This is the second CD from Aero Research. It includes 151 full color (and quite large) images of various aircraft that have served in Air Defense Command over the years.

The CD is designed to be opened and used in Windows Explorer or some other similar image viewing program. For that reason, there is no self starting program nor any index. This is by no way a hardship as most of us have at least one of these programs on our computer.

The disc is arranged by unit, starting with the 2nd FIS and ending with the 526th FIS. There are also a few unmarked aircraft to add to the mix. Within you will find everything from the F-86 to the F-106 and that includes a bunch of F-101s, F-89s, F-4s and F-102s, as those were the mainstay of air defense in the US.

As you might expect, the images come from a variety of sources. Some are of aircraft in museums, some are from dupe slides, and some are from originals. This means that the quality of the images varies as well. One thing that Aero Research continues with is that all of the images are very large. The width of these images is a uniform 6000 pixels. I'm not really sure just why this is. On one hand, it does mean that as standard screen resolution increases, then it won't mean a continuing reduction in image size. On the other hand, the images when viewed at the maximum size are often too much with no real detail at all; especially when dealing with dupes. Personally, I'd think that 3000 pixels would be a good choice. This would also allow a lot more than 150 or so images per CD. Just some thoughts on things.

I found the compilation to be basically very good. There were images I'd not seen before and while some units were a bit 'heavy' on the images and there were some aircraft I found it odd to be missing (like 101 FIS F-106s) the overall presentation is well done and worth the price of the CD. I'm sure you will agree with me.

You can get more information by e-mailing AeroResearch@Charter.net as they have not yet established a web site. Thanks to Aero Research for the review CD.

December 2006

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