Drawing Airfield Layouts

My drawing skills are not up to much, despite having an 'O' level in technical drawing. I have had many goes at drawing from aerial photos, especially earlier wartime layouts but the result where of sketch quality, impatience being the main issue here. Anyway it oocurred to me the in this computer age there must be a simplier solution. Ignoring the obvious CAD solutions (it took me a day to draw a curve in one) my thoughts turned to Vector graphics, which, if my memory is correct, are scalable and rotatable without loosing quality, unlike JPG or BMP file which seem to degrade rapidly if turned through anything other than 90 degrees. The thought was to create constant scale components (hangars, pens, loops, hardstands etc) and buid a drawing that way - it works in Powerpoint for business use.
Does anyone know if this ever been attempted or indeed possible if so would it be difficult?

Peter

The technique I use is to scan a original drawing and then trace it using Paint.net a free programe to download. Its very easy use and the results can be stunning.

Do you both use mice or graphics tablets?
I have edited photo's with a mouse and make much use of the undo button (Paintshop Pro 7.4 by the way) as I don't seem able to keep the control the on rounded bits.

Thanks for the advice it has been very helpful.

Peter

Here is one i did earlier, obviously this is a jpeg and the detail and colour is shot but the original drawing is really good and bright. All done in Paint.net and for free!!

Paint.net has saved my life. Before it was available I used to draw airfield layouts by hand on myler - plastic film using pencil (0.35mm) and I got quite good at it. But then it was a trip to the photocopy shop to get a positive and then annotate the plan by spraying building numbers with spraymat etc. But now with Paint.net its so simple and a damn site quicker to produce great results.