All, I was browsing the UK ebay site a few weeks back and stumbled across a new source of quality ship plans. There were several back issues of the magazine Modelarstwo Okretowe for sale on the UK ebay site. This is a marine modeling magazine that has ship plans in almost every issue. It is a polish magazine, but I believe it is printed in Russian (but I'm not 100% sure of that). The magazine got started in 2005, but I had never heard of them before I saw them on ebay. They cover all kinds of ships, from wooden sailing vessels to modern ships, civilian and military, including submarines. But several of their plans are for naval ships of the WWI - WWII eras. The articles have some detailed pictures of the actual ships, or of pictures of detailed models. I bought 3 issues from the ebay seller and was very pleased with what I got a couple of weeks later. So then I found the magazine's website and ordered 8 more back issues. I used google translate and found out that overseas buyers needed to email them for shipping info. I emailed them and bought 8 back issues for $77 (including priority shipping) and paid for it via paypal. I got the back issues about a week later, and was very impressed with what I got. Most of the plans are very detailed. All I have gotten so far included hull stations, and all but a couple included hull lines. Plans always included profile and plan views. Most plans show port and starboard views of the SS, with detailed drawings of the exterior of the deck houses, funnels, turrets and guns, etc. Plans seem to resemble the Profile Morskie plans, but in larger scales. The fold-out plans from the issue I got ranged from 1/50 scale for MTB-34 to 1/250 scale for the USS Vincennes heavy cruiser. And unlike the Profile Morskie plans, these are not on A-size sheets that you have to tape together, but are all on large folded sheets, slightly smaller than an A1 metric or an ANSI D size blueprint. Each blueprint is printed on both sides. Most plans are two sheets (one page printed on both sides), but some are 1 sheet, 3 sheets, or 4 sheets. If a plan is only on one sheet, another ship plan will be printed on the reverse side. Sometimes plans are spread across two issues, as each issue usually has one folded large scale blueprint (printed on both sides) inserted at the centerfold and one set of small scale drawings (usually 1/400 - 1/500 scale) printed inside the issue itself. The google translated Modelarstwo Okretowe website can be found here: translate.google.com/translate. If you click on 'Download', you will find that the downloads section includes lists of all the large scale and small scan plans they have published so far, with the scale, time period depicted, and what issue they are in. That's what I used to pick the back issues I wanted. If you go to the shopping section you can see the covers of each issue. But don't add them to your cart if you want to buy any - email them instead as their shopping cart isn't set up to handle overseas shipping. The list of plans isn't very extensive yet, but the magazine is still publishing so more plans will be added with each new issue. In total, I bought 11 back issues of the 37 regular issues and 11 special issues printed so far. The 11 issues I have include 12 plans (1 pre-WWII plan, 10 WWII plans and 1 modern tug plan), with two sets of plans spanning two issues. I don't think it's worth getting a subscription at this point as I've only been interested in less than 1/4 of the plans (11 out of the 48 total issues) printed so far and the shipping is more economical when buying several issues at a time. But I will keep checking back every few months to see what plans were added in the most recent issues. Carl
