Warbird Information Exchange

hi all,

Where can I get blue prints? And what other kind of material is worth having for starting a reproduction? I really don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet. But it has something to do with me inquiring about V-1710-33's the other day.

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Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

Dig around in www.aircraft-manuals.com and you'll be amazed @ what turns up pertaining to products built in upstate New York

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Well, the Smithsonian is a good place for things like that. I believe my museum rang them up for some Waco AQC-6 blueprints. I'm not sure if military aircraft blueprints are as readily available as civilian aircraft.

Peace,

David M

Woof,Woof, odball.god I love Kelly's Hero's .I'm sitting here ,eating cheese,drinking wine and soaking up the rays.a hippy about 25 yrs too soon. and ya gotta love Don Rickles too.a great movie.one of my favorites.sorry ,I know this has nothing to do with your post but I love your pic.

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"WHAT ME WORRY?"

NASM has drawings on microfilm for most US aircraft from WWII. Their archives section is currently closed to new orders, as they are gearing up for the shift to Udvar-Hazy from Garber. The difficulty with any of the microfilm drawings though is that not all of the drawings are present, and not all of them are correct. Also quite a few of the images are of such poor quality as to be unreadable. This is not NASM's fault mind you, and we are lucky to have anything at all. From what I understand, the orignal paper copies of the drawings are in the National Archives, so that is a possible place for getting examples, but you will either have to photograph them yourself, or pay someone to do it. Also, one problem with the microfilm, at least with the rolls I have seen is that the drawing images often extend to the very edges of the 35mm film roll. This makes it very difficult to scan, as most scanners are preset with standard 35mm rolls in mind, and do not extend to the edges... so you will need to come up with alternative approaches for scanning them in accurately.

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

Also keep in mind that, unless you have a vellum or PCM drawing (full sized, tooling approved drawing the real airplane is built from. and it won't be on paper), you should NEVER attempt to scale off of a production drawing as they are sized to fit the particular piece of paper they are printed on and are 'reference only'.
We had such a peeing contest @ BADWRENCH with one of the FAA PMI's to the point that we actually put 'for reference only' on the clock in the QC office.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

From what I understand you do not want to admit you are making an airworthy aircraft if you are talking to the National Archives. They will in all likelihood want you to get permission from whoever owns the rights to the original design. For example I know someone who was very keen to replicate the Curtiss SOC Seagull and had determined that there were original plans available in the Archives. However the Curtiss-Wright Corporation still exists and they would not permit a flyable design to be built. The Archives also will not let just anyone handle and reproduce plans in any event; there are only a few vendors they will allow and as I remember the quote to copy the plans was around $10K. The SOC plans were on schedule to scanned sometime later in this century. The same person also learned that some years previously another set of plans (not sure from where, Smithsonian or Navy) for the SOC had been lent to someone at the Washington Navy Yard and were never returned and could not be found.

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

Hey Nathan, contact me (pm) and I will help.I know what you want.

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Hang The Expense

CORRECT,So many people(NOOBIES) are not aware of the problems with trying to scale up from a drawing.They need the ordinate drawings which can be challenging to find or find some old bastard that has already done the work required.

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Hang The Expense

I had managed to get a full set of Lockheed Hudson drawings from the Smithsonian about 10 years ago, but there on microfilm and hard to get copies made of. I chatted to Richard about this years ago.

Reader/printers are pretty cheap if you can watch and wait. I picked up a nice Minolta RP6062 with a zoom lens and the motorized reel system for about 25$ at a city auction. The printer needs to be cleaned a bit but works well enough. You can sometimes find readers only for just as cheap. On occasion, you can find a reader/scanner that will plug into your computer for a couple of hundred bucks.

The one thing about printing out drawings, is that they take up a tremendous amount of space. If I were to convert all of my film to paper, it would take a couple of file cabinets to handle it all. I am only printing exactly what I need, as I need it. I can work off the reader for most bit and pieces.

Sometimes I get crazy ideas in my head. But in the end its usually something to big for me to do.

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Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

Now that the Smithsonian archives are back up and running, can anyone who has (successfully) ordered drawings from them in the past give a quick walkthrough of the process?

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

Go to their website, click on the contact tab. Then leave a message as to what you are wanting. Within a couple of weeks you will get a packet in the mail telling you the cost of what you want. I was looking for information for a particular aircraft and what I just told you is what I did. Once I got the packet in the mail I copied the forms just in case they got "lost" in the mail. What I ordered cost me a few K's

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A&P/I.A., A.A.S./Aviation Maintenance technology
Warbird salvage/recovery
One day I'll get that P-40!

Shrike,
NASM are good people. I have purchased quite alot from them over the last 30 years, they have original tech drawings as well as many hard to find tech orders. Just write to them explaining what you want and they will send out an information package list what they have available and the cost, there will also be an indemnity form you have to fill out and , due to small staff and big demands, there are limits on how much you can order at one time. I recieved a quote from them this week and sent back an order today, so they are certainly back up and running. The address I use is; Smithsonian Institution, P.O Box 37012, National Air and Space Museum, Rm 3100, MRC 322, Washington DC 20013-7012.

There are several threads on WIX about buying microfilm scanners off ebay and copying the film to CD-ROM to make it more easily accessable. This probably isn't approved under the terms of your purchase. However there are certainly individuals out there doing it. Goodluck.

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"If that's a goddamn 'Jug' in front of me, you sure as hell better wiggle your wings." 80FS/8FG Cape Gloucester, December 1943. And the entire 41st Fighter Squadron rocked their wings.

ALWAYS LOOKING FOR P-38 PARTS