Sport Pilot Magazine

[fly_tornado]

arguing about this only because of the freedom the internet gives

 

 

[bull]

Just to clarify bull, the survey regarding the magazine going digital was both online and included in the March magazine, the option to fill out the form and mail it back was there.

I stand corrected on that and the members apathy is the main cause i see,or the older members with the drifter or gemini in the shed just could not care about new fangled bullshit i suppose . So apologies to all about my rant on the magazine ok,,,,

 

 

[Yenn]

After all the above brou haha hopefully dealt with, has anyone downloaded the Sport Pilot for July.

 

I went to the ISSUU site as the email suggested and had nothing but trouble. It took 2 phone calls to Kim at the RAAus office for her to walk me through the procedure. Main problem was I had to put info in and there was nowhere obvious to put it. Just wander around the site and eventually you mouse will pick up on something and a grey area will pop up for you to fill in. I think the site must have been built by someone who CASA had sacked a being incompetent.

 

I wonder why they couldn't have used what worked with all the other magazines I read.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Yenn

 

After all the above brou haha hopefully dealt with, has anyone downloaded the Sport Pilot for July.I went to the ISSUU site as the email suggested and had nothing but trouble. It took 2 phone calls to Kim at the RAAus office for her to walk me through the procedure. Main problem was I had to put info in and there was nowhere obvious to put it. Just wander around the site and eventually you mouse will pick up on something and a grey area will pop up for you to fill in. I think the site must have been built by someone who CASA had sacked a being incompetent.

I wonder why they couldn't have used what worked with all the other magazines I read.

I had a look today Yenn but I went to the RAA website instead.....no dramas at all.

 

 

[Jabiru Phil]

Oh well if we are going to go into niggles ...Look back through the past 4 magazines and count the number of pages and articles that are presented as Features that are in fact written by the Australian distributor of the featured item or reproduced from overseas manufacturers own reviews that are not noted in any way to say that they are advertising.

 

This is basically free advertising for the product - the feature is in no effective way independent or objective and the 'free' advertising is of enormous value to the distributor and I am sure must pi$$ off advertisers who are actually paying ... and getting 1/4 to 1/2 a page for $$ whereas these are 2-3 pages of pure puff for free - pretty puff, easy to publish puff, not requiring editorial skill or effort puff but puff.

 

Then add on the rumor that there is 10 years (or in fact 'x' years) of member contributions being left aside and I am starting to feel very uncomfy with the whole setup.

 

I am not saying that material from importers/manufacturers should not be considered BUT for heavens sake lets label it as such and not take it as a given or put it in in preference to members own material which may be far less polished in its presented-to-editor form but is what the members are up to and writing about ... we may not as a group write articles that would sell a commercially available magazine and grow a viable circulation BUT we are not a commercial magazine and its a member association.

 

If the members are only prepared to write about the flight on Saturday to go and have a bacon roll at a neighbors place and talk about the nice things/people they saw or the scare they had on the way THAT is what a member magazine is supposed to be about.

I think it's called something like "free editorial with advert"

 

Happens in most press, country anyway.

 

Phil.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

I downloaded the smaller July mag straight from the RAAus website. Last month it was small in size, but the graphics sucked, everything was really pixelated and chunky.....This month however the quality is superb and the size is still small, 7.9Mb only.

 

ISSUU may well have its benefits, but for me I'll just stick to the plain old PDF.....

 

Its just a shame its behind the membership portal requiring a login to see, but the benefits that ISSUU brings, such as the ability to track what members read and what they just flick past etc will be missing from the plain old PDF....

 

I look forward to something like the motoring magazine I read on my ipad, it takes ages to download (infact some months have been nearly 1Gb in size) however the benefit is its designed for the ipad and so doesn't maintain the old paper layout, and it includes video and audio clips etc. Where I read a review of car X almost always there will be a video segment where a professional driver shows and comments on handling characteristics and other things that in their opinion deserve thumbs up and thumbs down etc.

 

So email announcement of availability by midmorning, downloaded and read by Teatime..........hard to beat that!

 

 

[GAFA]

You can download a PDF version from ISSUU as well.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Sign of the times: http://www.theage.com.au/business/retail/abc-to-close-its-shops-across-australia-20150722-giiiqd.html

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

I was just reading the AUF magazine from January 1994 - the cost of the Magazine was an issue back then too. Editor Peter J Lewis wrote:

 

 

 

"The Editor has heard a number of rumours that the cost of the magazine being produced in the office is much more expensive than when it was being published under contract. At May 1, 1993 (my first mag) the cost of my duties as Editor was approximately $1,040.00 per issue and has remained consistent. (Remember I am also the Assistant Executive Director whose duties are costed separately). The contract rate with the Holbrook Publishing Group for April 93 was slightly (Approx. 1%) less than that.

