Pilot's Log

Now I have eight different patterns loaded for the eight aircraft carrier models I want to reverse-engineer. Of course, my main two limitations in this endeavour will be funding and patience...with the next one being working space.

On Facebook I "Like" the Giveaway Of The Day--free software downloads. Among the offers this past week: RonyaSoft's Poster Printer, which I'm playing with. I'm not so much interested in posters as such, tho' that looks fun...I'm blowing up paper models. And so far, it looks like the RonyaSoft program is going to save me both effort and money, by cutting down the number of pages I'd need to print to get the same results.

I haven't decided which model to start with. Tho' that 1/72nd scale Colossus-class aircraft carrier project is the most tempting!

While I was bored with not being able to adequately contact the outside world, I did a bunch of brainstorming. Tend to do that along with my research addiction.

Anyway, I have, on my hard drive, the digitized files for many of those wonderful Maly Modelarz Polish paper models, of which I've spoken before here. I have one for a Colossus-class aircraft carrier from the WW2 era. With it set to print at "regular size", the resulting model would only take nine sheets of paper or cardboard, and scale to about 1/350.

So what if I wanted a model to scale with the majority of the model aircraft I build? 1/72nd scale? To enlargen the sheet five times (350 ÷ 72 = 4.861, rounded to 5), I could split each sheet into twenty-five proportional pieces (5X5) making the total model 225 sheets of printout. And the model that would be built from these sheets would be...10 feet long!

With Paul Francis' shop nearby, this concept isn't outside the realm of possibility as such. It's just not particularly practicable, especially with the start of school imminent and other things coming along to occupy my mind and time.

A sort of postscript to This Very Old Post: I've been going over Rapid Library with a fine-tooth comb since I noticed that they have a huge load of old Maly Modelarz content. The main problem is that the folks who have added these files to the Library didn't bother to identify their contents, or did so in a confusing manner. That and there's no way to sort the search results. So I've been cross-referencing what I've seen on screen versus hard copies from various sources.

A lot of this content, I've already downloaded from other on-line sites. But others haven't been seen in years and I'm wondering if I should scarf them now for future projects.

Hey.

A couple years ago, a buddy of mine in the local IPMS (International Plastic Modelers Society) turned me on to a website in Russia that carried Polish Maly Modelarz (literally, "Little Models") paper models that had been scanned for download. That site's gone, but at least two others have sprung up with their content since.

I haven't actually built anything from that content yet, but I have downloaded a bunch of the models and continue to do so. Not that I have enough scale model projects to do, just that this offers opportunities to explore that I haven't tried. Examples: I can enlargen the graphics by splitting the files and printing them separately, as my graphics program fits to page. This way I could have a pattern for a plastic model that could be assembled from sheet styrene, and be the same scale as an action figure. Or I could combine plates to reduce the size of the model, for the purpose of having gaming figure scale pieces.

http://www.modelarz.narod.ru/indexe.htm (The original site addy. By combining this with http://web.archive.org/ I've found loads of otherwise lost content.)
http://www.beuliland.com/
http://glidersusa.free.fr/modelli/ (The two main sites that have the content available now.)

Maly Modelarz also has their own official website too: http://malymodelarz.webpark.pl/ They don't have any downloadable models, but rumor is they've collected scanned files for a series of CDs. If those are really available I'd want to get them.

Why? To make something that would be truly my own. Haven't decided exactly what, but that's part of the process.

FP