Aust DMV book - Repro

[Tony Smith]

This book was published by the Australian Army's Directorate of Mechanical Vehicles during the war to illustrate the various body types of vehicles (Motorcycles, cars, trucks, trailers and armour) in use with the Australian Army. It deals specifically with Variants developed by/for Australian service. Many of the base vehicles are Ford and Chev CMP's, or Ford/Chev/Dodge MCP's. This book has a wealth of information regarding rare or limited versions of Aust vehicles. It is similar to Dr Bill Gregg's book "Canada's Fighting Vehicles", but does not have specifications for each vehicle. It would be an ideal companion to Gregg's book to illustrate the Australian body styles of Canadian vehicles. Originals of this long out of print book have always been hard to find, and there have been poor photocopies of photocopies getting around, but now there is a finely detailed reproduction available.
Keith Webb has spent some time reproducing an original book, cleaning up the scans, and in some cases, replacing the original mimeographed pictures with the original photos where they are available, resulting in much better detail. The book is 110 pages and features Bikes, cars, trucks trailers, AFV's and recovery vehicles. It is available in spiral bound A4 landscape format, or on CD.

[Mark W. Tonner]

Hi Tony;

How does one go about obtaining a copy of either the spiral bound A4 landscape format, or CD?

Cheers

[Tony Smith]

I hope Keith will jump in here and state the prices and shipping options. I bought the book based on what it was and I thought it was fair value, it was only after I bought it I was told it was Keith's. Maybe the price I paid was "Retail" and not an MLU price.

[Col Tigwell]

I take my hat off, to people who spend their time and money, to ensure that things that are precious to those who have interest, do not disappear, never to be seen again.

In this case and Mark's, neither party will make great profits, (if they make any at all) but the motivation is their's to preserve it.

We have seen over the years, that a few dedicated people, long after the powers that be had decreed that the stuff was not going to be preserved, muck in and ensure it was.

I worked for a large engineering company, and the day that I arrived, I was told by the then CEO, to get rid of "all that junk" which was taking up storage space ina long disused office.

We played a cat and mouse job, of moving 2 tons of glass plates, around up high in my warehouse. These plates showed the engineering efforts of the company, particularly during WW2.

Convinced the Air Force they should borrow the aviation ones, which showed Wirraways, Hudsons and Catalina's under repair. So at least the AWM had copies. Interestly showed a Dutch PBY5A, which was so badly damaged, that I do not see what held the tail on. On the wrapper, it stated the pilot said the airframe creaked a bit.

Enventually in our spare time, we sorted out the plates into some type of order, and I managed to get the power house museum to take them over.

Change of CEO, brought yet a change in attitude, and they were running around trying to find some of the old photos. Quitely I got Ian to make negatives of the ones wanted, and suddenly they re appeared.

I hpe that those who are making the effort on this forum are appreciated.

On behalf of all who believe, a big thank you.

Regards

Col

Keith email me your PO address, I have one copy only of the book the new CEO published, amny of the photos come from our save.

[Keith Webb]

Hi all

Yes, mea culpa it was I who put it together.

I took the decision to create a reproduction of this book because it covers most of the A and B vehicles in Australian use toward the end of the war. Original copies are fairly rare, and the pictures are very interesting. They also list the "MV Field Spec" number for each vehicle which is covered in a series of roneo-copied sheets, listing vehicle dimensions, performance, original kit and so on. This is going to be a future project.

I'll soon be putting a page on the site with more information on the book, which is the result of scanning an original copy, optimising and re-contouring the pictures, re-doing all the text and creating a new layout.

Because the quality of the original wasn't great I had to put a lot of work into making the pictures look as good as possible. The process consumed over 100 hours od painstaking work.

Because the originals had been screen printed, the new book has to be printed using a continuous tone printer. If a standard laser printer is used the pictures are degraded by an effect known as moire patterns.

The printed copies are then spiral bound, using a cover of similar colour to the original, protected by clear plastic cover sheets.

If you'd like to order a copy before I have the web page made, you can PM me and I'll forward the orders to Kate who also looks after the DVD side of things.

The price is $A30 plus p&p. It's also available on CD-ROM as a .pdf file for viewing on computer for $A20 plus p&p.

Hope you all enjoy it.