I am receiving a lot of requests recently for scale plans & drawings ( even catalogues !) for scratch building,in particular subjects that have been mentioned here on scale-models,firstly I am not a plans dealer and certainly dont hold catalogues,so perhaps a few pointers are called for,I dont sell plans and most of the models were built from drawings that have been downloaded from the internet itself,there are literally thousands of drawings for free out in cyberspace,you just have to do a bit of searching to find them,most of the old and excellent 'Flying Aces' 'Model Airplane News' and even some 'Aeromodeller' drawings are easily downloaded as pdf files,once you have them on your hard drive then they can be easily printed out and then if necessary scaled up or down acordingly.Most of these drawings were made to fit magazine pages so a fair bit of overlapping and pasting up is necessary,but this is easily achieved with a bit of patience and care.
Regarding the older Aeromodeller & Model & Allied publications leading right up to the modern day counterparts,a lot of these drawings are sold today under the 'X' listing which is handled by a separate company ( once again easily found with a simple Google search) I have had various reports of from 'good to poor' service,but in view of the sheer number of drawings that have been processed by the model press over the years best to be patient, and supply as much info as possible regarding the original source.
There are a lot of old designs held by a chap called Harris but I do not have any contact details for him.
Mentioned in these columns recently have been the availability of the old Veron plans still available from that stalwart Phil Smith,just tap in the respective search here for the threads required.Another popular request is for Harold Towner plans,well these were available from his daughter following his death ,but we are talking of 10 years plus here so the service could have been dis-continued or the stocks exhausted,bear in mind that his designs were kitted by the Astral company,so may not be cmplete in terms of drawings still available,the only link that I have is practical scale at Bridlington,UK,the Towner family are very well known so the local post office could be helpful,you never know ?
The modern drawings done today just do not seem to have the same appeal to modellers,and the time proven designs from the past are certainly still in big demand,my advice is dont give up in the search,and above all use the search engines as you could be in for a big surprise as to your favourite plan,it can take time and try using different combinations of search ie scale airplane plans,scale airplane drawings,model plans aeroplanes,sometimes one particular search will yield different results,happy hunting out there !
Regarding the older Aeromodeller & Model & Allied publications leading right up to the modern day counterparts,a lot of these drawings are sold today under the 'X' listing which is handled by a separate company ( once again easily found with a simple Google search) I have had various reports of from 'good to poor' service,but in view of the sheer number of drawings that have been processed by the model press over the years best to be patient, and supply as much info as possible regarding the original source.
There are a lot of old designs held by a chap called Harris but I do not have any contact details for him.
Mentioned in these columns recently have been the availability of the old Veron plans still available from that stalwart Phil Smith,just tap in the respective search here for the threads required.Another popular request is for Harold Towner plans,well these were available from his daughter following his death ,but we are talking of 10 years plus here so the service could have been dis-continued or the stocks exhausted,bear in mind that his designs were kitted by the Astral company,so may not be cmplete in terms of drawings still available,the only link that I have is practical scale at Bridlington,UK,the Towner family are very well known so the local post office could be helpful,you never know ?
The modern drawings done today just do not seem to have the same appeal to modellers,and the time proven designs from the past are certainly still in big demand,my advice is dont give up in the search,and above all use the search engines as you could be in for a big surprise as to your favourite plan,it can take time and try using different combinations of search ie scale airplane plans,scale airplane drawings,model plans aeroplanes,sometimes one particular search will yield different results,happy hunting out there !
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