A polite request for aviators of a certain age
 

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Please consider the following polite request.
There are those among you who bridge the huge and significant gap in aviation history, that from biplanes to jets, or flying boats to jets or heavy recips to jets. Probably the biggest leap in aviation technology other than venturing into space. Those who can recall what prop synch was all about, that know what 2,800 at 54" means, who can still smell 115/145 on a quiet night. When take off power was measured in decibels achieved not what %flex the bean counters will let us get away with. Those who laid a noisy, black smokey trail across the sky for others to follow, when mag drops were not a new fangled sweet. You know who you are. Pilots, flight engineers, loadmasters, line engineers all of you out there in pprune land.
Recently Captain Bob Welliver (411A) passed away, last May he PM'd me to say that at last he had started on his biography, it will not now be finished.
Please have a serious thought about getting into your loft/garage/shed/den/office/study/cellar and digging out your old log books and bit and pieces.
Please consider applying quill to parchment and recording your piece of the fabulous history that is aviation. The incidents that inspired, amused, frightened or amazed you. Please don't leave it too late.
Please forgive this intrusion.
Thanks for your time,
Be lucky
David

Mr Dinosaur your PM box is full.


However, having popped in here and read your last post, I am certainly in agreement - in fact I mentioned it in Bob's thread, and would love to know if he'd not only started, but kept notes and photos with the intention of a biography one day.

There are a lot of interesting lives stashed away in shoe boxes and dusty cupboards, and so many of them will be discarded without a word being read. Such a shame.

Quote Loose rivets Sorry Sir,
This thread caused a bit of a surge in the inbox.
All sorted now.
Thanks for taking the time and trouble to post.
Be lucky
David

I have a "Royal Air Force Flying Training Manual,
Part 1-Landplanes"
Air Publication 129, revised 1937,
reprinted 1939 with pen and ink revisions in 1940.
I got it from a teacher when I was in school in the fifties.
To give you some idea of its contents, where formation hand signals are discussed, the illustrations are open cockpit bi-planes with a lot of the formations in Vic threes. I don't think there was any finger four in the scheme of things when it was in effect.

I know of a few places that would be glad to have it and I do not intend to see it get binned. I have to believe that the RAF museum at Hendon must have copies but I wonder if it would be worthwhile finding out just in case. That would be a good home if they do not have something like that.

If you have the notion to share such a document, perhaps you could consider scanning it and publishing it on a webite such as Scribd I've done it for a couple of documents which the pilot fraternity may find useful. And perhaps we could start a historical documents link on this forum like the one which exists on the technical forum.

I for one would love to see that manual. I should think that copyright wouldn't apply on such an old document

I wrote a brief autobiography (23,000 words) for my sons a couple of Christmasses ago. About 40 pages of A4,with embedded pictures, printed and bound myself - nothing elaborate. It has been well received.
There is no way the RAF Museum is getting my stuff - it will only vanish into some dusty file somewhere!

Dan, I think that scanning the book would be a fair undertaking as it is almost a couple of inches thick. It is in eight chapters with nine appendices at the end. I think it would end up as a pretty big file.

20 Grand,

You might not give the orginals to the RAF Museum and things like medals would stay in the family.

However, a copy of your autobiography would be appreciated by them. The work would be catalogued in such a way that it can be pulled up by the many hundreds of people using the museum's research facilities, when there is some relevance between your experiences and what the researcher wants to find out about.

Give it go!!

O-D

Get scribbling!
 

AvGas

A GREAT idea, I just hope some people take up the challenge. So often those at the forefront of events don't realise the significance (to us like-minded types, at least) of their endevours. There are numerous aviation magazines that would love to receive tales of times gone by, Air Classics, Propliner, Airways Magazine to name but three.

I think my exploits with early flying machines and truculent pilots is already well documented;)

Sir George Cayley

I too have an original of AP 129 and it sits proudly among all my treasured books as I type this.

Now, in case the Mods read this and cry "advertising not allowed" I shall say right now this is not the intent. I too have written my memoirs garnered from daily diaries and photos kept since 1952 and cross referred to 23,000 hours worth of military and civvy log books. I found the cost of writing and publishing let alone advertising was beyond my means. There had to be another way and I found it.

Chris Brady of www.b737.org.uk wrote his marvellous The Boeing 737 Technical Manual many years ago. I recall we talked by email and he advised me to use an internet publishing site called www.lulu.com which is based in Louisiana USA which is free.

The website shows a budding author how to collate the pages etc and submit the book for publication to them. All at no cost. The snag is you have to write your own book and that includes designing the cover page and back page, do your own proof reading and page layout. I needed help from a friend who had computer keyboard expertese. In other words the author is entirely responsible for the donkey work. As I said I needed someone to help me with page layouts.

