FJ-3M VF-142 Fighting Falcons Skin Pack for DCS F-86F 2.0

This is the first in a series of US Navy and Marine Corps skin packs for the FJ-3/FJ-3M Fury, the navalized variant of the F-86 Sabre (the M version being Sidewinder capable). The idea of this series is to have a single skin for each squadron, and separate decals for each side number (Modex). The last 4 digits of the serial number (BuNo) use the USAF serial number to allow for dynamic BuNos, though the side number must be selected by choosing the skin itself. This will allow a common Modex pool and a single texture for each squadron, thereby allowing you to employ an entire squadron in a mission while keeping the hard drive and in-mission RAM footprint to a minimum.

Fighter Squadron 142 (the Fighting Falcons, not to be confused with the VF-142 Ghostriders that was designated in 1963) flew the FJ-3M Fury for a short time (1956-1958), including a deployment on the USS Hornet (CVA-12) as part of Carrier Air Group 14 (CVG-14) before returning to NAS Miramar and transitioning to the F8L1-1 Crusader. This skin pack features skins from the 1957 Hornet deployment (CVG-14 Tailcode A) and the return to Miramar (1958) prior to transitioning to the Crusader. The 1958 skin displays the CVG-14 Tailcode NK, which replaced A once the US Navy went to 2 letter tailcodes.

Note: this skin pack uses an EXE installer that creates common texture folders and an autoexec.cfg (if you already have one, you can make manual changes). I would like your feedback on this system; if it works I intend to apply it to my other skin packs. If you have a 1.x version of this skin installed, then the installer will remove the old 1.x liveries and obsolete texture folders. Be sure to update any missions that used 1.x series skins.

A Note About Autoexec.cfg:

Rather than copying texture files to their respective livery folders, I prefer to use a series of common texture folders along with unique filenames. This allows a single instance of many of my common textures, and keeps the hard drive footprint to a minimum (especially nice if you run a SSD for your system drive).

The installer will add a series of folders to the DCS Texture path; if you do not have these folders created, then it is no problem. The autoexec.cfg included will automatically point to the Texture folder in your Saved Games\DCS folder, and regardless of whether you run the Open Alpha, Open Beta, or Release version of DCS, the path will always point to your Saved Games\DCS\Texture folder. Again, this saves space on your hard drive.

If you use your own Autoexec.cfg, then when prompted to overwrite you can click "no". This will create a file called autoexec.new, and you can manually make the updates as you like. Just don't modify the top line with the file date; this is used by the installer for version control. However, feel free to include it in your existing autoexec.cfg, so you don't get prompted to overwrite until there's another update to the autoexec.cfg.

If you inadvertently overwrite your autoexec.cfg, it is actually backed up as autoexec.old. Just open it and copy the appropriate information to the new file.

Updating from the 1.x series of FJ-3 Skins:

With the release of DCS World 1.5.4 and 2.0.3, the decal layer that once covered the entire model has been removed by Belsimtek. As such, organizational specific modex placement as well as modex placement on the wing is no longer possible. The modex (1xx-3xx) is now selected in the Mission Editor rather than by skin selection. For skins that have the BuNo on the tail, the last two digits of the modex are also used for the BuNo (this is not accurate, but just to allow a dynamic number on the tail).

Detail placement in textures based on USN skins by Crazyeddie.
Special thanks to SkateZilla for the awesome Photoshop template.

You are free to use any of the textures in other skins or projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file.

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