The hardback version of my second book is difficult to find these days, but Mortons has made an Ebook version available:
Mortons Books BOEING B-47 STRATOJET AND B-52 STRATOFORTRESS – ORIGINS & EVOLUTION Back Issue
Sep 152022
Jun 302022
I’ve just made the June 2022 rewards available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:
Large format diagram: “X-15 Access Doors.” A North American Aviation diagram from 1956 showing all the openable panels on the port (left) side of the fuselage
Document: “Harpoon Coastal Defense System:” McDonnell Douglas brochure on a truck-launched anti-ship missile
Document: “Harpoon for Fast Patrol Boats:” McDonnell Douglas brochure on anti-ship missiles for small ships
Document: “Shorts Skyvan:” small brochure about the boxy cargo aircraft
Document: “VTOL Design – Turbojet Configurations” Northrop paper on VTOL fighters, mostly a historical review but with basic layouts for designs up to Mach 3
Document: Turbofan propaganda. A number of brochures and data sheets and such on turbofans and turbojets… PW4000, F100, JT9D-7R4, J57.
CAD diagram ($5 and up): IM-99B BOMARC surface to air missile general arrangement
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Apr 262022
The third of three pieces of vintage aerospace concept art – the actual paintings, not reproductions – that I recently procured from ebay has arrived. This is a 1960’s Hughes concept for a “Hot Cycle” Rotor Wing VTOL aircraft. The prior two – a 1970’s Bell AMST concept for a four-turbojet C-130 test aircraft and a 1980 Bell concept for a hovercraft to allow fighters to launch from bombed-out runways – were just able to be scanned on my flatbed scanner. But the Hughes painting was much larger, so I digitized it via photography, resulting in a 10,878X7500 pixel (about 36X25 at 300 dpi) image. Several iterations of the image – the stitched-together final image, and a version that was fade-corrected to make it look more like the actual painting – have been uploaded to a Dropbox folder with the Bell art.
These paintings are currently framed and will be hung on my wall… for a time. At some point my plan is to donate them to a good museum. The Smithsonian NASM is the obvious default, but I’m interested in alternatives. A museum that would *want* these and would protect yet display them would be ideal.
If you happen to see other aerospace concept art on ebay that’s not going for *insane* amounts and you’d like to see it preserved… let me know. I now have four pieces (not counting things like blueprints); not a great collection by any measure, but it’s something.
I am going to continue to work on digitizing this painting. I’ve been trying to find a local flatbed scanner big enough to scan the whole thing all at once; if I can get that done, the results will also be uploaded to the Dropbox folder.
If you’d like access to the folder – and thus the high-rez images, as well as some PDF documentation I’ll be adding – here’s an opportunity to do so. These paintings were not cheap to secure, so there’s a bit of a charge ($25):
Procuring these was not cheap, but now they are saved for posterity.
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Apr 132022
The large format rocket & submarine scans I mentioned HERE are starting to come in. The first ~60 scans clock in at a total of about 1 gigabyte… the remaining forty – scanned, but not yet sent to me – total something like 23 gigabytes. Giant full-color blueprints. Woo.
For a limited time, if you would like copies of these scans, the whole batch is $175. If interested, send me an email:
Apr 072022
I just dropped off at the print shop a little over one hundred large format prints for scanning. I usually do this in small handfuls, so this is a new approach. It’s also an expensive approach. In that pile of prints are just over 50 diagrams of early-ish rockets/space launch vehicles, all from the same source; the other fifty-ish are something new: submarines. American subs from the early days to a few decades ago; some are commercial diagrams, but most are official blueprints depicting a wide range of submarines.
Following receipt of the scans, there will follow a long process of going through them and trying to figure out what to do with them all. Some will go into the monthly rewards catalog; some will perhaps go into the “Drawings and documents” catalog, and some, like the subs, will go into a brand-new catalog. A lot of them will *not* be distributed that way, since they are commercial items. Almost all will require a lot of cleanup, a heart-breakingly time consuming process sometimes. A lot of expense and effort, right when I’m broke and busy. So, always on the lookout for a way to make a nickel, here’s what I can do: if the idea of 50 rocket diagrams and 50 submarine diagrams (some of them will be *very* large) sounds interesting to you, I will make them available as a sight-unseen lot for $175 for anyone who responds via the email address below. I don’t know for sure how long the scanning process will take; probably more than a week. At the end of that time I will have a massive block of data uploaded to Dropbox: I’m handwaving a guess of around ten gigabytes. So if you’re interested in the diagrams, or you just want to help a feller out with this rather niche activity (preserving aerospace and now submarine history), send me an email, and when the scans are available I will send out PayPal requests.
