FSX Vought SBU-1

The SBU-1 first entered service in 1935. It was the first scout bomber to exceed 200 mph and the first US Navy plane to use cowl flaps for better engine cooling. This is a native FSX Acceleration model. It features the usual animations plus cowl flaps. It has a specular shine and liveries for service on the US CV-2, CV-3 and CV-4 carriers. The VC is based on real photos. It has animated flight controls and back lighted gauges for night operations. By Paul Clawson.

This is the 3rd time around I have modeled this aircraft. It hasn't been particuarly popular with the vintage airplane crowd, but, it is popular with me. When I want to fly vintage carrier ops, I start with this model or my Boeing F4B. This is a completely new model that complies with the FSX Acceleration SDK. I have always felt the SBU-1 was one of the best looking airplanes of the fixed gear era. It was the first US Navy scout bomber to exceed 200 mph and the first to use cowl flaps to improve engine cooling. This model has the usual FSX animations including cowl flaps. The textures are DXT5.dds format and have a specular shine, I don't know how accurate the shine is on a mostly fabric covered airplane but it seems the planes of this era were kept shiny clean to prevent corrision. The sound is aliased to the Dehaviland Beaver since I have not found a good file for the R-1535 engine. If you know of one feel free to change it and then email me a link. The VC is based on real photo's. It has animated flight controls and the instruments are back lighted for night ops. I chose dark red for the back lights which was common practice to prevent night blindness. I added a dark red vc light effect as I felt the cockpit was really too dark. The effect is included in the download. There are 3 different liveries in the download, one each for service on the USS Lexington (CV-2) USS Saratoga (CV-3) and the USS Ranger (CV-4). The gauges are mostly default but I have combined them all into one .cab file for installation ease.

INSTALLATION: Unzip SBU1vX.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the file Vought SBU-1 into the Airplanes folder of FSX. Open the effects folder and copy the file fx_lowredvc.fx into the effects folder of FSX. That's all, folks.

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