I don't know about anyone else, but it seems the Vintage & Old-Timer Plans PRE 1960 PLANS ONLY has turned away from being a receptacle for a plans resource into more of a general building thread discussion with few or any plans being posted and quite a few that are much later than the required PRE 1960 date. Especially as we now have the thread fro PRE 1977 Plans
I know it's a common problem for most forums to slowly but surely the wander way off the thread.
I think it's time to try and put it back on the rails
If anyone cares to take a look at the first couple of hundred pages you'll immediately see what I mean.
It would be good to see this thread getting back to what it was intended for, a plans resource, not simply a convenient discussion for everything vintage and lately (last 200 pages) non vintage?
It's not like we're starved for space or other topics under the Vintage & Old-Timer Designs threads.

Could be everyone is running out of fresh plans. It’s not an inexhaustible supply! Not everyone has all their old magazines saved. I didn’t start saving mine until about 1960.
A little discussion, though off topic, keeps the thread “alive”. It might also slow the Ebay plan sellers, rather than “scoop” and run, they have to look!

Originally Posted by JohnAV8R

Could be everyone is running out of fresh plans. It’s not an inexhaustible supply! Not everyone has all their old magazines saved. I didn’t start saving mine until about 1960.
A little discussion, though off topic, keeps the thread “alive”. It might also slow the Ebay plan sellers, rather than “scoop” and run, they have to look!

Hi John
When you consider the number of magazines that have been published I doubt we could be close but even so, it's a sticky thread that will always be at the top so it's not as if it is going to get lost any time soon!
The pre 1977 plans will as it's not a sticky thread and it seems to me being a sticky thread has simply made this topic a convenient rather than correct thread to use.
As for the eBay plan sellers, they have skins thicker than Rhino's and aren't likely to stop anytime soon because this thread exists. If anything they're more likely to copy what's been published here and try and make a few bucks from the uninitiated
I agree that there will always be some side tracking in any thread. However now it's become fair game for anything and the whole intent of the PLANS ONLY has very much been lost.
I've downloaded quite a number of plans over the years this topic has been running, but I've put back by cleaning up drawings and loading plans in return.
It would be nice to see some more relevant plans posted.
This is after all the Vintage & Old-Timer forum.

Raglafart, could be there’s a lot more plans out “there”, as you pointed out, ( all the different magazines, years of publications, etc). I think that a major stumbling block is that most of us don’t have access to collections going back past 1960s, 1950s, 1940s? And when people move on, the “house cleaners” throw every thing out!
I still enjoy the 1960s magazines; there are always several construction articles per magazine, which are a lot more than “to-days publications”.

Yes, the “side tracking” has probably resulted from convenience that the thread is always at the “top”. Maybe those that side track too much should just start a new thread, but that’s not likely to happen.
Since the thread is privately moderated by orange&white, who may elect to delete unwanted replies, he should perhaps make the final decision and just delete all the “off topic discussions”. However, this action could also have a negative effect, such that the thread would see less comments and even fewer plans being added.
There’s probably no easy way to get around the perceived problem.
We all enjoy the plans that are posted.
We are all very grateful to those who go the “extra yard” and clean the plans up.
Lastly, as you mention, “It would be nice to see some more relevant plans posted. This is after all the Vintage & Old-Timer forum.”
Just my two cents worth.
John

I think part of the problem comes in when the thread police or people who just aren't satisfied with good things chime in and complain about the whole copyright issue and other trivial issues. It is like a disease, once it enters and bears its teeth, it slowly kills the victim, in this case the thread in question. A good example was when there was such a grumble about the folks putting in boat plans. You see where that went.

So to answer the question, I think people start to bring up other off-topic issues in the thread to give it some sort of hope for survival.

BTW, thank you to everyone who has contributed plans sources and information in the said thread. I appreciate it very much and look forward to it getting back on track.

Greg

Originally Posted by Greg Knipp

I think part of the problem comes in when the thread police or people who just aren't satisfied with good things chime in and complain about the whole copyright issue and other trivial issues. It is like a disease, once it enters and bears its teeth, it slowly kills the victim, in this case the thread in question. A good example was when there was such a grumble about the folks putting in boat plans. You see where that went.

So to answer the question, I think people start to bring up other off-topic issues in the thread to give it some sort of hope for survival.

BTW, thank you to everyone who has contributed plans sources and information in the said thread. I appreciate it very much and look forward to it getting back on track.

