other photo of F-GETB in 1991/1992, there's one were it's in an all-white scheme in early 1994 but nothing in-between. If anyone has or can find photos of that time period I'll be very glad.

[FSMuseum]

Hey Nils,

I tracked down some more photos for you.

Here is F-GETB on Nov 2, 1991:
www.flickr.com/photos/146301829@N08/48959006047/

Here she is again on June 21, 1992:
www.planespotters.net/photo/785530/f-getb-air-france-boeing-747-3b3m

RZjets shows that the aircraft was leased to Garuda Indonesia in 1994:
rzjets.net/aircraft/?reg=667755

Most likely it would seem it was hastily painted in an Air France color scheme after the takeover of UTA in 1991, then a few months later into full colors, then leased out in a white scheme.

[Nilsfr91]

Apr 26, 2024 16:12:22 GMT -5 FSMuseum said:

Hey Nils,

I tracked down some more photos for you.

Here is F-GETB on Nov 2, 1991:
www.flickr.com/photos/146301829@N08/48959006047/

Here she is again on June 21, 1992:
www.planespotters.net/photo/785530/f-getb-air-france-boeing-747-3b3m

RZjets shows that the aircraft was leased to Garuda Indonesia in 1994:
rzjets.net/aircraft/?reg=667755

Most likely it would seem it was hastily painted in an Air France color scheme after the takeover of UTA in 1991, then a few months later into full colors, then leased out in a white scheme.

Thanks Chris! Missed that one on planespotters.net, and this is what I suspected. It seems that it kept that "interim" livery for at least a few months, I'll have to just mirror things for the left side but at least I know that it was an actual livery flown for some time, so I can add it to the mix.

[Nilsfr91]

Hello everyone,

No new paints today (well at there's going to be a little spoiler but hey), just a little question for my fellow FSPX painters out there: I finally had the courage to do some trial and error things with the 767's alpha channel to finally have some more accurate antennas configs on recent and future paints, my issue is that at least with those P3Dv4/v5 native models, even after tweaking the alpha a bit the model and livery loaded and selected in MCX appears with allllll of the antennas (including of course the ones I've blacked-out). I know that in-sim the alpha will propably do it's job, but still I thought that like most other models it would load properly + it's convenient to not have to put the "test" livery in a bogus flightplan and load P3D just to see if only 3/4 antennas appears lol.



Does it do the same for all of you? I do know that for most of the models that were shipped with some FSX native versions (the 777's, A330/A340's) the alphas tend to mask what they are supposed to mask in MCX, so it's probably just a P3Dv4 version thing with MCX.

[bensplanes]

Yup, MCX gives me problems like that all the time.

[Nilsfr91]

May 6, 2024 7:56:42 GMT -5 bensplanes said:

Yup, MCX gives me problems like that all the time.

Ok so at least it seems to be a normal thing with those models, I'll have to check if the alpha works properly in-sim then.

[Nilsfr91]

Here's some proper previews of some of those Condor 767's. When the pack will be finished you could expect livery variations spanning from the early 90's thru the late 2000's with the first winglets retrofits.






The reason of those sudden CFG paints is that I plan on returning to flying a little bit on my sim, for almost a year I only boot it up to check some paints/AFCAD mods and recently I "successfully" merged with the FSDG scenery a simple but detailed for the time FSX freeware scenery for FIMP. I spent the last two weeks playing with MCX to add some very basic dynamic lighting to it for my own use (screenshots below). Being one of my faves destinations in-sim with FSIA (also a nice destination served by CFG) and TFFR/TFFF/TNCM I'm going to do some flying there pretty soon (mostly CDG-MRU/LHR-MRU/RUN-MRU), but in the 2000's one of the few airlines operating to MRU was Condor alongside AFR/BAW/VIR (for a short while)/SAA/UAE/REU/CAW/SEY/MDG/EEZ/LDA and CRL and CFG is only one of the very few missing in my ai plans. The mix of early Thomas Cook, old CFG and yellow CFG liveries being absent for modern ai models I decided to do a quick run of those.

(disregard the clipping-thru-the-scenery jetways, it's just some GSX models plopped-in so there's at least some functional ones to use, the ones in the scenery were only static) 



The rest of the AFR 747's are coming too, the -200SUD/300M's are coming alongside the Condor 767-300ER pack.

[Nilsfr91]

Here are the CFG 767-300ER, going from 1992 to 2014 (when the Thomas Cook logo and livery changed). The pack includes 18 variations regrouped in 3 main "eras": the early 90's to very early 2000's with the old late 80's/early 90's livery as well as the short-lived 1997-2002 livery, the 2002-2004 Thomas Cook powered by Condor liveries (full Thomas Cook livery, late 90's livery hybrids) and the return of the full Condor name applied on the Thomas Cook livery circa late 2004 to late 2009.

The last category includes 2 representative liveries for the winglets version: one for the mid/late 2009 PW powered retrofitted planes and one for the bunch of GE powered ones bought around 2011/2012, all of those wearing the late 2004 livery until 2014.

