[Bob C]

Hi Darren

I guess there may be freeware out there which you may be able to adapt but I have designed my own Databases which have suited my needs perfectly.

I first started noting regos/serials and taking slides (and later prints) in 1966 so my first Database comprised numerous notebooks and photo albums. I used various indexing and cross reference systems so was able to quickly find something.

This system sufficed for 30 years until 1996 when I bought my first computer, an Apple Mac which had the very good Claris Works Database so I transcribed all of my civil records to Claris but there was no Internet capability or provision to store images but it had excellent search and sort functions.

I kept separate DBs for Australian Civil Aviation, Australian Military and visiting foreign military aircraft, the latter numbering more than 2,000 entries due to the numerous visits of USN carriers to Perth.

The MAC had all of 15meg of RAM and a 500meg Hard Drive but easily coped with what I was doing !)

So when I purchased a Hewlett Packard PC in 2000, it came with a full suite of Microsoft Office products including the Access Database which I have used since then, designing an Australian Civil Aviation Database to suit my own needs. At present it has 1,472 records from Dash 8s upwards. I could have included a lot of other types but felt that I had to draw the line somewhere. I have a separate Database of visitors to Perth since 1988 and it has 2,015 separate entries at present.

Luckily for me, I had hard copies of all my MAC data so when it "died" on me one night in 2002 all was not lost. I had transcribed the civil data to the PC but had barely started with the military so I decided to leave that and just concentrate on civil from then on.

My Databases are not just photo catalogues but include all relevant data for each aircraft so have many fields, most of which are self explanatory ; those marked with an * will be explained in more detail later.

The fields are :

Type, Con No, Line No, First Flight, Delivered *, Rego, Lessor, Latest Operator, Status*, Comments, Previous registration (10 separate fields), Prints (3 separate fields)*, Hyperlink, Slide, Embedded Image *.

Further explanation :

Delivered - refers to the date of delivery to the latest operator. Earlier operators are shown under the heading Previous Registration which also includes the date of that registartion (if known).

Note : I use the date when the aircraft actually arrives in Australia and NOT CASA records as there are many occasions when aircraft are first registered months before actually arriving in Australia, and sometimes not at all

Status - either CURRENT or date struck off register. I generally use CASA records for that.

Prints - three separate fields showing the date and location of up to three prints I've taken ; ie 08 Oct 2010 - Perth W A.

Embedded image - I used to scan my prints as bits and was able to embed them on the Form page of the Database. However, about 2 years ago, we had problems with the PC and when it came back from the shop I was unable to use that function and various experts don't know why. Now, whenever I try to scan an image as a bit it comes out in a very small thumbnail wheras the previous embedded images were 12cm X 8cm.

I was able to print the Form page with all the aircraft's details and embedded image and it looked pretty good.

Now that has gone by the board unfortunately.

I hope the above is of some assistance.

Cheers

Bob