DH Process and Tool order sheets 'worth keeping'

Beachcomber,
Mike, I would like to thank you from the numerous restoration, rebuilders, and interested parties from now and the future. It is a NOBLE thing that you do.

Ed 1

Sounds good

I bought a folder of war time AS, ARP, AN and AND specifications and drawings.
I am in the middle of scanning them. I have been wondering what to do with the scanned documents once I have finished.

Image Composite Editor looks fantastic – you need to give me some lessons !

What I do to get a result is painfully photocopy each piece of paper onto a standard paper size, eg A4 or A3. Original documents may be in some old imperial paper size that won’t fit modern scanners. I do this using the paper size control on a modern photocopier at Officeworks. I have tried to employ somebody to do this but in checking the work it is, at best 95% accurate, in other words some pages might be missing, text cut off or crucial information such as amendment notes pasted in are not done, because a hired gun is either not interested or doesn’t realize the importance of context and accuracy. At least this way I become familiar with the content. I am talking about thousands of pages, so I do a few hundred at a time on an odd weekend.

Once all the information is on standard sized paper I hand it over to a gumball chewing adolescent at Officeworks to scan at 40c per page, feeding in the pages while texting away. I put post it notes on a bundle and get them to label the resulting PDF file with the file name on the post it note. So I end up with a memory stick with 250 labelled PDF files that I can then load up into a searchable database. My time is not costed, but the direct costs of paper copying and scanning end up being about $2 per PDF, so $500 down, $2000 for the 1000 CAC Standards. 2K will get me a week or two in Bali, so I don’t want to think too deeply about what I am doing.

I thought about contracting out the scanning and file labeling to India, but I don’t think there would be much of a cost saving, and at least with the Australian system I am keeping an adolescent off the streets and a life of car theft and quality checking each step of the way.

So then I thought this information could be loaded onto the web to allow folks to find material standards, as it is critical to safe flying structures. I thought I could charge them $5 for a download rather than $100, just to generate enough income to pay for web hosting. It will barely pay for itself, unless each download comes with a complimentary serve of Debbie Does Dallas.

So really the whole thing is an act of charity, a Jesus walk with a crown of thorns while getting flogged. I think the main thing is that these Standards do not get lost, as they are the kind of arcana that normal people would think no rational human being is interested in. And they are right ! But for all the irrational folks wanting to turn rusty, flaking scrap metal into beastly devices roaring through the air they are critical.

Now if anybody wants to dump a box of DTD or British Standards (aeronautical) on me I would be happy to do the Jesus walk with the box. I am thinking of lodging the searchable database on silverbiplanes.com under ‘materials and metallurgia’.

British Standards do have an excellent library of historical Standards, but each digital copy is 100 quid or more, depending on your domicile, size of enterprise etc. This pricing is driven by ‘cost recovery’ principles. It means that it is not really used, almost defeating the purpose of holding them. Maybe we should negotiate some deal where these aeronautical standards could be listed and available at a lower price, to drive uptake, while a royalty is paid to the Standard’s office.

This same principle could apply to work scanned by anybody else, but the higher the royalty cost, the lower the use.
My core driver is that information should be shared and ideally free, to support more safe, historical, flying devices in the air.
The reward for this is good karma, a currency that can never be debased.

So karmalong folks !

Beachcomber

I use a composite image editor when I come up against a document bigger than A4.

Just scan all four corners, assuming there will be overlapping areas being scanned, run it through the editor and the document is recreated.

I use a freeware product from a well known software company.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/ice/

P & P

If you need anything scanned etc , drop me a line.

I was over in Melbourne collecting something I bought on Ebay years ago, and the vendor and I got talking, and as a result I bought a folder of war time AS, ARP, AN and AND specifications and drawings.

I am in the middle of scanning them. I have been wondering what to do with the scanned documents once I have finished. Perhaps we should share. Drop me a PM.