Greg

Hi Greg
Without wanting to start it off all over again, thankfully I think the copyright issue has finally fallen off the perch. It certainly didn't help the thread and got close to killing it.
It put off a lot of posters of plans and did a tremendous amount of damage.

I'll be the first to say I couldn't see the point of having boats listed in an Aeroplane thread, especially when there is a dedicated "Boat forum"
Why would anyone search an Aeroplane thread for boat plans
I set up the "Vintage Model Boat & Ship plans" thread in the boating forum part of R/C Groups under the "Dock Yard" and that's had a healthy 15 pages since starting.That issue here on the Old-Timer thread came and passed.

Now all we need is a few more plans of the Old-Timer pre 1960 type and less off topic gassbagging where there are other more appropriate places for it to stop the dilution of the threads initial intents

I'm pretty sure I still have lots of appropriate plans left. I've gone through most of my copies of Airflow, but I still have a bunch of old FAC news with lots of plans in them, and also Tailspin and a few Max Fax, etc. I'm not sure what proportion are pre 1960, but we'll see. I also have an old book (I forget the name just now) from the '30s that I've been scanning and posting from, and there are a few left in there.

The FAC news still carries a fair number of old rubber free flight plans, mostly scale. Tailspin as well, though perhaps not quite as many since it's a smaller publication. And Max Fax too. I'm sure there are some other good newsletters like that with old plans.

You can find some other plans sources in the links at fullsizeplans.com, including DVD's for old magazines. I have the DVD's for Model Builder, which are pretty good. The scanning could sometimes be just a tad less fuzzy, but it's sharp enough to be useful. Not cheap, but there's a lot in there. Hoping that's true for the other DVD's.

I would be willing to devote some time to cleaning plans up. I've downloaded literally thousands of plans from the forums here so it wouldn't hurt me one bit to clean some up for others to download. If someone can get me the raw files, I will spend some time reading the discussion regarding cleaning the plans. Im pretty savvy with computer software so I dont think it will take me long to catch on.

Originally Posted by madbomber

I would be willing to devote some time to cleaning plans up. I've downloaded literally thousands of plans from the forums here so it wouldn't hurt me one bit to clean some up for others to download. If someone can get me the raw files, I will spend some time reading the discussion regarding cleaning the plans. Im pretty savvy with computer software so I dont think it will take me long to catch on.

I don't know that you actually need raw files, here's a work in progress that I've been looking at that was posted a day or so ago for the Fairchild Argus.
I've been working on the downloaded copy of the plan that was scanned at resolution of only 72 pixels per inch.
I generally have followed the advice at Outerzone and found my own way using a combination of CS3, Microsoft Paint and picture manager for various tasks
Here's a copy of the original along with my work in progress after 2-3 hours of cleaning up all the back ground, I'll retype all of the original plan info once I've got the drawing fully cleaned up. I've found Pain much easier to use for text and arrows and few other features than CS3, Picture manager has some useful brightness and contrast features that are easier to work with than CS3 too, but you run into to problems once file sizes get above a certain size. Probably because I use JPEG format when working with the files.
I scan at 600 dpi in grayscale which significantly reduces file sizes. Once I've finished all my editing I then convert to Bitmap which gets the file size down to an even more manageable size.
I'm probably making work for myself the way I do it, then again I've taught myself by trial and error and enjoy doing it
Here's the original file in Colour and then my work in progress

Rags, I posted the Fairchild Argus scans. If you used the posted stuff, they were all scanned at 300 dpi. I did a 600 dpi scan of the plan only, for you skilled gentlemen to work on, but it's too big to post (only just, I think it's 3.7 mega).
Anyway, I tried to work on it using GIMP. First time I've tried messing with grayscale, etc., and I ended up with files that are all around 10 mega! Perhaps I'm doing something wrong!!!

Later today, I'll put the 600 dpi plan files on my Dropbox and provide a link, so that you'll have something reasonable to work on...

I should have sent you a pm and asked you to email me the larger file.
It's a pretty model and worth the work
Cheers John

If there's anything I've posted that appeals to you and hasn't yet been cleaned up by someone else, I usually have somewhat higher definition, or at least larger files that I can send to you. However, I'm not sure that's usually necessary.

Originally Posted by madbomber

I would be willing to devote some time to cleaning plans up. I've downloaded literally thousands of plans from the forums here so it wouldn't hurt me one bit to clean some up for others to download. If someone can get me the raw files, I will spend some time reading the discussion regarding cleaning the plans. Im pretty savvy with computer software so I dont think it will take me long to catch on.