 

 

Not only is the costing about the same, I also do all those "in office" and other duties - paste up advertising, liaise with printer, arrange inserts, etc. which were not part of the Holbrook duties and until my appointment were done by the Executive Director at a much higher rate. So in fact this editor is saving AUF (you) money."

 

 

 

In 1993 there were 12 issues, membership was 3,300 and the magazine was 40 page black & white, a full page advert was $168, members market $7.

 

 

 

In the same magazine there were complaints that Lightwings and Skyfoxes were not ultralights, and Notes Re Crop Spraying - by the National Flying Coach (apparently it was approved).

 

 

 

[Guest asmol]

In the same magazine there were complaints that Lightwings and Skyfoxes were not ultralights

How the times have changed !

 

 

[coljones]

I was just reading the AUF magazine from January 1994 - the cost of the Magazine was an issue back then too. Editor Peter J Lewis wrote: 

 

"The Editor has heard a number of rumours that the cost of the magazine being produced in the office is much more expensive than when it was being published under contract. At May 1, 1993 (my first mag) the cost of my duties as Editor was approximately $1,040.00 per issue and has remained consistent. (Remember I am also the Assistant Executive Director whose duties are costed separately). The contract rate with the Holbrook Publishing Group for April 93 was slightly (Approx. 1%) less than that.

 

 

 

Not only is the costing about the same, I also do all those "in office" and other duties - paste up advertising, liaise with printer, arrange inserts, etc. which were not part of the Holbrook duties and until my appointment were done by the Executive Director at a much higher rate. So in fact this editor is saving AUF (you) money."

 

 

 

In 1993 there were 12 issues, membership was 3,300 and the magazine was 40 page black & white, a full page advert was $168, members market $7.

 

 

 

In the same magazine there were complaints that Lightwings and Skyfoxes were not ultralights, and Notes Re Crop Spraying - by the National Flying Coach (apparently it was approved).

I think the point has been made that the editorial costs, including print ready galleys (PDFs these days), are covered by the advertising. This just leaves the printing and distribution costs to RAA accounts, around $440,000 if my memory serves me. The difficulty with the RAA accounts and budgets is that they reveal little information about the activities funded such as Licencing (certificates), Operations, Technical, Advocacy, Safety, Training, Secretariat, Publications, Other administration etc. The failure of the Audits would have lead to some very hefty expenses under Technical, borne by all members rather than just aircraft owners or even the subclass where the problems arose.

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

My husband has all his old AUF magazines back to the 1980's, so I have volunteered to scan these for RAA. The CEO says the prior editions of Sport Pilot will be available on their new website - all 44 of them. I will do the rest. I have yet to talk to their website developers, but I am looking for any suggestions. I have an A3 scanner and OCR software. I am going to do a test run to see what I can produce. I would like the whole library to be search-able, rather than having to open each magazine to search. Maybe a choice between HD or smaller files; keeping in mind people with slow internet. Any ideas?

 

 

 

Sue

 

 

[fly_tornado]

try scanning as PDFs and upload to google docs, or http://document.online-convert.com/convert-to-html

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Sue

 

I wouldn't use a flatbed scanner....simply too slow rather you need a document scanner that is capable of doing A3 size and duplex(capable of scanning both sides of a sheet at the same time, not by the machine feeding in scanning one side and reversing the page and then doing the second side before moving onto the next page) in colour. Remove the staples, open in half and scan. You'll need software (which should come with the scanner but check for functionality ) that is capable of cutting the scan into the 4 respective page halves and rearranging with the rest of the magazine pages into the right logical order for the pdf file. I would suspect that the device will be under $2k in price

 

I would ask RAAus to fund that beast. It wont cost heaps (or maybe it will now that the AUD to USD has tanked)

 

I haven't used a separate document scanner for some years now as my MFC has true duplex A4 built in......Canon used to make very good devices and I note that a DR2510C looks at quick glance to be Ok.....( http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/86779/SCANNERS_DOCUMENT_SCANNERS/Canon/DR2510C.asp as an example) but you'll need to test first I would think. 50 inch's per minute duplex colour suggests that you'll get around 2 sheets (8 pages) per minute scanned so it wouldn't take very long to knock over a whole magazine....

 

Most quality document scanners have an ultrasonic capability to detect a missfeed of multiple pages at once....very import feature that cant really be missed........the alarm going off to signal a missfeed gets old pretty quick though....

 

That all said, most modern photocopiers used in large offices are perfectly capable of doing this as well.....and you may have access to one of those for no $ spent....... Might just require a bit of online googling to find out how best to do what you want with the device......

