Blended Wing Body Diagram book
BoMi (Bomber Missile) Diagram booklet #1 (X-20 Dyna Soar predecessor designs)
BoMi (Bomber Missile) Diagram booklet #2 (X-20 Dyna Soar predecessor designs)
Oct 192013
Oct 192013
For what it’s worth:
I’m constantly tinkering with line settings, but I’ve largely settled on the results shown below. I do my drawings in AutoCAD 2000 and then further processing in Paint Shop Pro. The lines in ACAD are split into several layers:
1) “Outline:” This is for, obviously, the main outlines. This includes major overlaps, such as engine nacelles in front of wings of fuselages and such. Also used for sharp intersections, such as some wing/body intersections, when the angle of intersection is greater than 45 degrees. “Outline” is White (which prints black) with a lineweight of 0.40 mm.
2) “Details:” used for things like control surfaces, doors, windows, etc. Also used for intersections at less than 45 degrees. Also White, with a “default” lineweight.
3) “Lines:” Used for panels lines, faint intersections and the like. uses Color 253 (medium gray) and a default lineweight.
The process for going from ACAD 2000 to a good raster image is more complex than it would seem to need to be; I imagine more recent versions of ACAD have cleaned the process up. Anyway:
1) Plot the drawing as an EPS file at ANSI C size (22X17 inches)
2) Open the drawing in Paint Shop Pro at 200 dpi, grayscale, no transparency.
3) Crop the image just at the outer border
The image just as-is is then saved as a GIF or PNG (not JPG, as that entails loss). It can then be plastered directly into a Word document. The drawing will print out (on paper) at a chosen scale if the border was drawn at a specific size, and when put into Word the image is formatted to be that width. If you want to print at a specific scale but don’t wnat the border, you can still go through the whole process with a border, and then simply erase it /paint it out at the last step so that the image has the right size but no border.
I’ve found plotting the CAD drawing at larger sizes initially helps smooth out curves. But this means that the image is way too big for basic online posting, and the line weights get really thin and faint when the image is just resized smaller. So before resizing smaller one or both of the following:
1) “Erode” the image. This expands line widths. At full rez it looks pretty crappy, but when resized it works well.
2) “Blur” the image. This widens the lines and helps smooth it out, but makes everything lighter. The image can be darkened via gamma correction or brightness/contrast.
Something else to consider: “Drawing Order.” With multiple line colors, it matters what lines are “over” and “under” what other lines. After the drawing is done in ACAD, the “draworder” commend lets you pick what lines are in front, what are in back. It’s best to have the “Outline” layer in front, and the “Lines” layer in back. This way, when a black Outline line intersects with a gray “Lines” line, the black line is unbroken. Sometimes I forget this step, and the results can look *wrong.*
The image below of the Lockheed CL-1170-6-2 was from issue V1N3 of Aerospace Projects Review, reformatted in AutoCAD to print out on 11X17.
Oct 132013
The ebay listings for the F-23 derivatives, Lockheed Archangels and A-12 Avenger II diagram booklets will end Sunday… 13 hours from this writing. Bid now! Bid often! Bid insanely high! Bid like this is a mafia money laundering operation!
Oct 102013
American Bible scholar claims ancient ‘confessions’ prove story of Jesus Christ was entirely fabricated by Roman aristocrats
Short form: Some Guy has read the same stuff scholars have been reading for millenia (“The Jewish War” by Titus Flavius Josephus) and has concluded that Jesus Christ, and thus Christianity, was invented out of whole cloth by Roman aristocrats.
The argument goes:
First Century Roman #1: “Hmm. These Judean Jews are troublesome. Constantly rebelling, won’t pay their taxes. Every time we lay a military beatdown on them, they just get snippier. What to do?”
First Century Roman #2: “Hey, don’t the Jews have some sort of a legend about a forthcoming messiah? What say we invent one for them, one that says to ‘turn the other cheek’ and to pay your taxes?”
First Century Roman #2: “Sounds good, but won’t they notice that this guy doesn’t actually exist?”
First Century Roman #1: “Well, what if we say they guy has *already* lived and died and performed a bunch of miracles? It’s not like the Judeans can look up his death certificate on Google.”
First Century Roman #2: “Brilliant!”
First Century Roman #: “Brilliant!”
While an interesting hypothesis, from my reading of the admittedly Daily Mail article what I get is that the guy came to this conclusion by reading something you can buy on Amazon and seeing something that two thousand years of readers haven’t seen before. While it is of course possible that these confessions could have gone unnoticed by everybody for this long, it seems at best very unlikely. Sadly, we’ve reached a point (or, perhaps just as likely, we’ve always been there) where someone can pull something like this directly out of their keister and get taken seriously. Perhaps even get a recurring “guest expert” spot on a show on a reputedly respectable TV network.
Perhaps shockingly, the guy has a book.
