The Aeronca Drawing Preservation Project
An Overview
Todd Trainor - Originally written 2003
Updated 2009
Background
At the 2000 NAA convention Bill Pancake told me that a flood destroyed
nearly all of his private collection of Aeronca drawings. What if Bill had some of the last copies of some drawings?
..They
would be gone forever. This was a wake-up call for me. At that moment I was determined not to let any more
Aeronca drawings become destroyed, lost, or forgotten. Don't forget that many of the E107, E113, and C3 drawings were lost in the 1937 flood of the
Ohio River on Lunken Field.
The Project
My ambitious plans are to scan & enhance as many Aeronca drawings as I can to make them available to the public
via the web or by other means. Some scanned drawings are given to me
to post the web. This would greatly assist those
who are restoring or repairing Aeroncas. It will also preserve them for future
generations. Some of the drawings would be available on the web directly, however, the volume of the drawings and their file sizes
may force me to
put most of them on CD (or DVD) and mail them per request. The drawings will be
available for free, but I might have to ask for a fee to cover my costs of storage, equipment, burning CDs/DVDs,
postage, the website and other costs. Eventually I will distribute enough CDs to ensure that those drawing will survive through
time.
I have spent hundreds (probably over a thousand now) of hours on this project. And at times I encountered many hurdles and brick walls which has caused this project to change its scope and strategy several times. I believe I have a good start now.
Drawing Sources
The drawings come from private collections. I borrow them, scan them, and return them. Two of my largest sources so far have been the FAA ACO office in Chicago and the Bellanca-Champion Club via Mike Hartman. Recently, I have been receiving drawings that have already been scanned. However, I am still missing many drawings, so if you have any drawings please contact me. I am also in desperate need for the master drawing lists of all the other Aeroncas that I don't have permission for.
The Work
As of this writing, I have scanned nearly 4000 drawings. I have many more to go. For the large drawings, I initially used a wide-format monochrome scanner lent to me by Mike Hartman for this project. I scan them as grayscale. Many of the drawings are in very bad shape or the data is barely readable, sometimes it is not readable at all. Now I have my own scanner, but it recently broke and have found it cheaper to have Kinko's scan the drawing for me rather than the costly repair to my scanner. However, more and more, I am finding people will scan their collections for me (at Kinkos or at their work) and send me the raw scans on a CD. I then clean, enhance, and post them on the web.
Most of the work, however, is in "cleaning" the drawings by using a PC and Adobe Photoshop to enhance the data and remove dirty background. The drawings are also converted from grayscale to black-and-white to conserve disk space. However, lately I've been allowing them to remain as grayscale since disk space is becoming less expensive. This is a very time consuming effort, requiring several to dozens of hours per drawing. Those drawings have been posted on the website.
Volunteers Needed
Help! I need all able and willing volunteers with a computer to help me clean and enhance the scanned drawings. This is very interesting work as you get to see the internal components of these antique airplanes. But the work is tedious, yet important. I will teach you how to use Photoshop, a very complex graphics program. I have a Volunteer Guide To Cleaning Aeronca Drawings available on the website.
Expenses
The drawings are free, but I need to charge a small service fee to recover the costs scanning, cleaning, and storage. I am hoping to drop that fee in the future when all my expenses have been recouped.
Contact
Feel free to contact me for any reason.
Todd Trainor
2285 Ore Creek Lane
Brighton, MI 48114
ttad@aol.com