Big Fat Horribly Expensive Convair Book: On Hand

Orionblamblam

Orionblamblam

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Got it today. So why don't we have a "smiley" doing a spit-take or milk shooting out his nose? This thing is friggen' *packed* with drawings. Gonna take me days just to work out what all's in it. But from the first few go-throughs, it's mostly nuclear-powered seaplane bombers. Secondly: ASW planes, nuclear, conventional and "SF-1" fueled (doesn't say what SF-1 is, but it's gotta be either hydrogen or methane... most likely hydrogen)
 
Orionblamblam said:
and "SF-1" fueled (doesn't say what SF-1 is, but it's gotta be either hydrogen or methane... most likely hydrogen).
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I think SF-1 refers to some sort of solid fuel in terms of a hybrid engine that uses solid fuel and some sort of liquid fuel in combination. Kind of like SpaceShipOne.
 
Sentinel Chicken said:
Orionblamblam said:
and "SF-1" fueled (doesn't say what SF-1 is, but it's gotta be either hydrogen or methane... most likely hydrogen).
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I think SF-1 refers to some sort of solid fuel in terms of a hybrid engine that uses solid fuel and some sort of liquid fuel in combination. Kind of like SpaceShipOne.
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In a jet engine? I was thinking maybe it could also be a slurry fuel but back in those days "special fuel" for turbine engines was generally hydrogen as they thought it would be the next big thing (see Suntan).
 
Weirder stuff got proposed back in those days. Could be some sort of oddball ramjet thing that would resemble what's used on the Meteor AAM these days.
 
Sentinel Chicken said:
Orionblamblam said:
and "SF-1" fueled (doesn't say what SF-1 is, but it's gotta be either hydrogen or methane... most likely hydrogen).
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I think SF-1 refers to some sort of solid fuel in terms of a hybrid engine ...
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Not in this case. Clearly large cryogenic fuel tanks (a number of inboard profiles). I'm guess that it stands for Special Fuel or some such. I need to calculate the volume of one or other of the tanks and figure out the fuel density, but it looks pretty low... I'm guessing hydrogen.


After going through the thing, by far the biggest "WTF Design" is the nuclear powered version of the F-106 as an interceptor.
 
Orionblamblam said:
After going through the thing, by far the biggest "WTF Design" is the nuclear powered version of the F-106 as an interceptor.
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Well that would help ease up on the oil problem ;)
 
Orionblamblam said:
After going through the thing, by far the biggest "WTF Design" is the nuclear powered version of the F-106 as an interceptor.
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And I thought Convair's "Sky Scorcher" air-to-air missile proposal with a 2 Megaton warhead was weird ::)!
 
Orionblamblam said:
Stuff that's bomber related... well, I'm obviously hesitant to release that (would undermine my book). But anything non-bomber... I'm thinking scanning at 300 dpi, stitching together (these are mostly foldouts) and selling drawing packages at, say 25 cents per scanned page. Trying to recoup *some* of the monster costs. Any thoughts?
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Scott, the problem would surely be that anyone purchasing the image will most probably want to, for example, post it on this site, or whatifmodelers, etc. This would then stop anyone else buying the image.

What if, instead, you consider doing a one-off APR special on Convair designs? Choose say 15 of the most interesting designs (excluding bombers) and create a PDF along the lines of the Bombers preview, but without redrawing everything to save time on your side?

Of course, this depends on reasonable sales of the Bombers Preview.

I am looking at download manager programs that tie into PayPal and allow the server to automatically email a link that expires afer 24 hours on completion of the transaction. The idea would be to allow authors to offer articles or images for sale.

Paul.
 
I agree with Paul. Working on the honor system it's ok when you think about this Secret Projects community, but the world is large... An APR dedicated to Convarir could be ok, another possibility are private agreements you can easily monitor.
 
overscan said:
What if, instead, you consider doing a one-off APR special on Convair designs? Choose say 15 of the most interesting designs (excluding bombers) and create a PDF along the lines of the Bombers preview, but without redrawing everything to save time on your side?
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Possibly, yeah....


Of course, this depends on reasonable sales of the Bombers Preview.
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The initial sales spike on that has ended, so I figure I've sold half as many of the Previews as I'm ever going to.

I am looking at download manager programs that tie into PayPal and allow the server to automatically email a link that expires afer 24 hours on completion of the transaction. The idea would be to allow authors to offer articles or images for sale.
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That would be useful...
 
