Plans Website Favorite: The Outerzone!

Finding a place that has an incredible amount of content for scratch building a variety of odd or different model aircraft is often difficult to impossible. Often you end up paying $’s for paper plans and if you want those electronically, you have to either scan them yourself if you have the tools or get them scanned at the UPS/Fedex Store or OfficeMax etc. The fact of the matter is that foamy aircraft seem to be taking over all aspects of our hobby and there isn’t much happening in the area of scratch building any longer. As the old scratch builders are disappearing, so are many of the resources as well. Except here, Welcome to the Outerzone!

Click on the Outerzone Logo above to check out one of the largest downloadable plan warehouses on the Web!

What they say about their site:

We collect and share plans of vintage and old-timer flying model airplanes. For free. We do it together. And we’ve been doing it since 2011. No need to login, just grab and go.

Thanks to you all, there are now 11,609 plans here for free download. We think that’s pretty good going. Thank you for helping us to make Outerzone what it is, an awesome free archive of old-timer goodness. Three cheers for all of us!

I’ve uploaded a few versions of plans that I have collected over the years and downloaded dozens!

Ralph G.

3D printing possibilities:

Everyone knows that I acquired a Prusa 3D printer a few months back. Check out my article on the GeeBee Firewall HERE: in case you didn’t catch it. There are a bunch of resources on 3D printable airplanes where you can download other peoples designs, print them, assemble them, fly them, and crash them. Repeat…

3DLabPrint has several 3D printable designs you can download and go with!

The appeal of the 3D printer for me however, is to design and print airplanes that are not common and parts for existing planes etc. I want to print airplanes that people NEVER see at the field. That being said, I really don’t have time to draw up a bunch of stuff from three views from the Warbird Bible, “The Complete Book of World War II Combat Aircraft” by Enzo Angelucci. If you don’t have this warbird book in your library, you’re missing out! This book has every warbird from 1933 to 1945 that had any role in the WWII. I often find myself sitting down with it and an adult beverage when I just want to chill and dream.

My Next 3D Print Project with plans from Outerzone.

I’ve just about completed the design of my GeeBee Z in AutoCAD Fusion 360 and I was on the lookout for my next plan. Something similar in size but a little more unknown. I was watching Kermit Weeks and his Fantasy of Flight YouTube channel and he did an episode where he went down to Midland Texas to check out a Russion Fighter called the Polikarpov I-16.

The video that inspired my next 3D printing project.

After watching Kermits video I wanted to build one of these interesting little fighters. Now I could have done what I used to do and look up the three view in the Warbird Bible and started drawing but instead I went to Outerzone and did a search for the Polikarpov I-16. Jackpot. The plans I downloaded are below. Stay tuned and I’ll do another post demonstrating how I plan to use these plans with AutoCAD Fusion 365 and the printer…

Polikarpov_I-16_Rata_oz11094

Until then, enjoy the hours of time your going to spend paging through the 11,000+ plans on the website. Fix yourself an adult beverage and thank me later. It brings back so many memories of kits and planes of old. Enjoy!

2022 Air Show

Airshow Glory I was able to attend the St. Louis Airshow Saturday June 11th. I have a friend by the name of Bevin Shively who

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