Online Aircraft Encyclopedia? (With technical drawings?)

[Stef]

Hi guys! I have a question... Let me put it the long way: When I'm drawing the various aircraft appearing in Chicken Wings, I like to stay pretty close to what the aircrafts really look like. Maybe that's because I had a technical education and like drawing technical stuff, but I also like the authentic look of the aircraft in contrast to the cartoon characters. It gives it all a unique look, I feel.

Anyway, I have various books with various aircraft types of course, but since this collection is by no means extensive enough, I am quite frequently looking for images on the internet. Finding images is not that hard, but finding the right kind of images is sometimes a painstaking task. What I am especially looking for are design or engineering drawings, something like profiles and horizontal projections, body plans, sheer plans etc.

Do you guys know something like an online encyclopedia where this is included? Since there's so many of you always posting quite cool links, I thought why not ask... I would be grateful for any recommendations!! Thanks a lot!!

[Gulfstream Driver]

Unfortunately, I don't know of anything specific.  It's too bad there isn't a database of POH's.

[Frank N. O.]

I like be accurate with authentic detail as well but all I can think of to find these details are the sites that have 3-view drawings of planes for 3D-modeling or maybe looking around at airliners.net. www.smcars.net have a ton of blueprint and while most of it are cars then they do have some planes as well on the bottom of the forum list, and there used to be a site called 3-view from a flightsimulator fan-site but I can't find it anymore.

Gulf, nice new avatar, elegant classic jet

Frank

[MO]

Hi Stef,

Great topic!

First of all, have you heard about Jack Leynnwood?

He was the guy who painted all those great, and I mean great, boxtops for Revell's scale model kits from 1957 to 1977. He produced at least 600 boxtops illustrations and they were so good that I know of people who chase desperately the models only for their boxes! He developed a very distinctive drawing / painting style that simply "made you look" and caught your eye, mainly by changing the shape of the aircraft´s structure -on porpuse- to achieve such effect. In a few words: He painted the planes and choppers very different from the real thing, just to make them look similar... He was mercyless when chopping wingtips, tail fins and even the noses. He also applied "perspective blending" very often, in order to catch the viewer's eyes and was against the traditional "hype-accurate" school where every rivet and every joint has to be represented exactly.

I have a very interesting article about him and his work that I would like to send you. It's full of Jack's illustrations and explains what I have tried -poorly- to explain to you above. So give me a "real" mail address and I will try to drop the magazine on the Post Office before the weekend. Do so through the Forum's Private Mail or send a few lines to my email address (that must be around here, somewhere...)

Cheers!

[Roland]

Hi Stef.

Coming back to your question again: the best way I found out to find technical drawings of certain planes or helicopters is to search for “specification data” of the related aircraft.

Ether you try this on the search machine or at the homepages of the aircraft manufacturer. Last I think is the best way to find the drawings. Personally I don’t know of such encyclopaedia on the net.

[Stef]

Thanks guys! Well, Roland, as for your suggestion: I sometimes do that, but quite a lot of manufacturers' websites are either not well structured or not comprehensive... It's maybe the best way, that's true, but it takes me an hour until I come up with what I need... Maybe I'll just have to create some structured bookmarks for myself...

Frank: I didn't really find anything on the site you posted. Do you happen to know any sites with 3D models on it?!

MO: Never hear of Jack Leynnwood before, but I built quite a lot of models when I was a kid (not by far as many as my brother though, hehe) and I used to love the boxtop images! Usually looked at least ten times better than the finished model!  Don't go through too much trouble for me please!! But if you really want to send it, my mailing address is no secret (it's on our contact page as well):
Stefan Strasser
Lacknergasse 55/8
1170 Vienna
Austria

Maybe write (Europe) in brackets, so the letter doesn't end up in Australia! Happened before in the past... 

I came across a really amazing website that Ted Stryker posted here in another thread:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/index.html

It has tons of cool pictures from every angle for every aircraft, and also vertical and horizontal projections. BUT the drawback is that it only features military aircraft of the US.(There's another page on a couple of international planes, but only military ones there too). Firstly I am mostly looking for civil aircraft, and secondly, the names are usually different to the civil ones (e.g. OH-6 for the Hughes 500). Now if there were something like that for civil or for all aircraft, that would be neat!!!

[MO]

OK, Stef. I'll mail you the magazine ASAP. Count on it. (And it's not a problem for me, don't worry.)

In the mean time, have you checked this site out?

http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new%20site/frames/aircraft%20profile_frame.htm

Click on the "Aircraft Drawings" link. You will find quite a bunch of interesting 3D views there, including the beautiful Cessna 185 and the Skymaster...

Let me know what you think, OK?

Cheers!

[Stef]

Wow!!! This is aweseome! Lots of historic and military aircraft there too, but quite a few civil ones too... it's really cool! Will certainly help me out in the future!
Thanks a lot!!

[Inept]

This may only contain the same aircraft that MO just posted, but here it is none the less.

http://membres.lycos.fr/wings2/3vues/3vues.html

[MO]

Here are a few more:

http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Ejp1508/index.html (Mostly Military)

http://richard.ferriere.free.fr/3vues/3vues.html (A bit of everything here, but it's in French)

http://www.bobsairdoc.com/ Check this out!!! (Commercial site)

http://avia.russian.ee/index.html (This one is for Mike and the bunch of rotorheads that inhabit this forum, but it has a bit of 3D views)

[Stef]

Wow, the French site looks quite cool! Actually it's pretty simlar to the one Inept posted and the other one from before. The ones about helicopters is handy as well! I especially enjoyed the section "Helicopter designs before 1900" 

The commercial one seems to be the most extensive one by far, but I actually don't really want to pay for it  And also, I'd prefer having images on the computer, and finding them through the internet, because I usually want to draw the plan now (I'm an impatient fella). Looks like this guy mails the stuff via snail mail which is far too slow for me!

Thanks again for all the help and the great links!!

[Mike]

Wow!!! This is aweseome! Lots of historic and military aircraft there too, but quite a few civil ones too... it's really cool! Will certainly help me out in the future!
Thanks a lot!!

Hey Bro, did you see all the views of the F-4 Corsair?
This will come in handy for the future "CW" strips, won't it??

[Frank N. O.]

First off, sorry I forgot that SMCars requires a profile to watch the blueprints/drawings but that's a free thing like here. http://www.smcars.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=86&order=desc this is the main list, I see they redesigned the whole thing recently. There are 13 pages, the first several are USSR planes but there are some classic WW2 planes in drawn/coloured 3-views etc. later on but maybe they are on the above posted sites as well.

That helicopter site was fantastic! Thank you for the link! There were several of those things I've never seen before and some that were out of this world, and then it actually flew for real, one of those was the Rotodyne plane I think, looked big, like a fat transporter/airliner with a spli-tail and a rotor instead of full-size wings, and they said it actually flew for real, and some pictures I found actually showed the real thing, absolutely fantastic! Another helicopter concept had swing-rotors to reduce tip-blade speed, in reference to the talks about terminal velocity for a helicopter. I wonder if anyone will design scimitar rotorblades, more area, smaller diameter.

Frank

[Frank N. O.]

I was just wondering, have you checked out Dryden's site yet? There's line-art, 3-views  etc. of several planes and pictures too.

Frank

[spacer]

http://www.simviation.com/designresources.htm#On%20Line%20Resources