The helicopters will form part of John B’s project for the UK emergency services. The two long-nosed N3’s are based together and differ slightly in the door and window arrangement. The short-nosed version is slightly earlier, has a different badging scheme and is based separately.
Also, from John, will be an additional offering of the 5 Army Air Corps (SAS) Dauphin’s based in Hereford in the UK. This is the blue example in the next screen shot and is deliberately kept inconspicuous to look like a typical commercial livery. In the same shot is the US Coast Guard MH-65E that is not part of any current project, but I wanted to make it anyway:
Finally, some French Navy examples – the AS565 Panther, the short-nosed SA365N and the long-nosed SA365F:
The French inventory of Dauphin’s is quite difficult to scope because of the different version numbers and paint schemes over time. I think what I have made is representative. There is a further squadron (34F) of 8 short-nosed AS365s in the anti-submarine role that have the same two-tone grey camo scheme as the Panther. I haven’t made those for reasons given at the end of this post.
Here are some air-to-air shots of all the Dauphin’s in the package:
Scenery and flight plans for the Air Ambulances and SAS models are in hand with John B. The US Coast Guard MH-65E is more of a challenge because Scramble lists 99 of them, scattered all around the USA. I have painted the model as an Elizabeth City example (I think they have 5) so users can potentially add them to the USCG C-130 Elizabeth City package I put together in 2019.
The SA365N’s, SA365F1’s and AS565 Panthers, are based at Hyères (LFTH) near Toulon in the south of France, but are usually dispersed to other airfields for rescue duties, or aboard ships. The default FSX and P3D scenery is reasonable, but Google Earth imagery is blurred out making it difficult to determine where the helicopters park. The 8 AS365’s in the anti-submarine role are based at Lanvéoc/Poulmic, Brittany in NW France. The default scenery is just a runway and again the GE imagery is blurred out. I don’t really want to get bogged down with scenery, so I think I will leave it to users to make use of the French examples as they wish.
Next job for me is to add the two LODs to all the models. I’ll then get the Air Ambulance and SAS versions to John before uploading the helicopter package.
John
