Request for Assistance - Radomes and Aft Fuselage Sections

[cnault2]

Hello,

I'm new to FSX painting - have been using tutorials for everything so far but I'm stuck on issues with stripe alignment on aircraft radomes and the aft fuselage sections. I've made some headway in understanding what's necessary for scaling, etc., by looking at .dds files of completed paint jobs. Is it as "hit and miss" as it seems?

Case in point, I'm currently painting 2 liveries of the Flight1 B200 King Air paint kit. To my rookie eyes, it seems like a good paint kit but the nose radome is positioned in a way that makes it tough to reference or scale stripes to the fuselage point it attaches to.

I've attached a jpeg of the actual aircraft and one of the problem I'm causing. I say it that way because I know it's my inexperience and not the fault of anything else. Like I said, the B200 paint kit seems to be a good one.

I'll take any advice or referral to a tutorial that I can get. I used the Simmers Paint Shop Advanced Search with the obvious keywords (nose, radome, dumb rookie, etc..) but I never received any returns. That's why I'm hoping to get some guidance here. Just pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Mark

[adlabs6]

Hi,

My guess would be that the radome UV mapping is not aligned with the fuselage, for whatever reason. This is something buried deep inside the aircraft MDL (model) file, and can't be changed by users.

Your best bet is going to be opening your paint kit template, and shifting those stripes on the radome up to get the alignment right. Judging by the screenshot, it would appear that the radome stripes might also need to be very slightly "squashed" vertically, but that can come after getting close on the alignment.

The only way to do this (that I know of) is trial and error. Open the paint kit, nudge the radome lines up a bit, save, and check in FSX. Repeat, nudging the stripes as needed after checking each prior adjustment.

Great looking repaint, by the way.

[Serval]

I think adlabs is right.
Sometimes models are not mapped perfectly.
With mapping modellers meer the same problems you meet when you wrap a paper around an aircraft model. So a lot of stretching and scaling is used. Sometimes small parts are a bit misplaced. Or even a copy of another part that looks like it. (you can see that in many games when you are familiar with making textures).
Probably the Original repaint of the model did not have similar details in the nose as yours. So, the modeller figured it to be no problem (or not his, depending on how lazy he was or maybe running out of time).

So, never think that only you can be the problem. But sure, experience will help to work around matters like this.
To add: to can try to use some small colored lines or shapes to try and figure out how the nose is mapped. Sure it will be a lot of work to solve this issue.

[cnault2]

Thanks for the guidance , gents. I've pursued the options you both mentioned. I've accomplished the alignment by doing so, but some invisible item is deforming the individual stripes on the nose. That, of course is a separate problem (see image). There are similar repaints of the Flight1 King Air with nose striping that isn't deformed so I'm again wondering if I'm goofing things up.

I don't want to pester you all more than I have already. I'd love to hear any thoughts you may have on this new issue. Otherwise, thanks much for your information. I hope to return the favor soon.

Take care,

Mark