Ever since the first time I saw one as a kid who grew up in the 70s and 80s, the Blackbird has always been my favorite aircraft. I have, figuratively speaking, read every book and watched every video on it available. I have seen it in person, and have built, painted and decaled numerous models of it over the years. This skin pack contains my representation of some of my favorite of the most notorious Blackbirds from throughout history. I hope you enjoy them!
-Koder
*** Please see note in the description about downloading the bundle.
What's Included?
These skins are for the YF-12A Blackbird mod for DCS from VSN Mods. At the time of this documentation, the mod can be found here:
https://filehorst.de/folder.php?key=duuqITUb. Please note, the mod requires Flaming Cliffs 3, or the F-15C module. Some of these skins are reproductions of SR-71A Blackbirds, which the model more closely resembles (especially in the nose section). They have been painstakingly built on top of the default skin that is included with the mod, and also use the incredible base layer repaint work done by DCS User Jack_Veil in his amazing version of 61-7972 which can be found here:
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3318236/.
Aside from countless hours of research, a lot of additional work had to be put into first stripping her down to the naked version, removing and/extracting elements of the texture and repainting what was behind them to make it reusable and easily customizable. This includes all of the logos, insignias, stencils, text, and numbering, most of which had to be realigned. Then many of the decals and stencils were manually recreated by hand, including numerous additional stencils around the cockpit area (RESCUE panel access, Ejection Seat Warning, etc). Finally, all of the text had to be re-added as editable text elements, so each skin could be painted.
In addition to the individual skins, there is a replacement texture for the pilot flight suit, to give it the bright orange look we would expect to see. There is also an alternate texture for the afterburner to give it a little more realistic feel, especially at high altitude. Both of these are included in all of the skins in this pack by default.
Blank YF-12A (SR-71) Skin Template:
The skin pack includes a template you can use to make your own custom liveries. See the specific section below for more information on the template and how to use it. Please note, the template uses two custom fonts (Aerorelix Stencil and AmarilloUSAF), that you will need to download and install yourself. These fonts can be easily found for free on the Internet.
*** NOTE: Since the bundled file is too large (4 Skins + Template ~525MB Zipped, ~1.94GB Decompressed) to upload here, you can download it directly from the Amoeba Games website at
http://www.amoeba-games.com/ClickRouter.aspx?linkid=191. The file is 100% safe but feel free to run it through your anti-virus tool of choice. The strange URL is only so I can track downloads. You will then be redirected to the actual zip file which you will see is named "YF-12A Classic Skin Pack 1.0.zip"
