Now on ebay:
QUEEN ALIEN LIFESIZE 1:1 BUST PROP STATUE ALIENS BEYOND RARE 1 OF 5 MADE IN 90’S
Giggity:
Can be yours for a paltry $75,000. Free shipping!
May 022017
Dec 272016
Recently sold on EBay was a sizable (something like 4′ long) wind tunnel model of the Curtiss Wright Model 90 AAFSS submission. This was a derivative of their X-19… more or less a quad-tilt-rotor. The Model 90 would have been fairly highly armed, designed to fulfill the same role that the winning AAFSS design – the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne – was designed for: transporting troops and tearing up ground targets. The US has not had an operational vehicle like this; the Soviet “Hind” helicopter is the closest, though substantially slower, analog. EDIT: Senior moment. Not a troop transport, just a blowin’-up-stuff-on-the-ground-real-good vehicle.
The Model 90 wind tunnel model was formerly on display at an aviation museum in Teterboro, New Jersey. No idea where it ended up, but hopefully it found a good home. I made a half-assed effort to crowdfund this one, but I think the lack of a good way to split the spoils among the funders doomed the concept. How *do* you reward funders for a purchase like this? Best idea was to have the thing 3D scanned, and distribute the scan among the funders, but unlike a scan of a drawing or a document, that’s not going to be readily useful for most people.
What I’d hoped to do was to disassemble the model, male fiberglass molds of the components, reassemble and restore it to like-new-ish condition then send it on to an appropriate and willing museum, possibly Ft. Rucker (since they’re all about Army aviation and have themselves an AH-56). Then make a few fiberglass copies from the molds, converting the “wind tunnel models” into detailed display models. Alas.
Oct 152016
Currently on ebay is a single slide, a photo someone took in the 1960’s. It shows a family standing in front of a full-scale mockup of the SV-5, what became the X-24A. This is hardly an unknown mockup; it has been shown elsewhere many times. But I thought this particular view might be of interest to some. It is shown on the back of a truck for transport, attached to a transition section that would, on the real vehicle, then attach to a launch vehicle such as a Titan II or III.
Aug 262016
Currently on eBay is a vintage Greek “Biscuit Card” featuring a simplified artwork replicating an internal-detonation nuclear pulse rocketship illustrated by Frank Tinsley. The original artwork was for a magazine ad for Arma Bosch in 1959 and is *not* any sort of official engineering design, just a magazine artists impression.
I’ve never seen the biscuit card version. I’ve no idea if this was a local Greek production, or the card was published in multiple languages.
Here’s the biscuit version:
Here’s the Tinsley original.
Jul 172016
Every now and then something pops up on eBay that is historically terribly important, and I’ve sat here and watched the auction shoot *way* past my financial means. The items get sold and disappear into a black hole. Well, no more, dagnabbit. I just scored a treasure trove of vintage Convair F2Y “Sea Dart” documents and diagrams. The final price was about $400… well beyond my means. But as there were 15 contributors, it broke down to about $24.55 per person. Each of the contributors will receive a full set of 300 dpi color or grayscale (where appropriate) scans of everything in the lot. And the actual items themselves? When I’m done scanning and checking them, they will be donated to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. This is appropriate not only because they have an archive of Convair files, they also have an F2Y sitting on a pole out front.
The crowdfunding effort was announced and made available via the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon. I fully intend to do this again; I wish I had a time machine to do it with a couple of frustrating Boeing 2707 and hypersonic auctions from a number of months ago… So if you’d like to be in on this sort of thing in the future, check out the APR Patreon.
Behold:
Oct 052015
In the last few days a stash of Boeing hypersonic reports and diagrams were sold on ebay. I put in good bids, but got beat *bad* and by a number of bidders. If anyone knows who scored these, I’d sure like to be put in touch with ’em.
Jun 092015
The apparently original concept painting of the McDonnell-Douglas MD-12 showed up on eBay a few days back. The MD-12 was the last new aircraft that McD designed before being absorbed by Boeing; like the Boeing NLA and the Airbus A380, it was a big fat double decker designed to haul large numbers of passengers at once.
May 192015
I’ve never been a fan of Blake’s 7 (only saw a few episodes, decades ago on public TV), but I know a lot of folks are. Well, guess what:
Blake’s Seven 7 Original Series Liberator Studio Model Film TV Movie Star Prop
Buy It Now Price: £33,000.00
May 152015
Saw this on eBay:
German WWII electro-mechan
The starting bid price is a bit rich for my blood… $7500. But if the photos and the scan from the Christies catalog are accurate, it does seem to be vintage V-2 hardware. Not quite sure what it did or where it did it; since there are dials that a human was apparently meant to set, it would seem to be part of the aiming system (which was little more than “go that far then flop out of the sky,” with azimuth controlled by rotating the launch pad and, IIRC, some radio guidance to get it pointed in the right direction. It *might* have gone on the missile itself, or it *might* have been part of the launch infrastructure. Shrug. This unit seems to be missing some bits, such as the rather important dials.
A bunch of photos at the auction site.
Apr 102015
I saw this on ebay. Thought it might be of interest to some…
EVEL KNIEVEL ORIGINAL X-1 SKYCYCLE PLAN TRUAX SNAKE RIVER ROCKET RARE X-2
The Skycycle was about the oddest manned vehicle to ever take flight. This is not at overall vehicle design blueprint, but instead a description of the pilot extraction and parachute system. Still, I’d plunk down 20 bucks for it, maybe even $50…
Ah. Nevermind.