Thanks for all the kind words, guys! I wondered if my dissertation would be too long but I wanted to explain all the sudden posting of 20-year-old photos of civilian planes, and especially all the B&W. I think those B&W shots are often really good for contrasting parts of the planes. Not all of my shots scanned in as well as I would have liked, and some of them have deteriorated and yellowed sitting in the basement in a box. There have been a few posted that come up with someone's more current shots. A real example of change is N4633V, a Varga Kachina that I shot in its production paint scheme and which now has a photo posted wearing WWII trainer colors!
I gave up the idea of a book back in 1990; I'm just going to do a CD with text for the controllers here as a good-bye present.
I got my first a/c recognition book back in 1968, which I still have. It is all silhouettes and titled, "The MacDonald Aircraft Handbook," compiled by William Green and illustrated by Dennis I. Punnett, put out by Doubleday & Company. This is a small book, about 4X6 by 1 ½ thick. My second one, also purchased in 1968, has all the same silhouettes and text but also has photos, and is titled, “The Aircraft of the World,†and also published by Doubleday. Its format is 8 ½ X 11 and about 1†thick. Over the years I got all the Jane's handbooks, and the Montgomery & Foster one. If it was a recognition book out since 1968, I had it and used them for developing my FAA course. I also used the Jane's All the World's Aircraft to get history and figure out how things connected - I even had the Aurora, IL public library purchasing them every year!
I actually was going to incorporate belly silhouettes in my program and that's when I bought a Pentax ME Super so I could put an auto-wind on it. I collected belly shots from about two dozen planes while sitting off the departure end of Runway 28 at DPA, but I dropped the idea as too much work!
Paul, I have a deck of those WWII spotter cards - lots of fun! I actually made my own page with a cutout that covered all the text of my first book (that home-made page is still in my book) and I would use that to memorize the silhouettes.
As for using other photos off A-D, I've already considered that. I don't know how else I'm going to get all the new stuff in only 67 days that I have left. I've been in a very long e-mail relationship with the top poster, Daniel Compton, and I've already asked for the use of his for those I can't get. We'll just see what I can come up with.
For Doug, I established very logical sections. My “Part 1†was just demonstrating common designs among Cessna, Piper, Beech and Mooney so as to know what company something came from before learning the types. I showed Cessna high wings as 100 and 200 series, twins of 300 series and 400 series; Beech singles of the Musketeer series with companion Duchess, Bonanza series with companion Barons, and King Airs. For basic Piper designs I showed the PA28 series and companion PA44, PA32 series and companion PA34, PA24 to PA30, Apache to Aztec, PA31s to Cheyennes and even how the PA46 resembled PA31s. Then I had part 2, divided into chapters (sections in the slide program). Chapter 2 is high wing, single engine, starting with tail-draggers. Chapter 3 was low wing, single engine. Chapter 4 was twins, divided into tail-draggers, then tri-geared high winged and tri-geared low wing. Chapter 5 was corporate jets. I tried to keep similar-looking machines together for comparison.
In my text I pointed out specific highlighted features, but the history of some to connect them was always good for me so I figured it would help others make sense of it. Just like a post a recently about the C210 with wheel pants and I pointed out that it was a C205 and explained how it worked (actually the C205 was under the C210 type cert, so it was something like "210-5" if I recall) by using the history beginning with the C180. The C120/140 to C150/152 is similar, and the C170 to C172 also a similar story. I liked the story about the Bonanza and Twin Bonanza origins of most of Beech's planes. Those two were Beech's first two planes after the WAR. If you follow the trail, the BE35 led to the BE33, which led to the BE36 (and the T-34 by the way), which led to the BE95 Travelair and Baron series. My understanding was that the Army asked for a stretched version of the BE50 which is where the BE65 Queen Air came from, which led to the BE80 with the swept tail. Then the Army wanted turbo-props on the Queen Air making it the U-21, and stretching that Beech made the BE99, but Beech saw the potential of a pressurized Queen Air with turbo-props and that made the King Air, which just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Doug, I like your idea of the voice-activated recognition thing - that would be a great thing to develop if you are a computer person. John, I was hoping some of those old shots would be recognized by people who flew them. Bringing memories back is always exciting. I have a shot of an F-104 that was at the Dayton show in 1982
http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/096096.html;
I recently got an e-mail from a retired Air Force colonel telling me he was the one who flew it there! That was neat.
As for my retirement, I plan to finally get to see some more airs shows since I will not be working weekends, especially the one in Dayton that I haven't seen since 1986. And there are many museums I want to visit. But a lot of my time will be spent in ministry work because that is what I have been looking forward to having time for - too often my work gets in the way of it!
Ken, my course I'm building will be on a CD because that's how much technology I know and it will work. If you have a way of setting something like that up for connecting to on the net, I'd be more than happy to provide it.
Glenn