Do you have any records of APR subscribers? I would imagine they would represent a useful ready market. Unless they are all on the site already of course.

I guess the problem with this site would be only 400 people have signed up (though hundreds more browse without registering) and only a small portion of those would be prepared to pay for anything- certainly, the number of people who were willing to donate to support the site was very small (about 10 people I believe) compared to the numbers who visit each day (100+registered users, plus lots more unregistered ones).

Therefore, you need to find a way of contacting the thousands of people out there who don't necessarily use the internet or haven't found this forum but would be very interested in this book. Also, your own website isn't exactly updated regularly, so I doubt lots of people visit daily to check on new developments.

Tony Buttler has kindly agreed to put the URL for the forum in his US Fighters book, which should hopefully drive some additional traffic this way. I have also been doing some SEO (search engine optimisation) work to try and get more traffic from web searches. Still, it remain a niche area within a niche area, and is never going to be hugely popular.
 
Amazon sells ebooks so that might be something to look into also.
 
Thats a great idea if you can do it. Lots more potential customers.

Scott, contact edocs@amazon.com to see if they will accept it.
 
overscan said:
Thats a great idea if you can do it.
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From Amazon customer service:

"We are working on removing Microsoft and Adobe format e-books from
Amazon.com, and soon they will no longer available for purchase. As
part of our commitment to provide the best customer experience
possible, we are now supporting the Mobipocket format. We remain
committed to e-books and encourage customers to visit
www.mobipocket.com where they can purchase and download tens of
thousands of the most popular titles."

Meh.
 
Theres always lulu.com, but whether that will give you lots of additional sales I don't know. It would give users the option of getting it printed, though.
 
Orionblamblam said:
overscan said:
Thats a great idea if you can do it.
Click to expand...

From Amazon customer service:

"We are working on removing Microsoft and Adobe format e-books from
Amazon.com, and soon they will no longer available for purchase. As
part of our commitment to provide the best customer experience
possible, we are now supporting the Mobipocket format. We remain
committed to e-books and encourage customers to visit
www.mobipocket.com where they can purchase and download tens of
thousands of the most popular titles."

Meh.
Click to expand...

You gotta wonder how removing superior formats makes for "the best customer experience".
 
sferrin said:
You gotta wonder how removing superior formats makes for "the best customer experience".
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You have, I trust, heard the old joke...

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None. They just redefine darkness as the industry standard.

I imagine the same sort of thing is going on with Amazon: Notice that "mobipocket" just so happens to be owned by Amazon.
 
overscan said:
Theres always lulu.com...
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That's actually one of the major ideas for The Book, and for larger-than-Preview projects like re-released APRs and the like. Not sure it'd be worth the bother for Preview... I believe that market is already saturated.
 
We're..OK. I'm very interested. What me to do? Have wallet, wonna buy.
Scott, WHY don't you open an eBay shop? Pretty woman from Canada sells pdf-ed aircraft manuals and DVDs extracted from 16-mm on eBay at http://stores.ebay.ca/AeroReports
1000+ feedbacks for an half of an year with a minimum price of an item (DVD) for about 10 bucks. Some of the forum members are regular buyers from her. eBay are full of guys ready to pay 500+ bucks for AH-56 Chayenne factory desk model and 10 bucks for photo of YF-23, 15 bucks for B-2 first flight mug and 80 or 100 bucks for Airfix TSR.2 kit that was sold in model shops with MRSP GBP 19.99. Just giving an idea of how popular ot could be with a treasures you are buried in! How many new Big Fat Horribly Expensive Convair Books and archive raids you can afford then!
 
Scott,

I'd like to buy that scans. Please tell us what we have to do :)
 
Re: Convair drawing sets

Orionblamblam said:
SD-54-08063 shows a two-seat F-102 trainer with F-104-style inlets
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It looks as if it has tandem seating, unlike the earlier(?) subsonic TF-102A, which had side-by-side seating and totally redesigned P-80/T-33 style in takes.

The production F-106B reverted to conventional tandem seating, like the drawing, although there apparently was no need for F-104/Mirage-style intakes on any F-106.