Thank you for that, I’ll try to scan them although the size of the sheets 355mm x 200mm make it a awkward for my A4 scanner. If I find any more I’ll save them, here’s his account of when he was at DH from 1947:

Working as a Methods Engineer at DeHavilland in Christchurch I had the job of engineering the navigator’s hatch for production. One of the requirements was that they should all be interchangeable across all 75 aircraft. This meant creating a red master and hawking it around all the aircraft to achieve a reasonable fit. However after many such it became apparent that a potential problem existed. When allowed to fall it created very high pressure in the damper cylinder, which also acted as the ejector mechanism for the Martin Baker seat. So high in fact the cartridges when fired could not operate the over centred latches.
I pointed this out to the designers who completely ignored it, but having been a pilot I knew how critical it is soon after takeoff if something goes wrong to be able to get out FAST. A few months later over the Sahara an eagle flew into the air intake pierced the bag tank and they needed to abandon the kite. Suddenly they wanted to know what I had been trying to tell them for the past 18 months. The solution was to drill a “0005 hole in the piston to allow the pressure to leak away.

I realised that if you have spent 18 months designing something you don’t enjoy somebody, especially a lowly engineer, telling you that there is something wrong with your precious design. Couple with a paucity of imagination and experience able to envisage what could go wrong under certain rare circumstances meant that inevitably that rare circumstance did eventually occur with a very costly outcome.

Try the de Havilland Museum – but scan them and share them first.

These are process sheets for the Trident airliner – so less likely to be of use as such, but interesting to researchers.

Bruce

Beachcomber,
Please, please, please, do NOT throw those papers away.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(PowerandPassion—get in on this discussion!!!

Indeed I concur with my esteemed colleague. All of us would give our eye teeth for material like this, within our field of interest. So I say a little prayer to anybody who, against common sense, keeps this material or passes it on to an archive that allows access. In my turn I have saved boxes and boxes of jet age material when I have stumbled on it, to try and pass on to the future what no doubt will be appreciated by some babe of today.

The technology and cost to rapidly scan this material is making it easier and easier to make the information safe, easily transmittable and replicable. I am in the process of digitizing all the material standards for Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, which covers off a lot of obscure wartime British DTD standards, RR proprietory alloys, US alloys and French alloys as the Australians had to grapple with everything from Beaufighters to “Harvards” to Mirages.

I must admit it is a pain in the behind, much like photocopying reams of odd shaped paper. The cost of scanning this is also significant, thousands of pages at AUD 0.40 per page, that then has to be labelled. The intention is to lodge this online, to help anybody grappling with material problems in restoration. There is no way you can charge for this and it is pointless to ever expect appreciation commensurate with the effort. But it is a nice thing to do. All that really matters at the end of the day is kindness.

I do hope those documents are saved.

I am also searching for old DTD Standards, a box of yellowing DTD Standards would make my day, please!

I’ll repeat – don’t throw these out. Either scan and share them for the greater good or pass them to a museum archive where they can be accessed.

I learnt more about how the Horsa glider was build from mod/maintenance sheets than any of the original factory part drawings. These things really help us how things go together and why things are the way they are.

Beachcomber,
Please, please, please, do NOT throw those papers away.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One of the biggest problems that has begun to rear it’s ugly head is the lack of information and maintenance procedures of older aeroplanes. The old (i.e. knowledgeable) guys are dying off. One example being; Ryan PT22 curved half tube on fuselage. Only thru an accident was one of the Ryan club members able to find out how the piece was made. An old Ryan worker at an airshow was able to divulge the needed info. Modern technology could not supply the answer. Another example; the Bristol Bulldog has NO information on maintenance of the Bulldog. (beyond the check to make sure wing are attached). These papers are needed.
(PowerandPassion—get in on this discussion!!!)
The only real problem I see is where to locate these papers.
Mike, please please please do NOT throw them out.
Cheers,
Ed

The De Havilland Aircraft Heritage centre may be interested in them perhaps.