It's a question of scale – Aerospace cutaways, it's what I do.

https://thecutawaycompany.com

In 2005, I lucky enough to produce a cutaway of the Airbus A380-800, the largest commercial airliner in the world, weighing in at 575,1648kg (1,268,000lb). That monster 1,250hr, five month project was a once in a generation cutaway for me, as such large and revolutionary airliners are few and far between, with the last similar sized cutaway, the Boeing 747-100, being produced by John Marsden some 37 years earlier in 1968. But that's another story altogether...

As is often the way of the universe – within which ALL thing must be in balance – I soon found myself at the other end of the size spectrum during May of 2009, when I was tasked with producing the Insitu ScanEagle, which has been the smallest aerospace cutaway of my career thus far. Weighing in at 18kg (39.7lb) for those who are interested in such figures, the ScanEagle is 1/31,939th the weight of the A380-800!

With U.S. State Dept. clearance granted, I was soon on a “fly-drive cutaway visit” of sorts. I flew into Seattle, were I took the rest of the day to meet up with curators of the Museum of Flight, in order to inspect the replica Nakajima Ki-43-IIb “Oscar” on show in their WWII gallery. In my own little way I had been involved with these new-build aircraft and wanted to present the museum with some Sumitomo propeller decals that I had made for the project. The next day I flew down to Portland and hired a car to drive all the way to the Insitu facility at Bingen, Oregon. What can I say? Driving through that part of the country is breath-taking and the might Columbia River is a force of nature to say the least.

I spent a week at Insitu, which was not owned by Boeing at that time, and it truly felt like a family business, where each employee knew every other employee, and everybody at the company was a pleasure to work with.

Now, you might think that an aircraft so much smaller than the A380 would be quick and easy to illustrate? A couple of hours here and a few hours there, job done….right? The short answer is no, as you are in effect trading off scale and levels of detail, in order to fill the same overall aeroplane shaped envelope. In essence, when you draw an airliner for example, you can only show so much detail in the seats, as you are fitting dozens or possibly hundreds into the ilustration, whereas on a two-seat aircraft like the Iomax Archangel, you can literally see all of the fasteners and the actual seat fabric! In the case of the ScanEagle, the simplicity of its internal equipment and overall layout could have resulted in an empty illustration, but through experience I was able to balance this with attention to equally important construction and material details, such as the composite lay-up applied to the curvature of the structure. The overall poster was balanced out with additional details showing the launch and recovery system, which completed story of the system.

Why go to such lengths you may ask? Well that’s an easy one to answer; the ultimate purpose of our aerospace cutaways is to support the business needs of the customer. From the engineering Dept., right through to the framed copy on the wall of the CEO – or the other way around if you’re on the management team! This allows the cutaways to be utilized as valuable tools across a company, for Marketing, Sales, Business development, Branding, Customer briefings, Training (both employee and customer), Internal development briefings, Customer support, Supplier/MRO support, PR, Media and Web presence. The old adage “you get out what you put in!” is never truer than working with cutaways.

After four and a half days at the factory, with some very late nights, thanks to the dedicated engineering team, I had all the information I required to complete the cutaway. In fact, one night I had to literally run for my car at 21:55, as the toll bridge closed at 22:00, and my hotel was on the other side of the river!

With the visit completed, I had a few hours to visit the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum (WAAAM) in Hood River, which houses a stunning collection of interwar US general aviation aircraft, before driving back to Portland for the return flight back to the UK.

10 weeks later the cutaway was published and the universe was back in balance….

Are you are interested in commissioning a cutaway of your aircraft? If so, please feel free to visit our website and checkout cutaway options, uses and services provided to our aerospace customers. 

If you found this post interesting, please checkout my previous cutaway articles on Linkedin.