Ye Olde Rocket Forum - AVI Astroport plans

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- - AVI Astroport plans (http://www.oldrocketforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421)

Quote:

Originally Posted by doswonk

DOH!! I had one of these back in the day - the AVI Astroport Encylog, not a large-bed scanner - and in a foolish burst of de-cluttering, disposed of it! What was I thinking? I suspect it was the last catalog to come out of AVI because shortly thereafter they went out of business. Had to have been back in the summer of 1978, or at the very latest '79.

I basically just wrote letters to every manufacturer listed in the appendix of the current (4th, I think) edition of the Handbook of Model Rocketry requesting a copy of their current catalog. Although I got a few "Return to Sender," it worked surprisingly well. That's how I "discovered" FSI.

Now I realize AVI was on its last legs,* and in fact one of the reasons I didn't care much for the catalog is that they were reselling Estes and (maybe) Centuri products I already had access to. One somewhat interesting point, to me, was that they were based in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which was not that far from the Chicago suburbs where I lived, and we had actually stopped there on a family vacation a few years before to visit a museum.

As a very occasional poster and general keyboard jockey, I will refrain from giving any advice about scanning the Encyclog.

________
* Being, of course, the final incarnation of the company that had started as MRI, which had become MPC, which had become AVI when the guy who'd started MRI and sold it to General Mills to become the core of MPC then bought up the remaining MPC inventory when General Mills bailed, which seems to have kept AVI stocked with product for a good part of the mid-1970s. But the vein was mostly played out by the time I got the Encyclog....which I disposed of.

I did essentially the same thing--which still makes me wince whenever I think about it--with my copy of Richard Morrow's book "Small Sounding Rockets" (see: http://www.google.com/search?source...1.0.B2n3NVYnr8M ), which I abandoned at my old house down the street (along with many other things) when I moved to this apartment ten years ago. My storage space here was much smaller, I was in great and chronic pain, and I didn't expect--or want to--live much longer (so I didn't care much about anything in the future), so I let a lot of things just go. My neighbor, to whom I quit-claim deeded the house, tossed what I'd left there, which included flown Loki and Super Loki meteorological rocket motors and a Nike fin from the Poker Flat Research Range's "boneyard."

Quote:

Originally Posted by astronwolf

Not having access to a large-format scanner is the obstacle that I have not been able to surmount.

Nowadays your smartphone camera can stand in for a scanner and do fairly well if you can get the lighting right. And it should handle darn near any size document.

If you have an iPhone, they now have scanning built into the "Notes" app. Open a note, then hit the circled "+" button in the bottom middle, and then select "Scan document".

There are also many 3rd party apps that'll do this as well, on iOS or Android. After they take the photo, they correct for the perspective and the end result is pretty good.

Give it a whirl if you can, it's definitely better than nothing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by neil_w

Thanks for the tip. This might do.

Using a phone to "scan" a large format document like the Encyclog sucked. The quality was just not there.

But I did finally get access to a large format scanner. I tried scanning and all it did was tear the first sheet. Ouch. The old newsprint is fragile and not up to being pulled through a scanner on rollers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astronwolf

Thanks for trying, Wolf. Sorry you got a ripped page.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astronwolf

:( Bummed for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Fish Named Wallyum

:( Bummed for you.

It tore along a where the sheet is folded in half, and only a bit. So it wasn't destroyed.

Here about a year and a half ago I got a large format scanner/printer to scan 11 x 17 page material, such as the larger instruction sheets/plans in some kits and the Centuri tabloid catalogs of the mid-to latter 70s. It has done an excellent job on those, though it is just a page at the time. No 'sheet feeder' for large tasks like that, nor would I want to even try a sheet feeder for those type scans.

It is Epson Model WF-7820 and I think I paid somewhere around $300 for it. Attached is a sample page scan out of one of the tabloid catalogs.

The condition of some pages of these old newsprint catalogs can be problematic at times and some pages just due to their condition require some cleanup after scanning. Especially pages that have multi colors printed on them. The newsprint has yellowed in a number of instances and getting good color scans of those pages takes some cleanup work afterwards. But then again, scanning documents of this type on pretty much ANY scanner would be time consuming and it is that for sure.

Earl

Other samples.

Earl