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More Art

May 022022

Like the recent purchase of Bell and Hughes art, I’ve just purchased from ebay two pieces of vintage McDonnell-Douglas concept art (the *actual* paintings, not reproductions) for the purpose of digitizing and preserving them. These are early 1970’s concepts for advanced fighters; the rear view is of the Model 265 AFTI submission circa 1973. The other is so far as I’m aware known solely from this painting and depicts a *tiny* fighter from 1970. I would be unsurprised if this turns out to be a concept for a fighter to be carried in some numbers by a 747 or C-5 carrier aircraft. A fighter that small shooting down a MiG 25 seems a bit optimistic.

These will be digitized and eventually donated to a good aerospace museum or archive (still inviting comments on what museum would be best… NASM, NMUSAF, Pima seem the most popular, with the Bell museum in Buffalo being an appropriate choice for the prior Bell artwork). And as with the earlier artworks, buying these was not cheap. Hell, ebay charged me more than sixty bucks just in *taxes.* Bah. So as before, if you’d like to help this project, $25 would go a long way. The “Add To Cart” button below would take care of that. If you were of a mind to, you could always hit the “quantity” button afterwards… hint, hint…

To help sweeten the deal, those who help out here will not only get the high-rez scans of the McDonnell-Douglas artwork but also professional photos I plan to obtain of the Lockheed stowed-rotor composite aircraft painting below, the very first “real” painting I purchased a few years ago. And if you’d like to help out with the previous Bell/Hughes paintings, check HERE.

Art!

fighter, hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, research, transports, VTOL 5 Responses »

Apr 262022

The third of three pieces of vintage aerospace concept art – the actual paintings, not reproductions – that I recently procured from ebay has arrived. This is a 1960’s Hughes concept for a “Hot Cycle” Rotor Wing VTOL aircraft. The prior two – a 1970’s Bell AMST concept for a four-turbojet C-130 test aircraft and a 1980 Bell concept for a hovercraft to allow fighters to launch from bombed-out runways – were just able to be scanned on my flatbed scanner. But the Hughes painting was much larger, so I digitized it via photography, resulting in a 10,878X7500 pixel (about 36X25 at 300 dpi) image. Several iterations of the image – the stitched-together final image, and a version that was fade-corrected to make it look more like the actual painting – have been uploaded to a Dropbox folder with the Bell art.

These paintings are currently framed and will be hung on my wall… for a time. At some point my plan is to donate them to a good museum. The Smithsonian NASM is the obvious default, but I’m interested in alternatives. A museum that would *want* these and would protect yet display them would be ideal.

If you happen to see other aerospace concept art on ebay that’s not going for *insane* amounts and you’d like to see it preserved… let me know. I now have four pieces (not counting things like blueprints); not a great collection by any measure, but it’s something.

I am going to continue to work on digitizing this painting. I’ve been trying to find a local flatbed scanner big enough to scan the whole thing all at once; if I can get that done, the results will also be uploaded to the Dropbox folder.

If you’d like access to the folder – and thus the high-rez images, as well as some PDF documentation I’ll be adding – here’s an opportunity to do so. These paintings were not cheap to secure, so there’s a bit of a charge ($25):

Procuring these was not cheap, but now they are saved for posterity.

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.

One art, please

fighter, hi-rez, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, research, transports No Responses »

Apr 162022

D’oh. My “gotta save money” goal just took some substantial hits… I bought some vintage *original* art, the *actual* paintings, on ebay.

Send help.

First: A 1980’s idea for a small unmanned hovercraft to help an F-15 lift off from a damaged runway:

Second: a 1970’s Bell concept for a C-130 with four turbojet engines as a demonstrator for the AMST program:

My credit card just went “WTF are you *doing?*”

Feel free to hit that “tip jar” or subscribe in order to do you part in enabling this sort of financially dubious aerospace history collection and preservation. What I think would be best is to scan the bejeebers out of these then donate them to a good archive or museum.

There’s another much more interesting piece I’m hoping to hear something good on regarding an offer I made.

Stabbed the “Buy it Now” button

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Apr 122022

Just bought on ebay, a print of the Boeing “Space Sortie” vehicle.

So much for my “maybe I should spend less in these difficult times” idea. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.

ALVRJ artwork

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Apr 102022

A recent ebay acquisition, this is a lithograph with a photo and color cutaway of the Vought ALVRJ demonstrator vehicle. The Advanced Low-Volume Ramjet was a program that ran from the late 1960s into the 1980’s with the goal of producing a ramjet engine for missile applications, such as air-to-air missiles and the like.

The artwork was scanned at 600 dpi and made available to above-$10 Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.

