This skin pack is a collection of fictional skins representing the 52d TFW flying the AJS-37 Viggen, an aircraft with a fuselage shape similar to the F-4. The skins represent one boss bird and six line birds split evenly between the 23d TFS and 81st TFS, each with accurate F-4G serial numbers. The tactical grey pattern is based on the three-tone Hill Grey pattern for the F-4 Phantom. Each skin has a "normal" version and a weathered version. Weathered skins have a bleached effect as if the aircraft were heavily exposed to the sun for months on end. Normal skins include pilots with green flightsuits, while weathered skins include pilots with desert flightsuits.
The 52d Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) was activated in 1971, and flew out of Spangdahlem AB, Germany as part of the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). The wing originally consisted of the 23d Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS) "Fighting Hawks" flying the F-4 and the 39th TEWS flying the EB-66. In 1973, the 81st TFS "Panthers" joined the 52d TFW and brought with it the Wild Weasel role. Eventually, the 52d TFW would consist of ony Wild Weasel aircraft, with the 23d and 81st TFS flying the F-4G and the 480th TFS flying the F-16C. The F-4G would be flown by the 52d TFW until early 1994.
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
1.03 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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