Book: Finished with Engines - the story of Qantas' longhaul flight engineers.

[FYSTI]

http://i1355.photobucket.com/albums/q715/fysti99/colin_lock_feo_book_zps12600484.jpeg

Ex-Flight Engineer Colin Lock is about to publish this book for those interested, cost is $25 + postage & handling. Send him an email: [email protected] and he will send payment & postage details. Alternatively you can PM me and I will give you the details directly.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Well after eight years the book is finished!

Firstly thank you most sincerely for your continuing patience and interest, it has been a long slog. I really did appreciate your words of encouragement, requests for progress reports and offers of assistance. I had planned to have the book out before Christmas and worked hard to achieve that aim. Unfortunately, while preparing the manuscript for the printer, complications arose so that in the end that was not achievable. Ligure, the printing firm, have advised me that, barring another catastrophe, the book should be printed on the 14 January.
Finally I hope and trust I have managed to deliver what you anticipated after you first heard the title: Finished with Engines - the story of Qantas' longhaul flight engineers.
Attached are the details of how to order your copy.

Thank you
Colin Lock

[QF22]

Well i will be the first as this thread/book deserves a reply.
It sounds like a great read, and I hope it ill be a best seller!
I for one will order a copy to read about what is unfortunatley a dying breed, along with the rest of QF engineering.
The airline will be a lot poorer for their loss!

[Blowie]

Thanks for the heads up - I will order my copy tomorrow. Congratulations Colin.

Blowie

[FYSTI]

*bump* to the top...

[baswell]

On paper? Via the post? It's 2013, all pilots have iPads. :)

Make it an iBook or publish it on Kindle and I'll be the first one to purchase! :ok:

[The Green Goblin]

+1 for Ipad :)

It'll give me something to do on those international BOCs :)

[triathlon]

Advertise somewhere else. Not this forum mate for your personal financial gain
:=

[The Green Goblin]

There's always party police everywhere.

Do you own pprune? Are you paying to use pprune?

Why do you care? If the mods have a problem with this, they will lock the thread.

Suck a lemon sour puss :E

[Keg]

Advertise somewhere else. Not this forum mate for your personal financial gain


I'm not sure that FYSTI has anything to gain by promoting this book. Personally I think it's awesome he's let other PPRUNErs know that the book is out there. :ugh:

I hope Colin sells a gazillion of them.

[Old Akro]

I agree with Keg. Colin Lock is either self publishing or using a small publisher. So, its worth this fraction of bandwidth to help. Also, print runs of Australian aviation books tend to be pretty small, so its worth alerting anyone who is interested to get in early.

In contrast with the kids :). I want to turn pages, and study good quality pictures. The equivalent of paperbacks I put on the ipad. Things I want to keep I prefer in hard copy to put on a shelf. I hope this book is the latter.

[Wunwing]

baswel et al.
There is more than a bit of irony in your post but you appear to be too young to see it. Flight Engineers were displaced by technology.We are a generation that may use computers etc but we aren't in love with them.

I am buying the book because I want a keepsake of an earlier life and I like the tactile sensation of turning pages and looking at real printed photos.This is Col's (very limited) market.

Having said that, Col didn't write this for a profit.It is (as far as I know) self published as a method of recording a now almost past era that most of our non airline aviation people didn't even know existed.I've lost count of how many guests in the cockpit (yes that did happen in better times) looked at me and my panel and asked "who are you , the Navigator?"

Wunwing

[baswell]

I have exchange a few emails with Collin about this, and I hope I convinced him to consider. :)

I don't think this market is as limited as you think, though you may be too old to see it. (Sorry, couldn't help myself! :) )

Seriously, though, at $25 in print, he's barely breaking even. At $25 per e-book, Amazon and Apple would let him keep $17.50. There are a *lot* of aviation enthusiasts out there, so go on a few podcasts and into some magazines in Australia and you probably sell a couple of hundred. Get some international interest and you may get into 4 figures. All without having to lug 1.4 KG books to the post office.

Not too shabby and even if you started it as a labour of love, there's nothing wrong with ending up with at least paying for a nice holiday out of it!

It doesn't cost anything to put it on the Amazon Kindle store and all you need to do is upload the word or PDF document. If you can self-publish on paper, you can certainly manage an e-book.

Sure, there will be folks like you who want to book as keepsake, maybe get it signed by the author. Many enthusiasts like me just want to read the stories even though they have no sentimental value to us.

I may not know a thing about flying big jets or much of the work the flight engineers like you did. But I know a thing or two about the realities of "new media" and just how big and tech savvy the aviation market is. (We have plenty of customers in their 70s and 80s using an iPad with our product!)

And this is all constructive criticism, of course; I just want the see more material like this more easily accessible! :ok:

[Desert185]

:ok: Dittos. Sell both versions.

[weighman]

I started as a Qantas apprentice in 1966 & wanted to be a F/E with a passion.
Didn't get the gig, but a lot of my mates did. Sat up front many times and watched them at work but always wondered if it became a monotous occupation.

Left the company in 74 and have stayed in the game in GA since and have had a rewarding life. Would be interested in the book to see how the guys went long term. In hindsight, I am probably glad I didn't get the job with the subsequent traumas of redundancy etc. I am still working.

I would find the book an interesting read to see how the life of a "flighty" ran and read the biographies of some of the guys I worked with.

Put me down for a copy and let me know how to obtain it.:D

[Wunwing]

I was a '65 apprentice and started as an FE in late '70. The job never got monotonous although like all long haul flying the long night sectors weren't the best.

However the time off gave room for other interests, which I could follow up while away.

The constant threat of both redundancy and demise of the job was always a strain but in the end very few were forced into redundancy.Most picked our own time to go with a reasonable payout.

Looking back it was a good career and I made the right decison staying as an FE to redundancy.

I actually feel sorry for a lot of the pilots who no longer have a finite cutoff and seem to stay,in some cases way too long.

Wunwing

[weighman]

Aaaahhhh the life of an apprentice in the mid 60's. Sweeping the floors, collecting the tradesman's smoko & lunch orders, no ASICs, driving the tugs to destruction, Sydney Tech & the Meteor, a beer & pie at the pub behind the tech at lunchtime.

Will never forget the Master of Apprentices (Bill Rutledge).:mad: