TOSG BULLETINS IN COLOUR?

[Guest TOSGcentral]

FOR TOSG MEMBERS.

 

DO YOU WANT THE BULLETINS IN COLOUR?

 

I want TO run this by TOSG member readers of this thread.

 

The UK production of the Bulletin is done in colour, I was sent a copy, and it is brilliant if only in terms of really pointing up detail – particularly in the tech area – plus it just really lifts the whole thing.

 

Prices are coming down and we have held TOSG subscription to $30 pa for several years now. We are still able to break even inclusive of the Bulletin postage and packing. But colour will be more expensive and I have enquiry for quotes out now.

 

What I want to ask is if you would pay a little more for colour? All things being equal I want to do the last Bulletin of this year as an example (at the original price that you have already paid for) so you can see what they are like.

 

I suppose it will come down to how useful the Bulletins are to you

 

Please post your views here please as any feedback will be useful.

 

Aye

 

Tony

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Everyone relax - it is not going to happen - sorry.

 

Got the quotes in and the lowest was over $22 per copy on a bulk order!

 

Have to wait a bit longer or look for another means of doing it.

 

Tony

 

 

[Thruster Bob]

Hi Tony,

 

Some random thoughts.

 

I can't see why we can't have one (double sided page) in colour - (just using a colour laser printer) and put say 4 feature shots of thrusters on it.

 

Advertisers might pay extra for colour.

 

Colour laser printers are achieving 30-50c real cost per page, and the quality is OK for me. Whether you are printing enough pages per month to achieve reasonable costs (considering amortization of the capital costs) may be an issue.

 

Cheers, BobT

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Tks for thoughts Bob - appreciated.

 

A half way house, that stays in the financial ball park is the way to go.

 

I still want to lever into this somehow.

 

I will chat with my new printers again and certainly see if we can have a colour cover. Your suggestion of a double sided feature page is a good one as well - we may be able to manage that - especially as a lot of aircraft pics that are included are really nice in colour and a credit to their owners.

 

What I really wanted was the tech stuff in colour because the detail really does come out well.

 

Tks again,

 

Tony

 

 

[Flyer]

Just a thought Tony, can you email your bulletin to your members? That way they get full color with no cost and can print it out on their own printer in color if they wish. Just a thought.

 

Regards

 

Phil

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Hi Phil,

 

Thanks for the input. Going electronic has been brought up so often before and it is something that I have wrestled with. Ultimately it comes down to survival of TOSG. I will give everyone an insight into the actual challenge.

 

The support group functions primarily as a collator and re-distributor of Thruster specific information. It does that either in answer to direct question contact (mail/phone/email) or via the four quarterly Bulletins. To function in this manner the information has to be there in the first place to draw from and that information needs to be as relevant and current as possible.

 

The Bulletins themselves average 24 A4 pages and most of that is direct information copy – with very little demand to the offered free advertising – and it is ALL Thruster specific. So the task is quite formidable from a writing point of view. This is not simply volume, it is interest and variety. Every writer has their own expression style and page after page of that style eventually becomes bland to the reader. So there is also pressure on receiving a constant flow of content from members and other sources, plus the requirement for photos.

 

As it happens I normally receive very little input and anything that I do receive is vital to the Bulletins and TOSG. The fact that I know so much about Thrusters is primarily down to 12 years of TOSG members providing me with information and then that being connected together into a meaningful whole.

 

Without members and their input TOSG will die and is already starting to do so. Going electronic will kill it stone dead very quickly! At present the group has been averaging around 50 members (more or less double its minimum critical mass) – but it used to be 150 members. Membership dropped off because people in an area share their Bulletins with others so those people dropped out of the Group but retained the benefits.

 

Equally Thruster owners at large soon realised that they could have their questions answered and problems solved just by asking – and could do so without being a TOSG member. Basically the group is about flight safety and I am not about to withhold information on some petty membership issue!

 

Ultimately, if you do not belong to something, but can take from it, then there is less self imposed “rightness†to contribute to it! My information sources will dwindle to an unsustainable level, the Bulletins will shrink in size and/or become boring and base membership will decline.

 

If I go electronic with the Bulletins that situation will happen very quickly as anyone can simply forward entire Bulletin pdf files to as many of their mates as they like. In one way that would be a good thing because more people will get the information and less will contact me with the endless stream of the “same questions†that go on year after year yet are regularly covered in the Bulletins. In another way it will stop the return flow of information and the Bulletins will die!

 

To counter this I have taken two initiatives from a management level. TOSG Bulletin production was merged with the UK Thruster club early this year and that has freshened up information flow and variety. The first thing UK members did was ask for electronic Bulletins! They were refused for the same reasons that I am giving here.

 

This is not about money – the Group is operated on a break even basis and I receive no income from it all, usually the other way around actually. It is very much about information flow two way.

 

Also in anticipation of TOSG ceasing (which could be as simple as myself being unable to work for one reason or another) I am committing all the TOSG records to my main web site (which Ian so kindly supplies to us). In that way, although the Bulletins and current trend information would cease – 13 years of collated information will still be available to anybody and TOSG, and its many members over the years, will have served its main purpose.

 

Aye

 

Tony

 

 

[Admin]

Tony, I hope you know that if there is ANYTHING I can do to ensure the continuation and growth of TOSG then PLEASE just simply let me know - if you want to bounce any ideas off me then do so, you never know what resources I have and can conjure up unless you let me know what you would like to do.

 

I am at your disposal and I hope that many other forum members will put their hand up to ensure our recreational flying heritage is kept - this is so important to us as a group of recreational flyers.

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Thank you Ian - you are your usual kind and generous self.

 

Have no fear my friend - you are firmly in my sights!

 

I intended banging on your door very shortly anyway. I want to pick up from where we left off last Xmas after we moved the TOSG web site to your domain.

 

My mother's stroke shortly aftwards, plus a couple of other concurrent challenges, ironed me right out for the rest of the year - but now it is time to get going again.

 

I have some structural design work vis a vis information organisation that I should finish quite soon and want to run that past you and then structure the web site that way (should not alter the basic structure but more a case of treeing and cross linking).

 

After that I will start transferring info to you in chunks via email attachments for up load to the site. There is going to be a great deal of it Ian and a lot of images - particularly for the airworthiness section.

 

Thanks again mate

 

Tony