Gents,
I’m slowly working on a set of 1:72 scale general arrangement drawings and accompanying descriptive text for all of the Schneider Trophy racers and projects, nearly 50 done and maybe 20 or so left to go. It started out as a small project to produce reliable drawings for a small number of aircraft and has escalated somewhat. The drawings have been made using the Canvas 8 vector drawing programme and I have used the best source material I have been able to track down including original manufacturers plans where available (few).
The question is, is it worth trying to get this published in book form? Is there likely to be any market for such a volume? I know that 3-views of many of the aircraft can be found in existing books and magazines but never at a consistent scale and never all together. Also a disappointingly large percentage of published drawings are of poor accuracy.
All comments and advice welcome.
Thanks
By: Arabella-Cox - 4th June 2010 at 22:24
Thanks guys
By: Arabella-Cox - 4th June 2010 at 10:12
Sounds like a very interesting project! I indeed too would be very interested in a copy of such a work. Although as said it is more of a “niche” type of book I do think there is a (small) market for this, especially if you also cover all the very rare types and the planes that didn’t enter the race in the end.
Some things that I think are interesting for such a book (especially from a modeller viewpoint):
-(Detailed) Information on the colors of the planes. Perhaps obvious on the planes of Supermarine and Macchi, less so on some of the early types and obscure ones.
-When you include pictures (I think it would add value to such a book), perhaps possible to print them at a relatively large size; all too often you see postage stamp size pics; perhaps interesting for some, for a modeller they are relatively useless…
Good luck!
By: John Aeroclub - 4th June 2010 at 10:02
Do please publish. Photographs would make the book much better IMO. I’m an avid collector of scale drawings.
John
By: Arabella-Cox - 4th June 2010 at 07:34
Thanks. If my writing is up to it I would hope to keep the tone light and to cover aspects of the aircraft design and history not found in other works. Derek James et al have done sterling work on that already. It would be good to include photographs but what worries me a bit is that I am unsure on who may hold copyright on many (most?) of those in my collection
By: chumpy - 4th June 2010 at 03:48
A very worthy project indeed, I would certainly buy one.
However with limited commercial appeal I would think, but there again some real obscure aviation subject matter makes it into print!
A bit of a dry volume if was just a set of three-views, perhaps if was a joint drawing / technical descriptive / pictorial work, it would stand a better chance. Without trying to tell the history of the Schneider races, these well covered in print already.
Chumpy.
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June 3, 2010 at 10:18 pm