Once time long ago I bought a karate book and, immediately after the introduction, I found the next phrase: "If you are no able to run one kilometer without stop, don't keep reading this book".

Well, if you are a fantasy repainter or you don't care if a plane is Swedish or Chinese, just forget this part and wait until I release the next one.

I'm supposing that you have, at least, one picture of the plane. Is it enough? No, never. Almost every plane has differences between port and starboad side. And, if you can see all the fuselage paint, it means that you can't see the wings. Let's do an example with the Boeing 727. Have you noted that a well documented picture never says 727-200? It says 727-212, -2Q8 and so on. That is because every airline orders its planes with slight differences: more or less bathrooms, kitchens and seats. So, if you count the windows between the back door of the plane and the engine, they are not always the same. And the 737-800 has an air intake and two cargo doors on the starboard (right) side, but not in the port (left) side.

Another reason to have more than a picture of the plane is the time and weather. Wet planes are darker that dry ones. I remember, when I was doing my Swisswings Do-328, that all pictures showed black letters and grey lines... except one. This was the only one taken on a sunny day. The others where all taken on a cloudy day. Wet planes often seems more glossy than dry ones. This is a thing you must take care when we talk about military planes. Many European fighter pictures are taken on rainy days, and even a matte Bf-110 seems to have its alpha channel high. A good place to find pictures of modern planes is www.airliners.net but remember that you can't put the pictures inside the finished file, because they are copyrighted. Of course, it's not the only web site, there are others. Another good real place is your local airport. Also, the airlines' web sites, the planes magazines, etc.

Remember to check if the airline includes the register code of the plane on the wings. Some do, another don't. Some of them even paint the wings instead of leaving it bare metal. The military planes include country identification on the wings... some only two, some four. But there are Sudafrican planes that don't have any.

The search for vintage aircraft is different. You can find pictures and side views on the historical sites. Sometimes also in plane magazines and old books. But another way to find information about vintage aircraft is to buy a scale plastic model. They include many paint schemes and the plane is displayed very detailed and by every side. Let's say that they did the investigative work for you.

Usually you can finish with many pictures of the plane from different years, from different places. On WWII, for example, the winter camouflage was very different from the summer one, even with the same plane. Even in the same squadron each plane had different camouflage. Here is when you must choose which plane, or how many planes, you want to do. Yes, you can do more than one.

One thing I like to do, when I can, is to follow a specific plane for many years, and release different repaints inside the same file for each change of paint, or each airline it served. It's funny to see that sometimes a regional plane travels all over the world in a few years.

And here is when the history of the plane is important. Maybe some of you know why a particular 767 is know as "the Gimly Glider"? Or know there is actually the third prototype of the Boeing 727-100?

Many of you had downloaded the "Memphis Belle", but there were two of them. The real one, and the plane of the movie. The pin-up girls were different, and the real one had dark green stripes over the wings, elevators and upper fuselage. A famous P-51D is called Cripes A'Mighty, but there was a P-47, a P-51B and two P-51D's called Cripes A'Mighty and flown by George Preddy. Also, today exist a P-51D in flying state called Cripes A'Mighty.

Another good source for information is...www.flightsim.com, of course. The plane could have been done for FS5 or FS98. I never do a repaint that was already done less than six years ago, but it's always worthwhile to search for similar or older files.

So, take your time and find so many pictures and history of a particular plane as you can. If don't, find pictures of similar ones. And if don't, well... do your best.

Enough for now. The next part of the series is "Painting and weathering a plane or seaplane". Any question, you can send me an email.

Alejandro Hurtado
dracosist@cantv.net

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