Orionblamblam said:
SD-58-02027 is the one bomber-type plane I've included
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To be honest, I can't even see what this one is.
 
flateric said:
We're..OK. I'm very interested. What me to do? Have wallet, wonna buy.
Scott, WHY don't you open an eBay shop? Pretty woman from Canada sells pdf-ed aircraft manuals and DVDs extracted from 16-mm on eBay at http://stores.ebay.ca/AeroReports
1000+ feedbacks for an half of an year with a minimum price of an item (DVD) for about 10 bucks. Some of the forum members are regular buyers from her. eBay are full of guys ready to pay 500+ bucks for AH-56 Chayenne factory desk model and 10 bucks for photo of YF-23, 15 bucks for B-2 first flight mug and 80 or 100 bucks for Airfix TSR.2 kit that was sold in model shops with MRSP GBP 19.99. Just giving an idea of how popular ot could be with a treasures you are buried in! How many new Big Fat Horribly Expensive Convair Books and archive raids you can afford then!
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wow. She's got the YF-17 and YF-23 flight manuals right here:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Northrop-YF-Aircraft-Manuals_W0QQitemZ110086665321QQihZ001QQcategoryZ40051QQcmdZViewItem
 
Indeed, but you run the risk of not selling any if the potential buyer has no idea what the image is. In my opinion, you'd be better with larger previews disfigured with nasty "PREVIEW" text on top in hard-to-remove-with-Photoshop places.

Just my thoughts of course.
 
The buyer is a forum member, so if he chooses to pipe up and say "it was worth every dime" or "what a load of crap," that would be up to him.
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It IS worth every dime.... ;)
 
flateric said:
We're..OK. I'm very interested. What me to do? Have wallet, wonna buy.
Scott, WHY don't you open an eBay shop?
Click to expand...

A note: in part due to this prodding - and in larger part due to sudden poverty - I've started scanning in some documents to make into PDF's. The first is the "Saturn V Payload Planners Guide." I'd wondered if I could do the same sort of thing I did with the Preview, making it available on my website in a hidden folder... nope. Damned thing clocks in at 61 megabytes (scanned at 300 dpi, because the drawings *deserve* it). So it'll have to be on CD-ROM.

Next up: "Saturn IB Payload Planners Guide."

Sorta fits into "Secret Projects" in that they cover unbuild variants of these launchers...
 
Skybolt said:
Scott, why you don't slice it in multiple files?
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Nah. It'll still wind up being just as big, just in smaller chunks, and the CD-ROM direction is where I'll have to go eventually anyway. In a sense it's a bit of a relief, as the files now become somewhat size-unlimitted. Less than 2 meg or so the files are emailable; up to about 15 meg they are downloadable... but beyond that CD or DVD media is required, but that starts at about 700 meg.

Plus, being gigantic files should help cut down on piracy, a little.

The Sat V guide looks beautiful at 300 DPI/61 meg. At reduced file size of 9 meg, it kinda looked like crap.
 
Ok, let us know when you're ready... but don't stop there.. I remember you had something going on the Dyna Soar, for example...
 
Is there alot of info on that F2Y Sea Dart follow on? I would definitely be interested in those drawings as well.
 
Sundog said:
Is there alot of info on that F2Y Sea Dart follow on? I would definitely be interested in those drawings as well.
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Seconded!! As well as anything on F-102 and/or F-106 derivatives.
 
Sundog said:
Is there alot of info on that F2Y Sea Dart follow on?
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Is there? Yes. I've got a small pile of F2Y info. However, the other info I have was donated to me for the purposes of APR, and I'm leery of just turning it around and selling it. Maybe I'll put some small article together or something.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Sundog said:
Is there alot of info on that F2Y Sea Dart follow on?
Click to expand...

Is there? Yes. I've got a small pile of F2Y info. However, the other info I have was donated to me for the purposes of APR, and I'm leery of just turning it around and selling it. Maybe I'll put some small article together or something.
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Anything on F-106X or the Sky Scorcher/F-106 concept? I'm sure you'd have said but anything on Kingfish?
 
Orionblamblam said:
Orionblamblam said:
Set 1: $41
Set 2: $49
Set 3: $56
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Anyone? Anyone? Going once, going twice....
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I'm interested in a copy of Set 3, but cash flow dictates, now that I've got car payments again (a long and ugly story there), that it'll be roughly this time next month before I can order and pay (that is the one with the F-102/F-106 data, isn't it?).
 
I'm in for set 3. What do I need to do, just paypal you asking for set 3?
 

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