if the SAC can do this, why not the SSA?

[Tony Verhulst]

http://www.sac.ca/freeflight/archive.html

Tony V, LS6-b "6N"

[Burt Compton - Marfa]

Back issues of "Soaring", the journal of the Soaring Society of
America, are for sale through the archive of the SSA, our National
Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY. Inquire via www.soaringmuseum.org

Much of our SSA paperwork, records, badge details, contest reports,
photos, magazines, club newsletters and more are archived at the NSM
on Harris Hill. The museum has recently been expanded and displays
many historically significant sailplanes.

Every soaring enthusiast should plan a visit to our National Soaring
Museum. Harris Hill itself is scenic and a very active soaring
site. The International Vintage Soaring Meet (IVSM) will be held on
Harris Hill June 28 to July 4, 2009. Elmira is located near the
beautiful "finger lakes" region of New York State, and you can fly
airline into Elmira-Corning (ELM) airport, in the valley below Harris
Hill.

Like the SSA, the NSM operates on a limited budget with a small
staff. Your volunteer help to assist with services is welcome at
both Hobbs, NM and Elmira, NY. Coordinate with your SSA Director to
offer your skills. A list of SSA Directors is on www.ssa.org

Happy soaring!

Burt
Marfa, west Texas
USA

[Alistair Wright]

"Burt Compton - Marfa" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> Back issues of "Soaring", the journal of the Soaring Society of
> America, are for sale through the archive of the SSA, our National
> Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY. Inquire via www.soaringmuseum.org

That doesn't answer the question, The Canadian stuff can be accessed without
travelling to a museum or buying anything. Just out of interest I had a look
at the archive, and even though I am located in Scotland a lot of the
material about safety etc is very relevant here. The current issue also has
a very good article on landing which every instructor would benefit from
reading. Come on SSA join the 21st century!!

Alistair Wright
Scottish Borders
retired instructor

[BB]

Burt has a point that scanning in old issues of Soaring might take a
few days of volunteer effort. But I can't imagine why pdfs of newly
produced issues aren't archived on the website, possibly with a delay,
and in the members-only section. This would take only a few minutes.
Yes, I've suggested this a few times. Maybe if a few others suggest
it, it will happen.

John Cochrane

[Frank Whiteley]

On Jul 26, 8:09 am, "Alistair Wright" >
wrote:
> "Burt Compton - Marfa" > wrote in ooglegroups.com...
>
> > Back issues of "Soaring", the journal of the Soaring Society of
> > America, are for sale through the archive of the SSA, our National
> > Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY. Inquire viawww.soaringmuseum.org
>
> That doesn't answer the question, The Canadian stuff can be accessed without
> travelling to a museum or buying anything. Just out of interest I had a look
> at the archive, and even though I am located in Scotland a lot of the
> material about safety etc is very relevant here. The current issue also has
> a very good article on landing which every instructor would benefit from
> reading. Come on SSA join the 21st century!!
>
> Alistair Wright
> Scottish Borders
> retired instructor

I think Burt was implying that such an online archive is likely only
to happen through voluntary efforts and perhaps a basic change in
organizational philosophy.

Frank Whiteley.

[Richard[_1_]]

On Jul 26, 8:16 am, BB > wrote:
> Burt has a point that scanning in old issues of Soaring might take a
> few days of volunteer effort. But I can't imagine why pdfs of newly
> produced issues aren't archived on the website, possibly with a delay,
> and in the members-only section. This would take only a few minutes.
> Yes, I've suggested this a few times. Maybe if a few others suggest
> it, it will happen.
>
> John Cochrane

John,

I agree and

The SSA could start for virtually nothing. Start with all the
relatively current issues how many years???? that are already in an
electronic format and put them on the website.

But,

The SSA has been quietly drifting away from a service organization to
its members. If you look at the financials you can see that the
supposed money making functions that require SSA staff are actually
losing money. The short list:
SSA Convention - Give it back to the clubs.
SSA Merchandising- Get out of that business, soaring vendors will
gladly take the ball, most of the books and such are already sold by
Knauff & Grove, Bob Wanderer and Cumulus Soaring.

I woud guess 3 to 4 employess could be dropped from the payroll if the
SSA got out of these activities, accounting costs , CC fees etc.,
space required and many other items associated with these activities
could be saved and devoted to the Mission Statement activities.