March 2022 APR Rewards

hi-rez, hypersonic, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, Recon, rockets, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Mar 312022

I’ve just made the March 2022 rewards available for APR Patrons and Subscribers. This latest package includes:

Art: A poster of the 1990’s German Sanger II two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane

Document: Bell-Boeing “Pointer” brochure… full color brochure describing the proposed tiltrotor UAV

Document: Cessna EV-37E STOL: 1964 presentation on battlefield recon/surveillance version of the T-37

Document: History of the Juno Cluster System: conference paper on the early satellite launching system

CAD diagram: work-in-progress layout of the Aerocon Wingship. General arrangement diagram with brief description of how much trouble I have to go through sometimes…

Compass Cope/B-58A

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Mar 302022

The two aircraft are unrelated, apart from the fact that I have uploaded scans of each to the 2022-03 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up patrons/Subscribers. The first is a brief magazine writeup showing illustrations of the Boeing and Ryan designs for the Compass Cope unmanned recon vehicles from the early 1970s; both of these would end up actually being built, though not quite in the configurations shown in the concept art. The second is a Convair inboard profile/plan view of the B-58A bomber, because why not.

The full-rez scans are, again, available to $4 and pup Patrons/Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.

December, January, February APR rewards

bomber, fighter, hi-rez, jetliner, launch vehicles, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane, transports No Responses »

Mar 052022

Yeesh, I am *terrible* at advertising. Just realized I missed reporting on *several* months worth of rewards packages for APR patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers.

December 2021 rewards:

Document: “B-52G Advanced Configuration Mockup inspection,” Boeing presentation on the design of the then-new B-52G configuration

Document: “Performance Potential Hydrogen Fueled, Airbreathing Cruise Aircraft, Final report, Volume I, Summary” 1966 Convair report on hydrogen fueled hypersonic jetliners

Document: “Integral Launch and Reentry Logistics System” late-60’s Space Division of North American Rockwell presentation on very early Space Shuttle-type systems

Art: Large format McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cutaway

CAD Diagram: Convair MA-1 pod for B-58

January 2022 rewards:

Document: “The Configuration of the European Spaceplane Hermes,” 1990 conference paper on the unbuilt French spaceplane

Document: “Space Rescue Charts,” 1965 USAF presentation charts describing space “life rafts” and shelters

Document: Two nuclear-powered car brochures… Ford “Gyron” and Ford “Seattle-ite XXI”

Diagram: “AGM28 Hound Dog Missile,” North American Aviation informational graphic

CAD Diagram: Boeing MX-1965 missile

February 2022 Rewards:

Diagram: Boeing 720-022 model diagram, United Airlines configuration

Document: Aerojet Ordnance Company brochure, describes aircraft ammo

Document: “The Nova (Liquid) Vehicle a Preliminary Project Development Plan,” October 1961 NASA-MSFC report on facilities planning for the “Saturn C-8” configuration of the Nova vehicle

Document: “Ground Handling Equipment and Procedures for a X-15 Research Aircraft Project 1226,” 1955 North American Aviation report on the early B-36-launched design for the X-15

CAD Diagram: F-111 Escape capsule

Bell nuclear powered helicopter

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Feb 112022

One of the odder concepts from the 1950’s was this circa 1959 Bell Aircraft concept for a nuclear powered helicopter. Very little has come out about it in the decades since; some crude schematics of how the reactor and propulsion systems would be arranged, a bit of text, and this one piece of art. Supposedly this vehicle would have a fuselage some 300 feet long (including rotors, it would be much longer), have a top speed of 200 miles per hour and weigh 500,000 pounds. The artwork looks more like the result of turning the artist loose on the idea of “giant nuclear helicopter” than an interpretation of an engineering study; nuclear reactors powerful enough to lift a half million power helicopter and neither small nor minimally radioactive. A heavily shielded reactor would have to be fitted within this vehicle *somewhere,* and there would doubtless not be windows in that region. This design, though, has windows along the whole length of the fuselage, with little space for a shielded reactor. This design seems to have been designated D-1007.

The full-rez scan of the art has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

Crowdfund: Shuttle II stuff: Success

hi-rez, launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft 2 Responses »

Feb 082022

The package of Shuttle II stuff (actually, “Shuttle Evolved”) arrived today and has been scanned and uploaded to Dropbox (some 350 megabytes). Enough funders came on board to drop the per-funder price to a mere $13. The artwork was particularly nice; it was scanned in at 600 dpi and provided both as-scanned, and with some process to de-age and brighten the art. The documents have been turned into PDFs, as well as providing the raw scans.

The collection of stuff was expensive, but crowdfunding it made it inexpensive for everyone. If you see anything on ebay or elsewhere that might benefit from such an approach, don’t hesitate to point it out.

Funders who have paid the $13 should have received a Dropbox notification about the uploads providing access to the files.

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