Since mid 2007 til now I was surprised by the number of messages posted in
Flightgear forums by a lot of people looking for this airplane and asking why
it is available for almost all the other flight simulators and not for
Flightgear !?
I'm interested in this kind of weird planes,so I decided to stop seeking
answers and to start building it .
It took me a lot of time to gather the needed informations(schemas,images
and articles etc...)to start with Blender .
I do not pretend it is as perfect as it should be but I think it would temporary
fill the gap til a Flightgear develloper decides to build something better .
Many liveries are available including a fictitious one.
Note :
1-The A300 and the A300-600ST Beluga real main panels are not
the same.The Beluga one has been subject to many changes:
Some instruments have been added and some others have been
removed.
2-There are only Inner ailerons in the real Beluga(I'm not able to
put some Images here because they are copyrighted but you can
check them easily by typing "A300-600ST Beluga images '' on your
browser).For example you can find both outer and inner ailerons in B-747.
History :
The A300-600ST Super Transporter was the best alternative for Airbus Industrie to replace it's aging fleet of B-337SGT_Super Guppies which the company had bought from Aerospacelines in the 70s' of the last century.A more capacious airplane was needed to ferry oversize subassemblies (wings, fuselages) between the partners' factories throughout Europe.
Therefore, Airbus decided to use the same concept used for building the Super Guppy : Modifying an existing airplane(A300-600R).
The first A300-600ST was built in Toulouse, France,and rolled out in June 1994.Four Belugas had been delivered by 1998 followed by the fifth in 2001 which allowed the smooth retirement of the Super Guppies in 1997.
enjoy
------
Pierre Duval
------------
Mars 2012