Oct 062013
I’ve put a few sets of 11X17 diagrams on eBay:
Northrop F-23 predecessor and derivatives diagram booklet
Lockheed Archangel Diagram booklet (SR-71 predecessor designs)
McDonnell-Douglas/General Dynamics A-12 Avenger II Diagram Booklet
I don’t really know if these’ll do at all well on eBay, but what the heck. I’m hoping they might serve as a bit of advertising, though. The Archangel set is very likely a one-off, a result of the printer actually spitting out two copies rather than one.
For those of you who were generous a good long while ago and have been wondering “what the hell?!?!” the technology and techniques I’ve been developing and requiring recently will prove relevant.
Oct 032013
Some time back I finally started putting my CAD diagrams into some sort of order. As well as cataloging them I’ve been reformatting them for 11X17, printing them off and putting them into a binder. I’m not quite done yet, but I’m already at over 230 pages.
Aug 262013
The British Library has posted a reasonably high-rez scan of a tenth-century edition of Beowulf. Read it not only in the original Old English, but the original handwriting!
Damned if I can figure out how to save the images, though. Any hints?
Jul 192013
More than half a dozen years ago I started working on a book: US Bomber Projects Since World War II. I made some good headway on the research and drafting sides of the effort, and put out a “Preview” to test the waters (which you can still order here. If you haven’t, yer a commie). As with many such efforts, it took much longer than initially expected, started to balloon out of control, helped end my aerospace career and, before too long, became somewhat redundant. When I started working on USBPSWWII, there were no books like that in the world. Lots of Luftwaffe, 1946 stuff, but basically diddly squat about US projects. But before long, reputable publishers started putting out books that covered the basics on USBPSWWII. So since the book was becoming an encyclopedic monster that would not only cover ground other had covered, but would be massively, prohibitively expensive to print, much less buy, I let the project slide into oblivion.
A while back I was talking the project over with a friend, explained why it collapsed. And she pointed out a whole new reason why, instead of letting it be stomped on, I should have charged ahead with it way back when. An important reason, a reason I should have thought of years ago, a terribly motivating reason: spite. And since that’s virtually the only reason why I do much of anything anymore, spiting fate if nothing else, I cracked open the files and started working on it again.
The original plan is still kaput. One great big book that covers, in detail, the evolution of the B-52 and the B-58 and the B-1 would be impossibly large. The original plan was something like Aerospace Projects Review on steroids, with hundred-page articles on a whole bunch of topics, covered in great depth. But a lot of these designs have been covered in the other books that have been published. So… the revived US Bomber Projects will cover the *less* well known designs. Sometimes in my researches I’ve come across designs for which the only documentation is, say, a three-view drawing. In the normal course of things, these designs would be largely left by the wayside since their stories cannot be told with detail and confidence. But now? Heck, those will be the USBP bread and butter. And it won’t be restricted to post-WWII stuff; the war years produced some amazing concepts. There are designs from the 1930’s that really need to be shown.
US Bomber Projects will, instead of one giant book, be a series of short magazines or booklets, covering eight or so designs per issue. The designs in each issue will be unrelated to each other, but there will be “arcs” through the issues. For example, designs leading to the B-48 and B-52 and B-59 are followed from the get-go.
I’ve got the first two issues wrapped up; I need to revise me websites and upload the files, all that mind-numbing necessary stuff. I hope to have #1 and #2 ready for sales within a day. I’m thinking $4 per issue?
Jul 042013
Being unpublished, I’m hardly one to give advice on the subject of writing fiction. Still, why should I let that stop me?
Something we’ve probably all seen/read and groaned at is the scene where Our Hero is only able to survive and win the day because the villain does something stupid. And not just spur-of-the-moment stupid, but the sort of stupid that required considerable planning. Or the story that is only able to proceed because someone does something monumentally dumb that gets the story rolling (such as recognizing that super-sized Velociraptors are monumentally dangerous, yet continuing to produce them and putting them in a pen that relies on external electrical power to maintain captivity).
Fortunately, for a number of years there has been a resource *vital* to anyone who wants to avoid this sort of thing, and instead write an intelligent story with intelligent characters: Peter’s Evil Overlord List. Basically, it’s a list of the most common dumb tropes that villains repeat, put in the form of a list of things any good prospective evil overlord should avoid. Whenever I have a story idea, I’ll make sure to check it against The List. It should be required reading in Hollywood, with financial penalties for writers who fail to learn.
Included in the list are gems such as:
- My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
- My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
- Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
- The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
- I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.
- When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”
- I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled “Danger: Do Not Push”. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
- The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.
- I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
- When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
- I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.
- I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
- If an advisor says to me “My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?”, I will reply “This.” and kill the advisor.
- If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.
- My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
- Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner’s manual.
- If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.
- If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.
- I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. “Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse.” Instead it will be more along the lines of “Push the button.”
- I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
- My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.
The Evil Overlord List was a product of the 1990’s. As a result, some of the suggestions are now moot. I wonder if this might simply not make sense to any younger reader:
- Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.
Go forth to the list. Read it. Learn it. Live it.
Jul 032013
You can now purchase a printed version of Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N3 through MagCloud. Two options: just the printed version, and the printed version with a digital download (PDF).
See: