PFA/LAA Magazines

[David Hunter]

Ian, I think I could give you all or most of the mags you have itemised. I have over 30 of them here now but, if you are still looking, I could get the rest in a couple of days. Where would they need to go to?

[Ian Melville]

Thanks for you kind offer David.
I am based in the Oxford area, and often travel around the Home Counties and Cotswold for work. Also in the Exeter area a couple of weekends each month. Anywhere close?

Aerial carriage is grounded at the moment.

Cheers
Ian

[David Hunter]

I'm near Tetbury Gloucestershire, about 5 miles west of Kemble. I'll get the mags together asap and let you know when I have. We have a 580M strip if you get your aircraft flying again.

[Ian Melville]

I hope you mean 'when', though I do wonder some times

The aircraft is based at Enstone, so not far. Give me a shout when you have them bundled up and we will sort something out.

Cheers
Ian

[Richard Mole]

Hello Ian,

OK I have now sorted out copies of everything apart from the first 6 and the possibly non-existent Dec 96 issue.

Send me a PM and I'll arrange to drive the stuf down to you with pleasure.

Best regards

Richard

[JJennings]

Hi Richard,

If you are still short of a few mags I`ll venture into the loft.
Have most from 1972 on.

Best,
John Jennings (G-BDFB, G-AFNI)

[Harry Hopkins]

Hi John,

The Heritage Working Group of the Association is trying to collect a copy of each magazine to have them scanned so that all members can access them. I suspect we're mssing quite a few from the 1970s.

I'll ask Penny Sharpe to contact you to let you know which years we don't yet have if you're willing to let yours go.

Best wishes,

Harry

[Richard Mole]

Hi Ian and David and John,

so sorry to have jumped in with crossed messages.
I sorted most of the magazines out yesterday, finishing this morning and then posted my message in a rush without reading the most recent posts as I wanted to get out for a walk in the sunshine!

Anyway, I'm happy to keep them to one side for a short while, just in case they are needed.

Regards

Richard

[Ian Melville]

Harry, I started scanning magazines for the LAAs benefit, and have offered my services to Brian several times. The project seems to be moving at a snail pace, and the output I have seen so far is not searchable1, so makes it of limited use. Since the project and it's aims are kept very quiet, I have no idea what the long term plan is.

I remove the staples and cut the magazines down the spine before scanning. The magazines can then be passed on to anyone who wants them (I don't have the facility to store them)

I am quite happy to be a collection point and work with Brian to fill the gaps where possible.

1. Searching is imperfect as the OCR software often fails to recognise words. Correction is possible be I don't have time for that in my lifetime.

[Ian Melville]

Harry, I started scanning magazines for the LAAs benefit, and have offered my services to Brian several times. The project seems to be moving at a snail pace, and the output I have seen so far is not searchable1, so makes it of limited use. Since the project and it's aims are kept very quiet, I have no idea what the long term plan is.

I remove the staples and cut the magazines down the spine before scanning. The magazines can then be passed on to anyone who wants them (I don't have the facility to store them)

I am quite happy to be a collection point and work with Brian to fill the gaps where possible.

1. Searching is imperfect as the OCR software often fails to recognise words. Correction is possible be I don't have time for that in my lifetime.

[Brian Hope]

Hi all, I mentioned a while ago that we were about to finally get going on scanning the magazine archive and checked yesterday how it was going. The current situation is that we have scanned every magazine from and including 1974 to today. It has been done by a company that has been digitising a great deal of our Engineering data and has a good search facility.
We do have archive copies of (I believe) all the earlier magazines but only single copies and we don't want to have to effectively destroy them to scan them - as Ian has noted, you have to cut them into individual pages to do the job properly. There is another set that the person who was originally going to do this for us has, and we are endeavoring to get hold of those for scanning. In the meantime, as a Plan B, if anybody has pre-1974 magazines that they want to dispose of I would be interested to hear from you so that we can arrange getting them to Turweston.
What we do with the digital archive has yet to be finalised but I hope we can complete it during this our seventieth year and make it readily available to members.

[Ian Melville]

Thanks for the update Brian. Would also seem the archive currently(2010-14) available on the website is now searchable (has been converted to editable text). In fact a better job of OCR than I can manage. However searching is not available across issues or even articles. So unless you know which article you cannot search for it. How does the engineering search facility work?

As far as I am concerned Brian gets first dibs an any magazines. If this project is on track then I have no need to do any more scanning, but I guess that is the "What we do with the digital archive has yet to be finalised ". In the meantime I am quite happy to take any overflow.

[Brian Hope]

Thanks Ian. "I do not know" is the answer to how the Engineering search facility works (and I guess that of the digitised magazines as well). I will be up at Turwestom next week so I'll try it out and let you know.
By 'yet to be finalised' I mean we haven't really had a discussion about it, either since getting our new CEO (Steve Slater) or having had the latest 40 odd years' worth done. Now we actually have something to discuss, rather than just an idea, I'll raise the point at the marketing meeting, which is one of the reasons I'll be up at HQ.

[David Hunter]

Ian, I have finally managed to get the mags. sorted out. I do not have the following from your list, at least I could not find them first try, July 81, Aug 91, Dec 96, March 98, July 2001.
I see you have had several offers which may help you fill the gaps but if you want any or all of these you are welcome. They are all in good shape.

[Ian Melville]

PM sent to Richard and David,

I notice that Adverts have been removed from the archive magazines. That was half the fun of reading the back issues, however I can perhaps understand why.