Last month was my great Anniversary—20 years of publishing of my works. In November of 1992 my article of the Fiat G.50 was published in the Japanese magazine Model Art and it included text, images of a preserved machine as well as detailed technical drawings (the first accurate drawings ever). Just a year before I started with my first research where I obtained documents from archives and visited an air veteran for interviews and data collecting. In this way the Fiat G.50 article was a milestone in my life as well as being my first published historical and reference work.

First works

To complete this work, which I generally present as a technical study, I managed to get data from historical centers in Italy (special thanks to GAVS Roma and Pasquale Aveta from the Military State Archive), Finland (from their archive) and I managed direct access to the only preserved G.50 in the world, in the depot of the Aviation Museum in Belgrade (big thanks to the very friendly director of the museum). Armed with a number of archival images, technical manual, engineering drawings, measurement data taken directly from the preserved machine as well as various other data, I made the first accurate technical scale drawings and this was later used by many other s in their projects (including injection molded kit design).

My personal archive grown much in last years

This was in the analog times—I did all sketches on paper, all data calculated with the classic calculator, final drawings made on tracing paper with Rotring draftsman pens and Steadler drawing tools. Images were made on FujiChrome slides and all material was sent in original form to the publisher. No digital copy as we do today!

And that was just the start……three years later the results of my research was used in one book and also in that book was published my color profiles—for the very first time. The same as the technical drawings, color profiles were all hand made. Some prefer to do this with the airbrush; I personally more prefer to hand brush. In the same year I made my first presentation of historic research to the Aviation Historic Group in Belgrade (later a few more works have been presented). In the years to come more of my works were published….

Work library

The new century and new trends forced me to switch to the digital method of illustrations and drawings. This gives much new power as well as it can include more details. Work can be done much faster and with higher quality. But some things still stay old fashioned—you still need time to research the subject, to visit with people and to analyze data. In the sphere of publishing nothing is better—the number of publishers is less, quality has rapidly dropped, and the price remains the same as two decades ago. Thanks to the fact that I have worked, and am still working, for a few big publishers, great numbers of my technical drawings have been published, some thousand of color profiles and art and a number of various articles (both historic and modeling).

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If you think that I have gotten many friends after two decades, I am afraid to say that this is not true. When you research and publish something, you get bitter enemies in persons who tried to do the same works before but did it less accurately and with errors. This also includes their friends and the result of any published work is an avalanche of negative reflections and campaigns. So why am I still in the public publishing of works and actually have more work than ever? The answer is simple—the market recognizes quality.

See ya in next project!!!

Srecko Bradic