The first PBY flight was in 1935, and before the WWII it was suposed to be replaced by the Martin PBM. At the end of the war, more than 4.000 planes where build. The Royal Canadian Air Force named theirs "Canso".
Some of them where buyed by Icona, a spanish company specialized in forestal fire fighting. It has used PBY, Do-24T, CL-214 and presently CL-415 as water bombers. It seems that there was no oficial painting scheme in the Icona Cansos: they where yellow, red, bare metal with red stripes, bare metal with black patches... This one is painted like the colors of the EC-FMC, wich was rented by Icona, posibly to the chilenian, who used too the same model and had exchanged them sometimes.
Diferences between the real plane and this:
The real has water bay doors, this one not
The real is unarmed, this one has three turrets like was in wartime
Use mode:
Search for an airport near the fire, and a river or lake near. Fill the plane with fuel and go for the water. Fill the plane with water WITHOUT STOPPING, touching the water with the knell so many times will be necesary. When is filled up, launch the water in one or two passes over the fire. Go back to the lake until there is almost no fuel. Then go back to the airport. Remember that over the burning, the air is turbulent and goes up. More, the engines lost power and will shut down.. or set in fire.
I include a file called OPERATION.TXT where is specified how to handle the plane. In few words: slow but stable and safe.
As allways, I searched planes from Icona in the web, and founded a model of the Canso 71 for FS98, iconpby6.zip, but is for FS98, when you needed a model for water landing and another for ground landing.
Talking about water landings: to make this compatible with Fs2002, I made a change to the aircraft.cfg of Mike Stone. This is the original for FS9:
//water=fx_spray
water=fx_waterland
and this is the change I do for FS2002:
water=fx_spray
//water=fx_waterland
My previous repaints are:
For FS2002 and FS2004:
b190ah6: Beech 1900D from Us Air Express
b190ah7: Beech 1900D from the canarian island's Air Atlantic
l1011ah9: Two L1011 leased by Iberia
d328ah14: The only Do-328JET of Welcome Air
atr4ah17: Two of the ATR-42 owneds by Lai, a venezuelan company
pby5ah18: A water bomber PBY Catalina, the Canso 71 is used in Spain
For FS2002, in Fs2004 the night cockpit lightning dont looks well from outside:
b727ah1: Green and yellow Braniff's 727
b727ah2: 727 flow by Viasa when was bought by Iberia
b727ah3: Braniff 727 painted by Alexander Calder
b727ah4: One of the first 727 flow by Kulula.com
b727ah11: Alaska Airlines 727 leased to the Seattle NFL Team Seahawks
For Fs2002 only:
b737ah8: American Airlines Astrojet, a 2001 plane painted like the 60´s
b737ah12: A BWIA 737-800 in caribean decoration.
d328ah15: The another two Do-328 (prop) of Welcome Air
d328ah16: Air Engiadina was the launching client of the DO-328
Dont know how it works in Fs2004:
Ju52mlka: Ju-52 owned by Milka chocolats company, in flying state
md11ah5: MD-11F from Eva Air Cargo
tornah10: Tornado in 2001 Tiger Meet painting
c235ah13: The CN-235 was used by the spanish line Binter Mediterraneo
Warranty:
I love the warranty wrote by Andrew W. Hall:
"None. Zip. Nada. Use at your own risk. I dont think
this will harm your computer in any way, but if it does, I
dont even want to hear about it."
A last remark: Why don't become a repainter? There are a lot of planes with special markings. I'm tired of the usual F-16 low-vis scheme, or the usual 757 in Delta markings. Why don't a "Bat's outa Hell's" B-25 or a serie of Qantas 737s? The plane modelers like Mike Stone are very important, but they can't make all the painting schemes by himselfs. So why don't help they?
Installation:
Just unzip pby5ah19.zip in your "Aircraft" folder of FS2004 or FS9, install your desired panel and that's all. If you don't know how to install a panel, just let the one who comes instaled, but I don't like it.
If you like this, or any observation, send me a mail to dracosist@cantv.net
