Hey, if anyone remembers the old Warships1.com site, which lamentably ceased to be for reasons unknown... for us to be able to do things we wanted to do mirroring the French plans repository (also offline now), we had to set up a Google business account, part of which was a website. Turned out that 1) www.warships1.org was available, and 2) that we could use Google Sites to make a website for it. Way too convenient, right? So, the end result of this is: The entire French plans site is going to be mirrored on Google Drive under the auspices of Warship Plans Repository, and with some help from friends, we can start to build a new warship info site, similar to the old warships1.com site. This is largely possible due to Chase Hargraves and Nick volunteering to help build our mirror (since they both have the entire French archive saved). If you have original ships plans that are not someone's copyrighted work*, please send them to me for inclusion. The intent is to keep the plans freely available to modelers and history buffs, so any help is greatly appreciated, and also serving the greater good (as I see it, anyhow). I will post on this forum when the mirror is up and ready. The rest of the site will be a work in progress. With the 'Sequester' apparently coming to pass, work is going to be furloughing me (and the other employees) one day per week, so I am making lemonade and will be building the site. Rar. Starting with armoured cruisers! Cause I get to pick! Fregattenkapitan von Tugboat, out. *examples of stuff I DO want are scans or copies of shipyard blueprints, or that are otherwise unencumbered. Examples of stuff I DO NOT want are scans of Miyukikai plans, Profile Morskie, George Goff, etc. That's stealing, nuff said. Still figuring out the legalities of the plans from the Narod.ru site.
That was my thinking. I don't want anything copyrighted. I may have to make a few runs up the coast to the Archives to get some American plans that I can use, but that's doable. Anything else, I will be at the mercy of donors The main point was to preserve the French plans' availability, and that is being met as we speak. Nearly done getting them onto the Drive and I'll post a link when it's ready.
Progress update: Have the Warships1.org main page more or less looking like I want it to in basic form. A grid with the nationalities displayed, click on one of those and it takes you to that nation's page where you can go to battleships, cruisers, etc. Loads pretty quick, probably because there's no BS loading (ads, etc). Now to work on a generic 'HMS Inedible' page, from which to generate many other ship pages.
No problem. We're getting the drive populated, although we're trying to sort out some things with the google drive in terms of why we have 20GB but Chase only gets to see 5 GB of it, despite being a collaborator with me on the project.
Interestingly, on contacting the French site to see if there was any problem mirroring their plans, they said that under French law this was not allowed, and they would charge us only $1,000/page. I don't recall if that was per day or per year, but ouch. When I mentioned it was for non-profit and that we would, in exchange link to their site, thus driving new traffic while offloading a lot of bandwith hogging downloads from them, they were a bit huffy and indicated that their bandwith was quite fine, thanks, and they did not want or require any "assistance." Just pay them for the privilege of mirroring plans without charge.... Right. Cheers,
If we are on the same page, I was not happy with the French plans. I had worked with the MOG plans and was working on rescaling them from 1/100 to 144. The major problem I had was the plans were not "Plum" ! The hull had a banana curve in it. I did like having all of the extra detail available.
Unfortunately not all of the plans are in the best of condition, and some more care could have been taken during the scanning process for some as well. Though sometimes a ship w\ a fouled up planset has a sister ship with a better set.
I think they are what they are, and the majority of them are usable for our purposes, and I wish that the major seafaring countries would do as France has and made the plans available for free. Even with a banana curve in them
They've been 14.40GBP per sheet for a long time now. Its only expensive if you just have to have all the sheets in the planset, some of which only include interior views.
You also have to consider the quality of the NMM plans to. Its not like you are buying something that a 5 year old drew with non matching dimensions.
I admire the French for putting their plans online, but it's sad they want paid so much to mirror their site. You'd think they'd be glad for the mirror. Oh well... I'm glad to hear that the NMM is not as expensive as I was led to believe. I may have to follow up on that soon.
