AA Military Research
Big-5 Battleship Plans
CD
Reviewed by Timothy Dike |
| This new Plans CD from Ron Smith of AA Military Research
will help you build a better scale model Big 5 Battleship. The big 5 refers
to the other Pearl Harbor Battleships. Most people relate to the Arizona,
Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Oklahoma, but there were four other players there
that day. The Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, and California. Also
included on the CD is the Colorado which was not at Pearl Harbor that fateful
day. |
| On this CD are 28 drawings of the BB-43 Tennessee, BB-44
California, BB-45 Colorado, BB-46 Maryland, and BB-48 West Virginia in
several views. The views show all deck levels in plan and profile. The
drawings range from mid 1920's right up to 1945. It is interesting to note
the extreme changes that these ships went through. Frame sections are shown
at the major points on the ships and even the added on torpedo blister
hull lines are included. These drawings are far more detailed than any
I have seen available anywhere else. |
click images
to enlarge |
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The plans are all scanned full size which creates extremely large files.
The image on the right shows an actual size overlay at full size with the
overall image reduced for viewing. The drawings have all been cleaned up
and are much clearer than the original sheets. |
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A note from Ron Smith:
This disc contains very large .tif files, you will need software
capable of opening uncompressed raster graphics such as Photoshop, Corel
Photopaint or GIMP. These files will put a strain on low end computers
with slow CPU's and under 1GB RAM. These files are intended for on screen
viewing or printing at full size, attempting to rescale or print on the
average home office printer will not yield satisfactory results. Full size
prints may be obtained at Kinko's, etal., when printed actual size you
will have a paper copy that exactly matches the plans at NARA less the
dirt and scanning noise. |
| We have gone to the expense of obtaining
hardcopy from NARA and having it scanned to .tif format. Each drawing has
anywhere from 30 to 150 hours labor painstakingly removing scanning noise,
dirt and draftsman's pencil cheat lines. Please respect the cost and time
involved and do not distribute them to others, we'd like to recover our
investment so we can offer more plans as time allows. |
Conclusions:
 This
CD is a valuable tool if you are considering any of these Battlewagons.
Early war or late war, it's all included. A great companion to the USS
Maryland photo CD.
The files are huge and very detailed and can be printed out as needed
by Kinkos. If you have your own large format plotter, you can print out
all you need as you need them. Warning: This CD is not for a slow computer.
While copies of the images are also provided in JPEG format, they are still
large and more than the typical PC can handle.
This CD is listed for $75. That may seen kind of steep, but you could
build a 1 to 1 scale version from these. You can order via the AAMilitary-Research.com
website with their paypal shopping cart. Note you don't have to be
a Paypal customer to order as long as you have a credit card. If you are
building a large size version of this ships these plans will prove invaluable.
They are also quite handy to refer to for smaller scales. |
