Required Documents Binder
Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:41 am
I just (for the most part) finished a pretty long project and felt compelled to share.
I taught myself Adobe Illustrator several years ago as a means to manipulate and create custom sponsor graphics when I was heavily involved with R/C aerobatic competition. I have since kind of started doing work in Adobe Creative Suite as a hobby and freelancer some technical documentation for a while before I got into flight instructing full time.
I have always had a fascination with preserving things, and I felt that this would be a good outlet for me to try my hand at doing something 170 related. I am not the only person that flies my airplane, and I do varying amounts of flight instruction in it—both initial primary training and tailwheel endorsements. As such, the aircraft documents do see quite a bit of use and were kind of tattered to begin with. We did have some pretty horrible photocopies of the Owner’s Manual/AFM/weight and balance, but I was not satisfied.
So, I embarked on a mission to recreate the 1952 Cessna 170B Owner’s Manual in its entirety...using the original fonts and even creating some typefaces, and measuring out, to fractions of a millimeter, the placement of text and images. It was fun, but I began to question my sanity about the 200 hour mark.
I’m happy to say that, save for replicating the 170 on the front cover, the project is complete. While I was at it, I cleaned up the AFM and the weight and balance as well.
Once I have the cover artwork in place, I’ll be happy to release it as a high-quality replacement for the original owner’s manual. Digging through the other B model manuals, this shouldn’t be too hard to replicate for other year models; but it’ll be a while before I get to it.
Anyway, I was feeling extra proud of the final result and wanted to share. I much prefer having a three-ring binder with full-size sheets for the paperwork rather than a small, odd sized manual and other paperwork. Plus, I see the manual as a collectible, and I don’t want to see it damaged or lost in use.
Thoughts? Anybody do anything similar for their airplanes?
I taught myself Adobe Illustrator several years ago as a means to manipulate and create custom sponsor graphics when I was heavily involved with R/C aerobatic competition. I have since kind of started doing work in Adobe Creative Suite as a hobby and freelancer some technical documentation for a while before I got into flight instructing full time.
I have always had a fascination with preserving things, and I felt that this would be a good outlet for me to try my hand at doing something 170 related. I am not the only person that flies my airplane, and I do varying amounts of flight instruction in it—both initial primary training and tailwheel endorsements. As such, the aircraft documents do see quite a bit of use and were kind of tattered to begin with. We did have some pretty horrible photocopies of the Owner’s Manual/AFM/weight and balance, but I was not satisfied.
So, I embarked on a mission to recreate the 1952 Cessna 170B Owner’s Manual in its entirety...using the original fonts and even creating some typefaces, and measuring out, to fractions of a millimeter, the placement of text and images. It was fun, but I began to question my sanity about the 200 hour mark.
I’m happy to say that, save for replicating the 170 on the front cover, the project is complete. While I was at it, I cleaned up the AFM and the weight and balance as well.
Once I have the cover artwork in place, I’ll be happy to release it as a high-quality replacement for the original owner’s manual. Digging through the other B model manuals, this shouldn’t be too hard to replicate for other year models; but it’ll be a while before I get to it.
Anyway, I was feeling extra proud of the final result and wanted to share. I much prefer having a three-ring binder with full-size sheets for the paperwork rather than a small, odd sized manual and other paperwork. Plus, I see the manual as a collectible, and I don’t want to see it damaged or lost in use.
Thoughts? Anybody do anything similar for their airplanes?