 

When it comes to final output......PDF is logical, you can do OCR on a scanned page and choose to replace the image with the OCR'd text (which generally looks bad cause the OCR can be OK but the choice of font and size sometimes doesn't match the original) which will give the smallest file size, or it puts the OCR'd text hidden behind the image (but available for searches) ...looks best but is larger in size..... OCR doesn't provide 100% accuracy, but generally enough to find what you are looking for in a search

 

Andy

 

 

[Ada Elle]

If you're willing to destroy them, there are book scanning places that will chop them up and scan them professionally for you. Maybe less destructive on magazines than on books.

 

 

[Keith Page]

My husband has all his old AUF magazines back to the 1980's, so I have volunteered to scan these for RAA. The CEO says the prior editions of Sport Pilot will be available on their new website - all 44 of them. I will do the rest. I have yet to talk to their website developers, but I am looking for any suggestions. I have an A3 scanner and OCR software. I am going to do a test run to see what I can produce. I would like the whole library to be search-able, rather than having to open each magazine to search. Maybe a choice between HD or smaller files; keeping in mind people with slow internet. Any ideas?  

 

Sue

Thank you Sue,

What a great idea.. We will have some great history to look at.

 

That will tell us where we have come from.

 

Regards,

 

KP.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

check your local library for free scanning services, they are all pretty big on digitizing old books

 

 

[rhysmcc]

Shouldn't it be digital already somewhere? It would have been sent to the printers in digital format at same stage?

 

 

[rankamateur]

Shouldn't it be digital already somewhere? It would have been sent to the printers in digital format at same stage?

In 1983?

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Unfortunately hubby wants his old magazines preserved, so no time saving to be had cutting the bindings. I accept that the scanning will be slow and boring, but it is a finite stash, and I have the time and patience. We live a long way from "civilisation" so services are thin on the ground. Our local library has two F/E employees and relies on volunteers like me to index, preserve and catalogue their non-core materials. They have one simple photocopier - it makes b&w A4 copies. So folks, me doing page by page scanning is a given.

 

 

 

How to process the scanned image is more the question. I have Adobe Reader, which means each image remains as one file. I could put the bite on RAA to provide a short term copy (licence) of Adobe Pro; or do you know of a better platform to manipulate images etc. The aim is to keep the cost to the members as low as possible. I am presently looking at other software. Remember I have woeful internet speeds, so downloading and uploading to a website will take HOURS.

 

 

 

rhysmcc - the CEO says they don't have digital copies prior to Sport Pilot. This goes back to 1986 with a typewritten newsletter - remember those wax sheets you typed on, fixed errors with pink waxy goo, hooked to a screen, inked up and turned the handle? AUF also had the "great server failure" where they lost everything because no one backed it up.

 

 

 

I hope to have each magazine as one file, but also have it able to be searched without having to download every magazine. For example, if you were researching Accidents & Incidents, then only that article, but from each edition would be displayed. Similarly if you were searching for "Chinook 10-003" you should get every mention in all magazines. I do a lot of work on the TROVE digitised newspapers correcting the OCR text and like the way it works.

 

 

 

Any ideas?

 

Sue

 

 

[fly_tornado]

try uploading the pdfs to google docs.

 

 

[Ada Elle]

Remember I have woeful internet speeds, so downloading and uploading to a website will take HOURS.

Take the scans, and put them on a CD or USB stick. Post to someone else with Adobe Pro.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Sue, in the longer run, quality will be important. Attempting to do what you are is amazing to me and highly laudable. We do need as an organisation to preserve this material and I agree it should be digitized not just photocopied for the reasons you state. It is also important to retain any colour. I still think RA-Aus should look at getting it done professionally - if it cost $10,000 it is still just one dollar per member. There should be no detectable damage to the original magazines if done professionally. To do OCR you need to start with a very high resolution image - the higher the better for good OCR. High Res means huge files and definitely not something you'd want to try transmitting at low bandwidth.

 

 

[dazza 38]

I read the first electronic magazine, I don't think I will bother reading any more. I buy and read the aviator magazine though, so I suggest the Raa convey important information via that magazine.

 

 

[Geoff13]

Sue, in the longer run, quality will be important. Attempting to do what you are is amazing to me and highly laudable. We do need as an organisation to preserve this material and I agree it should be digitized not just photocopied for the reasons you state. It is also important to retain any colour. I still think RA-Aus should look at getting it done professionally - if it cost $10,000 it is still just one dollar per member. There should be no detectable damage to the original magazines if done professionally. To do OCR you need to start with a very high resolution image - the higher the better for good OCR. High Res means huge files and definitely not something you'd want to try transmitting at low bandwidth.

I would prefer that $10,000 go towards getting me a paper mag back.