This skin pack is a collection of fictional skins representing the Main Battery flying the AJS-37 Viggen, an aircraft with an all weather strike role similar to the A-6. The skins represent a CAG bird and six line birds, each with separate MODEXes (side numbers) and accurate A-6 BuNos (serial numbers). The tactical grey pattern is based on the MIL-STD-2161A(AS) pattern for the F-4 Phantom, which has a fuselage shape similar to the AJS-37 Viggen. All organizational markings are based on VA-196 markings ca. 1995.
Attack Squadron 196 (VA-196) was commissioned in 1948 as the VF-153 Thundercats, then redesignated VF-194 in 1950. VF-194 flew variants of the Skyraider in the Korean War, and following the Korean War was redesignated the VA-196 Main Battery. VA-196 transitioned to the A-6 Intruder in 1966 during the Vietnam War, which it flew until its decommissioning in 1997.
In addition to the nickname "Main Battery", VA-196 started using the nickname "Milestones" in 1979 until its decommmissioning. VA-196 is notable for being Stephen Coonts' A-6 squadron in Vietnam, and therefore understandably the A-6 squadron in the book "Flight of the Intruder." As a nod to the book, NK-505 also has a Grafton/Cole variant in this skin pack with their names on either side of the canopy.
For Compact Installations - 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 Release, Open Beta, or Legacy 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.
For Traditional Installations or JSGME Compatible Extractions:
If you don't wish to use the shared texture folder and custom autoexec.cfg, you have a couple of other options available. Selecting the Traditional Install copies all textures to each livery folder, then copies each livery to each version of DCS detected (up to three versions, including release, legacy 1.5, and open beta). As a result, the listed hard disk space requirement assumes all three DCS versions are installled. Each skin is independent and portable.
If you wish to install to a location other than your Saved Games folder, you must select the Single JSGME Extraction, or else the installation will fail for not detecting existing Saved Games\DCS folders. Selecting this option will create a JSGME compatible install that can be dropped directly into your JSGME _MODS folder for installation. Each skin is independent and portable.
For either of these installation options, if there is an issue with textures not displaying, then it is likely a problem with the installer. Please let me know what textures are missing so that I can troubleshoot the issue.
Change Log:
1.0 Initial Release
1.01 Fixed issue with outer pylons
1.03 Applied ARAK M70B textures
Updated Installer for DCS 2.5
If you have any squadron requests, please PM me. If possible, provide top and profile views of the aircraft, preferably line art (much easier to extract color), and for CAG/CO birds, a close up of the tail fin is greatly appreciated.
You are free to use any of these skins in other projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file.
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