Hi Tarquin & CAsniffer

That's right. Flywilly recently mentioned again that he was thinking about scanning his collection of MK plans and putting them on a CD. Here's the link discussing it (see posts 30 & 32):

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_81...mpage_2/tm.htm

Posts 13 & 17 in this thread are also related:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_8133192/tm.htm

Another option would be to put them up on a web or ftp site permanently. I agree with you in that the file sharing sites are not the best option.

I guess it requires a volunteer to gather and standardize the plans and produce the CD. Of course, the plans would have to be scanned in the first place but specs could be established for anyone wishing to contribute a plan that they haven't scanned yet. I would think that for most plans 300 dpi scans would be perfect (150 is a little coarse and >300 is unnecessary). By standardize what I'm thinking of is that it would be good to have the plans in both PDF and TIF formats - the former for proxy and full scale prints and the latter to allow alteration & editing of the plans in Photoshop/Illustrator/CAD to aid in scratch building. If a plan is contributed that is of quality higher than called for, it would be interpolated to the standard (e.g., 300 dpi). Plans that don't meet the quality standard wouldn't be included or would be in a "low quality" section of the disc.

A number of people come to mind who would be well suited to the task but it is work so I'm not sure how this would be handled. Perhaps a small fee could be charged for the CD to cover the time commitment. I may be inclined to volunteer for the task but unfortunately my collection of MK plans, specifically, amounts to about 4-5 at the moment [&o] - not particularly impressive. However, I do have access to a personal FTP site which could be used for the purpose of uploading and eventually, also, for downloading the standardized plans. Of course the CD's would probably be burned "on demand" and date stamped for reference insuring that they are always up to date. Alternatively, CD's could be burned when the number of new plans added (say >5) calls for a new round - perhaps monthly or quarterly. An index table could also be included.

I believe that CAsniffer has done much of the picture posting and classic pattern aircraft indexing already - could be very helpful. Actually, 2-3 photos of the model, if available, could be included on the CD along with the plans. Finally, reference to build threads here (and perhaps elsewhere?) on the model in question could also be provided along with sources of short kits available, again if any.

The main issue, however, is that I'm not sure how much interest there may be for such a CD or FTP site. What I do know is that I offered PDF plans of scaled versions of the Tiporare alone and recently, the download count was over 200 (including all versions). I also offered two-three days ago to send PDF files of plans offered by Pete (ppljr) by email since several people were having trouble downloading them and/or didn't know what to do with the TIF files. In two days I think I got about 10 requests! None today yet.

In any case, food for thought.

BTW Flywilly, any comments on this?

David.