So you've got the Chronicles reference book. You've got the Rinzler books. You've got the websites. You've got ALL the known pictures, images, CADs, and museum picture collections. And you've got your own personal super-duper secret stash that you're not supposed to share with anyone else, on pain of losing a corner of your Jedi card...
So you're pretty much set to start building a 5-Footer Falcon.
But...
Do you have
My Affair With the Falcon by James A.B. Mahaffey, Jr.?
No? Haven't heard of that one?
Well then!
Just putting it out there, for all your purists, completists, and totalists out there. In case you don't want to miss a trick.
I'm not saying it's super helpful, I'm just saying it exists. And I will say this: it's very interesting, on multiple levels.
It was self-published on Oct. 28, 2019, and I got mine on December 6, 2019.
And James A.B. Mahaffey, Jr. puts Internet references and links in his book, one of which is the RPF and a few particular threads.
So this leads me to query: is James A.B. Mahaffey, Jr. ON the RPF? Is he known to anyone reading this? Is he reading this? If so, please identify yourself, as the Falcon builder's community has grown, progressed, and now has in their possession many of the things you are struggling to achieve and/or discover in your book.
Anyway, if you've got the coin, and are interested in knowing just how difficult it is to do what you are currently taking for granted, this book will give you a strong sense of historical perspective, as well as many personal details of the author's life, his journey into Star Wars obsession, and just how hard it was to get an accurate blueprint poster made in 1983. Yes, 1983. Yes: he was forty years ahead of most of us.
So even though I don't know him, had never previously heard of him, and have never met him, I am hereby unofficially declaring James A.B. Mahaffey, Jr. as the world's first studio scale 5-Foot Falcon builder pioneer, even if he never (to my knowledge) got to build one. He was, I believe, as the documents in this book attest, the first "true fan" of the 5-Footer, and the first to try and figure it out from an engineering and replication point of view. He forged a path many of us never knew he was forging. But he was, in the all-important world of documentation and provenance, at least one of the...
FIRST! (Lee Malone, to my knowledge, was the actual first to complete his build, and I have seen his, and it is a thing of true beauty.)
We're socked in with snow here in Chicagoland, and Mahaffey's book makes fine winter reading by the fireplace.
I raise my glass of warm brandy to you, Mr. Mahaffey!