Since it's been almost 20 years since the original plans submission guide was published, I wanted to update it to today's standards. Note that if any scans you'd like to submit are larger than 2mb in size you'll need to send them directly to me at scott at rocketshoppe dot com.
A big thank you goes out to Earl Cagle (Earl) for helping me with this updated guide.
Here is how you can help:
When scanning any item, be it instruction sheets, decals, fins, face cards, centering rings, patterns, whatever, set your scanner to uncompressed TIFF. This will give you a very good quality ‘master’ scan with the least loss of detail, at given scan resolutions. While this will give you large file sizes, computer storage is very cheap today. The resultant TIFF files can then be used as a basis for ‘exporting’ smaller file sizes such as .jpg, .pdf, etc. to be sent via email or other distribution methods.
For primarily ‘text’-based materials such as instruction sheets or catalogs, a second scan of the item with the file type switched to .pdf will give you a good pdf copy without resorting to a pdf generation program (many people do not have access to good pdf exporting programs or they can be tricky to use).
*IF* however you are NOT adept at exporting files from a given graphics progam, then set the scanner file type to .jpg or .pdf at the outset (instead of TIFF) per the sections outlined below.
And finally, USE A RULER IN YOUR SCANS to provide a proper scale for the item being scanned. For items like fins, rings, templates and decals, the ruler is invaluable and allows others to properly interpret your scanned items. Generally, the ruler is NOT needed when scanning primarily text-based items such as instruction sheets, catalogs, etc.
Instruction Sheet(s):
--- Set your scanning software to .pdf, 300dpi, Grayscale, if the instruction sheets are black and white; set to Color if they are in color.
Front Picture Panel (Header Card):
--- Set your scanning software to .jpg, 300dpi, Color.
Decals:
--- Set your scanning software to .jpg, 600dpi, Color.
Fin Patterns, balsa fin sheets, templates, centering rings, cockpits, fin marking guides, etc.:
--- Set your scanning software to .jpg, 300dpi. Generally, Grayscale is fine for these items. If there is particular ‘color coding’ or markings in the templates or guides, set scanner to Color.
Again, if you are adept at exporting different file types form your favorite graphics program, always do your ‘master’ scans in uncompressed TIFF format, then do your ‘distribution’ files (.jpg, .pdf, etc.) from the master TIFF file.
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