Features

AA Military Research TB-6 Plans CD Reviewed by Timothy Dike
This CD contains scans of the Torpedo Boat USS Porter TB-6, a 165 ton ship built in 1897. She served during the Spanish American War and off and on until 1912. On the CD are four images containing scanned sheets of this ship dated Feb. 24th 1909. They are huge images ranging in size from 17 to 32 megabytes each. They require a large format plotter capable of printing "E" size prints. Most of the images can be cropped down to "D" size if needed.
The views include an outboard profile, and plan views. There are deck levels, and completely detailed interior views in both plan and elevation. Cutaway section view also have fully detailed interiors. These plans are detailed enough that you could build your own 1:1 ship. They are detailed right down to the nuts and bolts and hinges that operate the various hatches. These plans are also fully annotated and call out the various constructions features. I have included thumbnails showing the images. Some show the image actual size overlaid on a reduced images. All are reduced in quality to format them for the web. The images on the CD are full resolution, while these have been reduced to the bare minimum.	click images to enlarge

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 building one of these early torpedo boats. 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 only $20 and can be ordered 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.