Classic British Flight Sim

What paved the way for today's Turkish Cargo... is a rather unlikely, but interesting combination nonetheless.
In August 1993, Turkish Airlines leased An-12 LZ-SFK, operated by Air Sofia of Bulgaria (hence the LZ rego).
Unfortunately, AFAIK, information is very scant on Turkish An-12 ops.

Radomeless An-12 model by me; WIP for FS2004.

LZ-SFK was the first ever An-12 to fly without its nose radome, which once housed the ROZ-1 ground mapping radar. 10 more planes would follow suit with this interesting Bulgarian modification.

Reference pic

Nice rendition, mate...and cleaner than the original pic

Thats s lovely looking model

Airspeed wrote: ↑

06 Jan 2023, 02:23

Nice rendition, mate...and cleaner than the original pic

TSR2 wrote: ↑

06 Jan 2023, 12:07

Thats s lovely looking model

Thanks you two
"Lovely looking" was what drove me into making the radomeless An-12, since literally every other flightsim An-12 features the nose radome.
Unfortunately, info on why the Bulgarians did this mod is pretty much scant.

Also to note: the eyebrows were painted on the texture, as the model itself doesn't have them physically.

Its great to see some more talent coming through. What are you using for modelling?

TSR2 wrote: ↑

07 Jan 2023, 19:13

Its great to see some more talent coming through. What are you using for modelling?

I use Blender for the actual modeling and UV unwrapping, and gmax for the rest, including exporting as a .mdl file (thanks to the FS2004 gamepack).

Here's a simplified version of my modeling workflow.
1. Blender:
• Modeling and UV mapping individual parts
• Exporting individual parts as OBJ

2. gmax:
• importing .OBJ files via a MAXScript and applying auto smooth
• Creating and applying materials
• Animating parts
• Applying landing and taxi lights where needed
• Exporting as FS9 .mdl



It probably sounds crazy that I'm using two apps for this, but I'm very familiar with Blender and how fast I can get things done with it, hence me using it.
Funnily enough, from start to finish, the An-12 exterior model alone took me a week, whereas other projects took longer.

Brilliant work. One of the reasons I asked was that most developers are using Blender for MSFS too, so if you ever try it, the modelling bit should be very familiar.