Looking for assistance

[yukonjohn]

I am one of the directors at the Yukon Transportation Museum:

www.yukontransportationmuseum.ca

We have a Smith Miniplane, a static full-size replica of the Queen of the Yukon (a Ryan B-1 sister ship to Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis), and we are also doing a replica (using quite a few original pieces) of a Fairchild 71/FC-2W2 bush plane CF-BXF. I have suggested the idea of having flight sim models of our aircraft produced for sale on CDs in our gift shop as a museum fund raiser? I have a fair number of walk-around pictures of the Miniplane and the Ryan, and could also provide some colour information and photo scans of BXF.

I am not a sim flyer (yet, tho' may have to join the fun as the room for my R/C models keeps getting smaller), so am very ignorant of the process of producing sim flyers. I think I have seen the Spirit of St. Louis available and was wondering if a reskin (if that is correct terminology) can be done to represent the Queen of the Yukon. I am not sure if the Smith Miniplane or the Fairchild 71/FC-2W2 have ever been done.

I am hoping to find someone who would donate some work or advice for our Museum for this kind of project. Any assistance or advice that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
John Gryba
Whitehorse, Yukon
Canada

[adlabs6]

Hi there,

I'm looking around right now for some options to suggest to you. I recall a few people in the Microsoft Flight Simulator community who might could give you better advice. After I get their contact info together I'll post it for you. Hopefully today.

[yukonjohn]

Hi there,

I'm looking around right now for some options to suggest to you. I recall a few people in the Microsoft Flight Simulator community who might could give you better advice. After I get their contact info together I'll post it for you. Hopefully today.

Thank you for the offer of assistance. I have just been in contact with Felipe Belalcazar who has done a Smith Miniplane. In addition to getting a Ryan B-1 and a Fairchild FC-2W2/71 (don't know if anyone has done one of those yet), another idea is to find someone to do a repaint of one of the existing DC-3 models to our Canadian Pacific Airlines CF-CPY (now mounted as a full-size weathervane).

Any assistance or advice that someone can offer would be appreciated.

Regards,
John

[adlabs6]

Ok, I've found the resources I was looking for, sorry for the delay.

First on the DC-3 repaint project, I found you some paint kits which are free to download. A paint kit such as this is used to create a new custom repaint quite easily. There is one available on the linked page for the default DC-3 which is included in Flight Simulator 2004. You can find it on this page:
The Douglas DC-3 for Microsoft Flight Simulator FS2004

I searched the popular flight sim repaint site AVSIM for any repaints of the scheme on the DC-3 you have on display, but found no matches. I was searching for this scheme, which I found at airliners.net:
Photos: Douglas C-47 (DC-3) Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net

I also found no matches for existing models of the Fairchild or Ryan at AVSIM either.

When it comes to getting a model built for Microsoft Flight SImulator, I can't suggest anything sure fire. I know of another museum which has a custom DC-3 model for FS2004 which they sell to support the museum. You can see more about it at Mid Atlantic Air Museum:
WELCOME TO THE MID-ATLANTIC AIR MUSEUM

And their FS related pages and products:
MAAM-SIM WELCOME

I do not know who these guys use to get their models made, but you could get in touch with them and see if they can help, especially since they've already been through the process.

I hope this is of help. If you need anything further, feel free to ask and I or someone here more knowledgeable will try to answer. Best of luck with the project!

[yukonjohn]

Thank you for your research and the info. This points me to some good options. Appreciate your interest in our project.

Regards,
John