Get the SSA back to being a member service organization that provide
what the MISSION Statement says minus the Convention Management.

MISSION
The Mission of the Soaring Society of America consists of the
following elements and programs:

PROVIDE MEMBER SERVICES, INCLUDING
a. Publications
b. Website
c. Educational Programs
d. Safety Programs
e. Information Dissemination
f. Record and Badge Homologation
g. Contest Rules and Sanction of Contests
h. Insurance
i. Membership Management

REPRESENT GLIDING TO
a. U. S. Federal (Congress and Executive Regulatory), State and Local
Governments
b. FAI, IGC, NAA
c. Sporting Aviation Groups


OFFER A SENSE OF COMMUNITY THROUGH
a. Promotion of the Sport
b. Convention Management
c. Chapter, Club, Division, Affiliate and Business Member Support
d. Availability of the SSA Foundation
e. Awards for Achievement and Service
f. Communication of the above to the members

Richard Pfiffner
www.craggyaero.com

[BB]

>
> But,
>
> The SSA has been quietly drifting away from a service organization to
> its members. ...
> Richard Pfiffnerwww.craggyaero.com

The restructuring task force pages at ww.ssa.org give great hope that
most of these changes are already underway. See in particular the "ssa
services inventory." Another FRTF recommendation I especially like is,
return Soaring to being a great magazine.

John Cochrane

[[email protected]]

This is due, no doubt, to the efforts of Tony Burton, the Editor of
'Free Flight'.
One can also get a CD of the PDFs for little more that the media and
shipping costs.

David Ridding



On Jul 26, 11:44 am, Frank Whiteley > wrote:
> On Jul 26, 8:09 am, "Alistair Wright" >
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Burt Compton - Marfa" > wrote in ooglegroups.com...
>
> > > Back issues of "Soaring", the journal of the Soaring Society of
> > > America, are for sale through the archive of the SSA, our National
> > > Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY. Inquire viawww.soaringmuseum.org
>
> > That doesn't answer the question, The Canadian stuff can be accessed without
> > travelling to a museum or buying anything. Just out of interest I had a look
> > at the archive, and even though I am located in Scotland a lot of the
> > material about safety etc is very relevant here. The current issue also has
> > a very good article on landing which every instructor would benefit from
> > reading. Come on SSA join the 21st century!!
>
> > Alistair Wright
> > Scottish Borders
> > retired instructor
>
> I think Burt was implying that such an online archive is likely only
> to happen through voluntary efforts and perhaps a basic change in
> organizational philosophy.
>
> Frank Whiteley.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Andy[_1_]]

On Jul 26, 7:09 am, "Alistair Wright" >
wrote:
Come on SSA join the 21st century!!

Is the S and G archive available on line? I let my subscription lapse
and I know there are lots of articles worth reading.

Andy

[Greg Arnold]

wrote:
> This is due, no doubt, to the efforts of Tony Burton, the Editor of
> 'Free Flight'.


The SSA would do well to emulate Free Flight. Get an editor who is a
soaring pilot, who has a vision of what the magazine should be, and who
actively solicits articles to fulfill that vision. No more of this
"Let's look through this month's mailbag and see if we can find enough
articles to make an issue."

[Tony Burton]

The SSA would do well to emulate Free Flight. Get an editor who is a
> soaring pilot, who has a vision of what the magazine should be, and who
> actively solicits articles to fulfill that vision. No more of this
> "Let's look through this month's mailbag and see if we can find enough
> articles to make an issue."

A good magazine does take a lot of footwork - you can't wait for the stories to come to you.

The initial Free Flight archive was relatively easy to put together as I had saved all the PageMaker
files from the time desktop publishing came into its own and I pulled the layout work away from the
printers around 1989. The original files had been chopped up a little (photos, ads removed, etc) to
save space as they were originally saved on diskettes and had to be under a 1.4Meg, but I was able
to reconstruct a portion of these early issues.

Since then I have, as a poster mentioned, simply dropped a pdf of each issue into the
<www.sac.ca/freeflight> back issues page as they are produced.

The longer job has been to generate pdf files of issues pre-electronic era. The easy way is simply
to scan each page but I decided, in order to make the best copy and to repair old typos and printer
errors, to instead rebuild replicas of the earlier issues. They take a few days each of spare time
when I have nothing better to do. I'm now within an issue of completing 1981 when my wife and I
began editing the magazine and will probably stop there.