I'll probably add at least the 757's in the late 90's livery and Thomas Cook/Thomas Cook-late 90's hybrids and the Condor Berlin A320's.

Here's the thumbnail:

[Nilsfr91]

Already an update for the CFG 767 fleet: I was able to find a reference photo of the "balloon" logo made for their 50th anniversary in 2006, so I re-draw it and now there are several additional liveries in the pack wearing those stickers.

I've also realized that the basic Thomas Cook powered by Condor (the one with bolder titles) was only wore by D-ABUC, D-ABUD and D-ABUE but with D-ABUD receiving that livery months apart from the other two, but also keeping it just until very late 2004 compared to D-ABUC receiving the updated Condor titles in the early spring and D-ABUE in the summer. Because of this that livery is no longer a representative one and I've made separate D-ABUC/D-ABUD/D-ABUE variations for that last Thomas Cook powered by Condor livery.

Here's the updated thumbnail:




I've also finished the AFR 747-300/200SUD pack. It basically includes F-BTDH,F-BTDG (-200MSUD) and F-GETA,F-GETB (-300M) for the 90's and 2000's, with the additional "interim" livery for F-GETB circa late 1991-early 1992, F-GETA with the 1998 World Cup stickers that were weirdly kept after it's special livery was removed in late 1998 and even weirder kept until early 2001.

There's also 3 additional liveries for the last year of operations of the type(s) in 2006: F-GETA with it's upper vertical stabilizer painted white and in a very veryyy and scandalously dirty condition (AFR was supposed to had it's sh*t together regarding it's reputation of bad-looking-coal-mine-dirty planes by then) + F-GETA and F-GETB with the Air France titles and logo painted over pending their full retirement from the fleet in july/august as the first batch of brand new COI cabin equipped 777-300ER's started to appear in LFPO by july/august too as replacement, but some photos of at least F-GETB showed that it occasionally kept flying commercial routes, and F-GETA did propably the same to cope with very high demand on the ORY-FDF/PTP/RUN routes during summer.

Here is their thumbnail:



The next post will probably also be a double-feature: the AFR 747-200 rework and the CFG 757's.

[Nilsfr91]

Like the -400's and -300's, at least for the early 2000's when the number of -200's dwindled very rapidly, I've decided to represent each registration. from 2001 to 2005 9 of the AFR -200 were stil around: F-BPVS and F-BPVU until late 2002, F-BPVX until early 2003, F-BPVT until late 2003, F-GCBA and F-GCBB until late 2004, F-BPVY until early 2004, finally F-GCBI until early 2005 and F-GCBJ until mid 2005. Interestingly, F-BPVY and F-GCBA were the only full pax planes from the get go all the others being -200M's, even if like the -300M and -400M's they eventually got a full pax cabin by the very late 90's/very early 2000's.

[Nilsfr91]

Hi everyone! Once again I've got a little question for my fellow FSPX models painters: did any of you were able to get the A380's paintkit recently or just have it? Normally once purchased the ZIP file containing the models etc have a pdf readme file itself containing a link to the aircrafts paintkit. I've purchased the A380 models a while ago before I started painting, I planned to do a very simple paint of one of the tests frames (F-WWDD circa 2005/2006 when it did some certifications trips, including to TFFR where it stayed for a few days mostly doing touch and goes) but now when I click on the link to the paintkit it straight up gets me an error 404 meaning there's no more file...

[azure]

I'm really loving your paints, Nils. Fantastic work on the BA tails in particular.

[Nilsfr91]

Jun 24, 2024 1:18:21 GMT -5 azure said:

I'm really loving your paints, Nils. Fantastic work on the BA tails in particular.

Thank you very much!

[Nilsfr91]

Soooo, hi there. There's been no new paints for some weeks now, late 2023 until quite recently has been (mentally) a tough time and these last weeks I've been going through a journey of tests and appointments for a/some potential diagnostics.



Painting-wise it meant that I until 2/3 weeks ago I didn't open Photoshop nor have truly wanted to paint, now that I'm back onboard I've just done a few half-done livery packs coming from my will to completely shift my A32x/737NG's fleets to the now very correct-looking FSPXAI models (mainly for the very good AI bahavior + lighting work, and some details not seen on the FAIB models). I have already re-done the AFR A318/A319/A320/A321 fleets, the Air Mauritius A319's, the Air Seychelles 737-700, some Easyjet's A319 and 737-700 and the Qatar Airways A319/A320 and A321's.



For the A32x family I've added "custom" details that did not exists with the base paintkit (one of the few limitations compared to the FAIB ones) to add the possibility of having the CFM56A showing and have either the older round front static ports or the very late 90's and onwards square ones + some pseudo detailling like the smaller overwings evac exists given as an option by Airbus and the additional ones on the A319's for airlines like Easyjet.



I've now gone into Air Portugal territory with the A319/A320/A321's, next will be Air Luxor then Iberia. I'll eventually tie all of this back with my originally "planned" projects by painting the early to late 2000's British Airways and Condor Airbuses but on those FSPX models of course.



Here are some pics as a treat (and apology for the hiatus lol):