drawings – Page 6 – The Unwanted Blog

Rotational Research Facility

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Mar 282022

A few months ago I was contacted via email by someone looking for information on the North American Aviation “Rotational Research Facility” built in the 1960’s. This was – kinda – an “artificial gravity space station” built on the ground, designed for long duration human testing. Obviously it would not test human reactions to fractional-G environments, since it started at 1 G and went up from there, but it would test responses to Coriolis effects and the like. When I was contacted, I had nothing on it other than a vague recollection of the concept. Thanks to eBay I recently acquired a book that had a short description of the facility, from before it was built. If that was *you* who asked about it, let me know. If it wasn’t you, but you have more information on it, let me know. Google turns up very little on the RRF apart from a few newspaper articles. The whole thing seems to have been memory-holed; perhaps the name changed before it was built.

Recent ebay acquisitions

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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A few more items I’ve recently paid for that will appear on the APR Patreon/Monthly Historical Documents Program catalog: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with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.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.

EA-6B diagram

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Mar 022022

I got the gigantic EA-6B diagram scanned. This was done without chopping up the original paper; but the end result is a nearly two gigabyte file. Manipulating it was a challenge, requiring sometimes five or more minutes to carry out a single command, but:

1)I was able to chop it up into three half-scale sections

2) I was able to scale down the whole thing to a single 48% scale version that I was able to convert to grayscale and clean up. I present a vastly smallerized version of the original color scan and the grayscale cleaned version, together with a full-scale crop of the refueling probe from the ~48% version. The intent here is to include a half-scale version in a future APR Patreon/Subscription rewards voting-catalog. The two-gig full rez? Not quite sure what to do about that yet. i will probably attempt to convert it to grayscale and clean it up for archival purposes, but at nearly 60,000 pixels wide, it’s just simply *huge.*

That’s a big sheet of paper

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Feb 262022

A recent acquisition is this Grumman general arrangement diagram of the EA-6B “Prowler” electronic warfare aircraft. It’s about three feet wide and fifteen feet long, and has been stored folded for many decades. In order to scan it, it needed to be converted from “folded” to “rolled,” otherwise it won’t feed through the scanner. This is not a problem; there are several techniques that will safely flatten out old, brittle, folded paper like this. Some people like to iron paper; my own preference, visible here, is to hang the sheet in a bathroom and run a good hot shower. The paper is permitted to get slightly damp; this softens the paper and undoes the decades of folding. The paper is then rolled around a cardboard mailing tube. The end result is that the paper goes from complex curvature to simple curvature, and feeds smoothly through a large format scanner. The sheet has undergone the flattening process, with scanning to occur soon.

In this case, though, something further and dire might need to be done. I don;t know yet whether the scanning company can scan something this long, and at 300 DPI, it’s something that can’t be processed with most image programs (there is a limit just shy of 30,000 pixels, or ten feet at 300 DPI). if they *can* scan it, then I hope to have them chop the digital image into two; if they can’t scan it… I’ll probably slice the paper into two. Not something I normally approve of, but there is a *wide* gap in the paper between views, so the diagram itself will not be at risk, and the value of having the image scanned and immortalized it probably more important than having a giant intact sheet of rolled-up paper.

Note industry standard scale reference near the bottom.

Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff

art, blather, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, sales & specials, ships, spacecraft No Responses »

Feb 022022

So a lot of “Shuttle II” stuff appeared on eBay for an exorbitant price. I’m becoming increasingly leery of plunking down excessive sums for this sort of thing… not only due to my own finances and the onrushing economic meltdown, but because doing so incentivizes sellers to slap even more exorbitant prices on things. But, I put this lot before my APR patrons/subscribers as a potential crowdfunding opportunity, and enough signed on that I went ahead and purchased the lot. It should arrive early next week.

As with all my APR crowdfunds, the cost of the item is split evenly among the funders; the more funders, the lower the price per person. Each funder will receive a complete set of high-rez (300 DPI, full color… higher rez if called for) scans of the items. Typically these crowdfunded items then get sent on to appropriate archive, library or museum, though this time I’m not quite sure where they should go.

If you would be interested in signing on, send me an email . There are currently enough funders that the per-funder price is ~~~$24~~ under $14; the more sign on, the lower it’ll get. If you have a price limit noticeably lower than $14, let me know in your email. This will remain open until the stuff arrives, presumably early next week. At that point it’ll be closed and the price set.

Additionally: the box shown below, loaded with blueprints/diagrams, is somewhere in the system headed my way. It was procured sight unseen; I have high hopes. This sort of thing is made possible by the APR Patrons/Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers. If you want to help preserve aerospace history and get in on these goodies, please consider subscribing.

“SR-71” references: Lockheed M-21/D-21 diagram

aircraft, drawings, history, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Origins and Evolution, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, SR-71 Origins and Evolution No Responses »

Jan 262022

Below is one of the diagrams that I used to help create “Lockheed SR-71: Origins and Evolution.” It is a Lockheed diagram taken from a CIA report showing the D-21 drone atop an M-21 mothership… basically a two-seat version of the A-12 spyplane. The D-21 program as a whole was a dismal failure, but launching it from the back of a manned Mach 3 aircraft proved to be fatal. Still, the D-21, for all the trouble it had, was an impressive piece of work; had there been more of a drive to make it work, doubtless Lockheed would have made it into a successful recon platform. But the time, effort and expense just didn’t compare well to results from spy satellites, and the program was ended. A number of airframes have been preserved, and there have been attempts to resurrect them for use as experimental platforms.

The full-rez diagram has been uploaded to the 2022-01 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. 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.

I plan on uploading a number of the diagrams, art and whatnot that I used to create the CAD diagrams in “SR-71” the the APR extras Dropbox in the coming months.

B-47/B-52: Signed copies!

aircraft, art, awesomeness, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, blather, Book 3, Book X, books, drawings, history, Hmm..., new products, news, projects, rockets, secrets, spacecraft No Responses »

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.

Behold: Books!

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Jan 132022

Yesterday some boxes from Britain showed up with some copies of my new book:

I will be selling these as signed copies for $55 plus postage. My plan at this time is to sell a very limited number (I currently have a grand total of 18 copies on hand; I have hopes for a *few* more to show up) with three 18X24 prints. all singed and numbered. However, fiver copies, #’s 1 through 5, will be auctioned: the idea is that the highest bid gets #1, second highest gets #2, etc. As a bonus, #’s 3,4,5 will get one extra 18X24, which will be a diagram from the currently in-progress Book 3. #’s 1 and 2 will get *two* prints from Book 3. Pretty sure that these extra diagrams will be of considerable interest to anyone who bought my SR-71 book and the B-47/B-52 book. I will contact the list of folks who signed on in a day or two.

If you want to just go ahead and buy a regular copy, it’s available from Mortons in Britain and, in a few days, from Amazon.

Barrage balloon diagrams: 1

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Jan 132022

A few days ago a series of auctions for 1940’s (mostly Goodyear) blimp and barrage balloon diagrams ended on eBay. I tried to get them all, but got outbid on all but one. Nevertheless, the photos posted to eBay might be of interest to some folks.