Excellent, thanks. Nope, no-one else yet, so you are the first. Ok chapter 1 (Grumman Wildcat) is yours. Thanks for the help.

OK, there you go. It should arrive before this entry is completed.

Nice work. OK, got that, chapter 1 is all done now, see here http://www.outerzone.co.uk/books/dis...ok=3&chapter=1 to have a look. It's twice as good now you can see some detail in the photos.

Anyone offering help with photos for the other chapters? So far that's 1 down, 14 to go.

Steve, all I can say for now is Thank You.
Your dedicated hard work is very much appreciated by all those in the modeling community. The Outerzone is a great resource.
John

Thanks John. I'm just having fun, that's all. I like doing this.

No more offers to help with clear photos for the Towner and Boys 'Scale Model Aircraft That Fly' book?

Meanwhile, here's a simpler request: Does anyone have the wing rib former for the Keil Kraft Outlaw? The plan is on Outerzone here http://www.outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=1307 but is missing the wing rib. Would be nice to have this particular plan complete.

Ok, hogal has kindly filled the gap by drawing up a plan for the Outlaw that shows a Clark Y rib.

Next request. Can someone please confirm (or not) that the Joe Wagner Dakota plan here http://www.outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=233 really is correct as drawn with 5 deg *left* thrust in the motor mount? Just checking. It looks all wrong, but I guess maybe that just is how it really is.

No one has offered number two, Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat? I can send them.

By the way, I checked out the Wildcat photos on your site and they seem to have some sort of a cross-hatch background in grey. Is there some way I can prevent that when I scan them?

Would you consider adding year published to the tag matrix?

Originally Posted by Balsabird

No one has offered number two, Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat? I can send them.

By the way, I checked out the Wildcat photos on your site and they seem to have some sort of a cross-hatch background in grey. Is there some way I can prevent that when I scan them?

Thanks for the offer of chapter 2 of the book, yes please. No-one else has offered help on this particular job, and if they do I'll post on here to lket you know.

The fringing effect is a pain in the backside, it's an intereference effect between the pixel size on the printed paper and the DPI setting used to scan it. I think. I am not sure how best to get around it. I think changing the scan DPI might help (or not), but am frankly not sure. Any offers of help or explanation on this effect are most welcome.

Meanwhile, I have to say even with the fringing, your pics are 10 times better than my originals. I'm not too worried.

Edit, have just googled that for a bit, and the correct term i think is 'Moire Pattern' - there's some info here - http://www.creativepro.com/article/s...-no-more-moir- but this is only if you are interested, I'm not unduly worried about it, myself.

Originally Posted by Eclipse_7

Would you consider adding year published to the tag matrix?

That's an excellent idea. I'd love to do that, and it may happen soon. But I am not sure how best to deal with the gaps in the data though. With wingspan, I went through with aeromeddler's help and we checked that every single plan had a wingspan. With the year date, it's not so easy, and many plans (1,245 by my count, just now, using the advanced search) have no date becuase I simply don't have that information (they appear as year=0).

So... I welcome any suggestions how to deal with that. Off the top of my head, we could ignore those undated plans, for the purposes of a by-year-tagmatrix search. In fact one simple way would be to add 1 new field for 'show only plans dated before:' and a date picker. That would then be handy for builders searching for plans which are known to be old enough to satisfy some vintage competition entry rules.

Any thoughts?

Lack of data in a field will always be a bugbear of any database like this. However, in my opinion where the info is known it would be great to have it viewable and searchable. I can only suggest that it is up to the users and supporters of Outerzone (which is all of us) to help by submitting the data wherever we find it missing. Until then having any undated stuff with either a 0 or some other character in the year field works fine. Everyone knows what it means.

As far as searching goes, as soon as someone goes to search by date, you could have an additional tickbox 'Include all undated plans?'. I don't know how many are undated, but at least this way b people wouldn't miss a plan because that information wasnt there. If people find that tiresome, then they don't tick the box.

Just idle thoughts from one who knows nowt about the technicalities of writing databases...

Steve,
Thanks for putting up Sal Taibi designs on the random image on your home page. Sal passed away last week at 92. Great flying designs, my dad's favorite was the Brooklyn Dodger.

Originally Posted by Colonel Blink

Lack of data in a field will always be a bugbear of any database like this. However, in my opinion where the info is known it would be great to have it viewable and searchable. I can only suggest that it is up to the users and supporters of Outerzone (which is all of us) to help by submitting the data wherever we find it missing. Until then having any undated stuff with either a 0 or some other character in the year field works fine. Everyone knows what it means.

As far as searching goes, as soon as someone goes to search by date, you could have an additional tickbox 'Include all undated plans?'. I don't know how many are undated, but at least this way b people wouldn't miss a plan because that information wasnt there. If people find that tiresome, then they don't tick the box.

Just idle thoughts from one who knows nowt about the technicalities of writing databases...

Thanks Colonel. This has got me thinking now.

I have just had a go at testing this on the TagMatrix pages, and it works pretty well. I am lazy, so I started with the easiest option: if you select a year it just returns all plans dated *below* that year (incl) - and it ignores and does not return any plan dated as 0. There is currently no option to switch beteeen including those undated plans on not including them.

Have uploaded a new (for now) TagMatrix page here - http://www.outerzone.co.uk/advanced/...trix/index.asp - that lets you have a go. If you're not interested in the year then of course you can just ignore it and leave the year at 2012 to default to everything. But if (say) you do a reset and clear all the colour squares to grey dontcare (ie show every plan = total 3,762), but then click on year 1925, you get exactly 8 plans back. Which I think is pretty cool.

Let me know if that made sense. Or indeed if you want more tweaks adding.

Originally Posted by WMD

That's an excellent idea. I'd love to do that, and it may happen soon. But I am not sure how best to deal with the gaps in the data though. With wingspan, I went through with aeromeddler's help and we checked that every single plan had a wingspan. With the year date, it's not so easy, and many plans (1,245 by my count, just now, using the advanced search) have no date becuase I simply don't have that information (they appear as year=0).

So... I welcome any suggestions how to deal with that. Off the top of my head, we could ignore those undated plans, for the purposes of a by-year-tagmatrix search. In fact one simple way would be to add 1 new field for 'show only plans dated before:' and a date picker. That would then be handy for builders searching for plans which are known to be old enough to satisfy some vintage competition entry rules.

Any thoughts?

You hit the nail on the head, SAM has two years that are important. Prior to 1939 and prior to 1942. I'm not sure what other vintage competitions there are out there , but adding those specific years would be helpful for SAM at least.

As far as gaps in information go, has anybody cross-referenced the Outerzone with SAM's approved lists? I would not mind going through it and adding missing information as I find it.