Geezer

Nice looking stuff.

Lovely!

Yeah, it is a fascinating photo. Usually, the front line squadrons had priority for new aircraft from the factories. Looks like Kesta 4 was a kind of home defense squadron, so it had to take what was left over.

Really nice job, Steve. You've captured the fragile appearance of the early Fokker fighter.

Wilches - I was wrong. I was pissed off at something else and took it out on you. My apologies.

From your earlier comments, its pretty clear you knew that only ONE Gladiator ever mounted a variable pitch propeller. If you are so knowledgeable about model making, why did you ask such a dumb question? Rest assured I am not interested in advice from someone with such questionable judgement.

That was not a production configuration. One or two aircraft are not representative of anything. It was a one-off improvisation - the aeronautical equivalent of shade tree mechanics cobbling something together in their garage. I don't have time for that. EDIT: Forgive me for not being more diplomatic. I have commitments that will take me well into next year, so you can see why I am not crazy about the extra time/effort to model something that only applies to one or two aircraft! Strictly speaking, I should not be modeling the Mk1 with wooden propeller. The Mk1 and Mk2 had different instrument panels but I don't like making cockpits so there's no way in hell I am going to expend the time and effort on two different cockpits when I have so much else to do.

Will also have to vary the color combinations, as some areas were gray desert, some were reddish, and some were sand yellow. Shot below shows sand yellow variant.

All production Gladiators were fitted with two- or three-blade fixed pitch props. Those will be included in the model. At least one Malta Gladiator had improvised repairs using a variable-pitch prop salvaged from a Bristol Blenheim. Is this the third type you are referring to?

Sure! And thanks... I've got a number of Gladiator refs, but it never hurts to have more. At the moment, I'm using the Osprey pub Gloster Gladiator Aces for color scheme info. If I have time, I hope to make two sets of skins. One set will be standard 4-color day camo (inwork now) and the second set will be the standard 2-color day camo. EDIT: there was a lot of variation to the 4-color camo patterns. I suspect the reason was most Gladiators were built with the 2-color pattern, and the additional 2 colors were applied later in the field. Below is a shot of an early, all silver dope Gladiator that had been hastily camo'ed when Italy declared war. Note how scruffy and weather-beaten the field applied paint looks.

Also been fooling around with hi-res terrain tile art. Shots below are of 2048 artwork pasted to an FE sized ground tile.

Got a good start on the fuselage.

Very possible. The first batches of Gladiators sent to the Middle East were painted in over all silver dope. As war became likely, they were given hasty coats of camo. After several months of operations in the desert sun, the locally applied camo started looking pretty scruffy. Dunno about Sea Gladiator colors. Other RAF aircraft, such as the Hurricane Mk1, were initially painted in Dark Earth/Dark Green with silver dope under surfaces, changing to Sky under surfaces in mid-1940.

Found this for a Malta Sea Gladiator. Looks like land colors were mostly, but not entirely, sprayed over the maritime colors. It also looks like the illustrator got careless? The undersurfaces view specifies SKY, but the side view shows maritime light gray on the lower fuselage. EDIT: The more I look at this art, the more I question it. It depicts a Sea Gladiator cowling (with maritime colors) mounted on a Gladiator with standard land camo. Thing is, the Gladiators on Malta were SEA Gladiators, not land Gladiators. Given the desperate nature of Malta's defense, it seems doubtful that vital aircraft would have been stood down for re-painting in land colors.

Yep. The Royal Navy had some Sea Gladiators in storage at Alexandria when Italy declared war in mid-1940. The RAF, desperate for any kind of aircraft, "borrowed" the Sea Gladiators for ops in the desert. Dunno if they were repainted in land camo or not. LloydNB agreed to make the Sea Gladiator textures some time ago, but I've not heard from him in a while. Progress shots. Mostly just the fuselage and engine remain to be mapped.

The three aircraft I have released so far employed both Case 1 and Case 2 textures. The Case 1 textures were 2048, while the Case 2 textures varied in size. Also, many of the textures were quite complex - multiple colors depicting intricate detail, as opposed to a few colors showing simple details. There wasn't any noticeable impact on frame rates on my mid-level desktop, though an old, low-end machine might have problems. Based on that, I suspect optimization is not a major issue unless you have a large number of big, complex textures?