A *few* of the submarine diagrams may be deleted prior to being sent out. The ones with the rather interesting “distribute these further and the FBI will come and say howdy” notifications. I’ve seen one such; it was not included in this batch. I didn’t see that on any in this batch, but I will look closer when I can see them digitally.
Mar 312022
I’ve just made the March 2022 rewards available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:
Art: A poster of the 1990’s German Sanger II two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane
Document: Bell-Boeing “Pointer” brochure… full color brochure describing the proposed tiltrotor UAV
Document: Cessna EV-37E STOL: 1964 presentation on battlefield recon/surveillance version of the T-37
Document: History of the Juno Cluster System: conference paper on the early satellite launching system
CAD diagram: work-in-progress layout of the Aerocon Wingship. General arrangement diagram with brief description of how much trouble I have to go through sometimes…
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Mar 062022
A few more items I’ve recently paid for that will appear on the APR Patreon/Monthly Historical Documents Program catalog:
1) General Dynamics report “Technical Proposal for Advanced Exhaust Nozzle System Concepts,” 1977 designs for advanced fighters
2) “NASA Aeronautics,” 1974
3) NASA Facts – “The Jupiter Pioneers”
4) “Cessna EV-37E STOL” report, 1964
5) Cessna 407A: report on the proposed but unbuilt 407A transport derivative of the T-37
6) Cessna AT-37E STOL: report on attack variant
7) Cessna YAT-37D counter-insurgency airplane report
Also purchased were a large number of vintage “Space World,” “Aviation News” and “Interavia” magazines for research and “Extras” purposes.
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Mar 052022
Yeesh, I am *terrible* at advertising. Just realized I missed reporting on *several* months worth of rewards packages for APR patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers.
December 2021 rewards:
Document: “B-52G Advanced Configuration Mockup inspection,” Boeing presentation on the design of the then-new B-52G configuration
Document: “Performance Potential Hydrogen Fueled, Airbreathing Cruise Aircraft, Final report, Volume I, Summary” 1966 Convair report on hydrogen fueled hypersonic jetliners
Document: “Integral Launch and Reentry Logistics System” late-60’s Space Division of North American Rockwell presentation on very early Space Shuttle-type systems
Art: Large format McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cutaway
CAD Diagram: Convair MA-1 pod for B-58
January 2022 rewards:
Document: “The Configuration of the European Spaceplane Hermes,” 1990 conference paper on the unbuilt French spaceplane
Document: “Space Rescue Charts,” 1965 USAF presentation charts describing space “life rafts” and shelters
Document: Two nuclear-powered car brochures… Ford “Gyron” and Ford “Seattle-ite XXI”
Diagram: “AGM28 Hound Dog Missile,” North American Aviation informational graphic
CAD Diagram: Boeing MX-1965 missile
February 2022 Rewards:
Diagram: Boeing 720-022 model diagram, United Airlines configuration
Document: Aerojet Ordnance Company brochure, describes aircraft ammo
Document: “The Nova (Liquid) Vehicle a Preliminary Project Development Plan,” October 1961 NASA-MSFC report on facilities planning for the “Saturn C-8” configuration of the Nova vehicle
Document: “Ground Handling Equipment and Procedures for a X-15 Research Aircraft Project 1226,” 1955 North American Aviation report on the early B-36-launched design for the X-15
CAD Diagram: F-111 Escape capsule
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
Jan 312022
Fantastic Plastic has at last released for purchase the War Rocket model I CADded for them a few years ago:
Emperor’s War Rocket
Jan 142022
A few boxes of books finally showed up, shipped from Britain. Not as many as I’d planned on getting; with luck, one or two more boxes are simply working their way through the system slower than the others. UPDATE: the rest showed up. However, I can only make firm plans for the books I actually have on hand.
I plan on selling signed, numbered and dated copies for $55 each plus shipping (cheap in the US, but doubtless ridiculously expensive elsewhere… international postage is nuts these days). To sweeten the deal, these will all come with three 18X24 signed, numbered and dated prints of the B-47 and B-52.
To start off, I will auction off the first five copies. To sweeten *that* deal, numbers 3,4 and 5 will have a fourth 18X24 print… from the currently in-progress Book 3. Numbers 1 and 2 will have an additional 18X24, also from Book 3. The subject of Book 3 has not been made public yet, but I trust that it and the diagrams will be of considerable interest to anyone who has purchased “SR-71” and “B-47/B-52.”
The auction will be simple: send me your bid (in excess of $55) and the highest bid gets #1, second highest gets #2, and so on. Send your bid to scottlowther@up-ship.com before the end of the day Sunday.
After that I will sell off the other signed copies, starting with those who signed up. Hopefully more will arrive by that point, but for right now it looks like There will be a grand total of only 18 23 signed and numbered copies on the entire planet. So… who knows. Collectors items.