That done, you simply forward the book file to the internet publishing website of your choice - probably hundreds of them available. I chose www.lulu.com despite googled comments criticising the site efficiency. My book was around 12 MB. Incidently there are well written instructions from lulu how to decide on what size pages and format and you decide how much you want to sell the book for. Say $20 USD. If someone sees your book advertised (free) on www.lulu.com they send off the $20 plus around $6 postage to lulu. The author gets $5 and lulu get $5 and the printer gets $10.

Or, you can do what I did, and that is buy 30 copies of your own book from lulu (delivery usually within 14 days) and give them as gifts to friends or family. The printing is the interesting bit, though. As soon as www.lulu.com get your credit card amount for the book, they contact the nearest capital city to your home address and arrange for one of the hundreds of specialised computerised printers to dash off one copy (or more) to your nominated address.

That is where the $6 "shipping" comes in as it is sent by courier and not by expensive post office means.

All this so far at not a cent from your pocket. All you need is the desire to write your memoire, the basic nouse of writing a story of your life experiences say in aviation, the help of a good friend to guide you through page layouts etc and someone to help you design an attractive colour front page.

For the latter, all I did was to go through my photo albums and selected about four photos of aircraft I had flown, and I found a nice shot of a Pacific island runway taken from very short final from my 737 cockpit. With those photos in my grubby hand I went to a local shopping mall which had a graphic designer who puts photos on coffee mugs and tea towels.

I thought of a title for the book and asked the man behind the counter could he please design a evocative picture for the front of a book to include the photos I gave him and title.

A day later he showed me his work which included several choices. He had done a wonderful job and I was delighted. That cost me a grand total of $35 for his work. I would show you the picture on Pprune but am not permitted due to The Rules.

You may not want to sell the book but just to have something for your family. Fine - lulu couldn't care less but will merely print any number copies that you want.. they get their $5 commission and you are happy. By the way, just google the words "Tall Tails of the South Pacific" and see what comes up. Make sure you spell it as `tails`, too. I achieved a life long ambition to put my log books into words and my family were delighted.
I hope this starts a few of you thinking about those flying experiences of long ago and start off with Chapter One..."there I was at 30,000 ft with nothing on the clocks except the maker's name". And all the jazz.

bral is absolutely correct. Some years ago a chap came into my shop and offered me the following original documents for sale, all pertaining to one RFC/RAF pilot.

An army commission dated around 1910

A Royal Flying Corps commission dated around 1915

A Royal Air Force Commission dated 1918

A bestowal document for a DSO dated 1917, and 2 MID certificates

When I asked him where he had got the documents he told me he was a dustman and had removed them from a pile of stuff on top of a bin he was emptying. Can you imagine what was in the items he didnt recover, and the mentality of the person who threw them away in the first place?

Timely advice, avgas dinosaur.

TTN,

A little strong.

In most cases it is pure ignorance.

Anyone want a set of Green Satin circuit diagrams, circa 1958?:D

Keeping track of the experiences.
 

Tee Emm:

Thank you for the post on how you published the Memoirs, good information.

Kind regards

Tmb

Last year I published my autobiography, ‘Was It All Worth It’

It cost me £2K for just 20 copies which I have given to my family and close friends.

Having retired after 32 years as an Air Traffic Controller mismanaging the skies above the UK I thought it would be fun to recount it all.

I wrote 135,482 words, 15 chapters. Tales about airmisses, incidents etc that I was involved with.

It only took me 6 months to write. There were days when the words just flowed from my mind and I would not get to bed until 2 am. But sometimes nothing happened. I now know what writers block is.

As far as getting it published on the open market, now that was a problem.

The Official Secrets Act that I signed when I joined ATC in Jan ’70 it seems binds you for life. I am very critical in the book of my past managers & the RAF. Also the newly formed CAA. So for that reason I could only get it published privately.

Still. I’m glad I did it.

So if anybody is thinking about writing a book, go do it. It’s not so hard. But unless your name is JK Rawlings don’t expect publishers banging at your door !!

Clint.

Well, I AM trying but I am so busy now that I have retired that I find it really hard to sit down and get on with it. I have managed to get to the end of 1965 so far.

I have decided to self-publish enough copies for my family and a few friends. It certainly would never be a great seller but some folks in the future might find some of it of interest.

One thing that is of interest about my 55-year flying career (so far) is that I never ever flew a Boeing or an Airbus!

Secrets
 

Clint I'm intrigued,what could be secret about a career as a controller with the CAA? But having been given a written warning because I wrote to the local paper without management pewrmission I can see where you are coming from.

In my career as both a Herc nav and then CAA ATCO I can't think of any thing that I or any reasonable person would consider to be of earth shattering secrecy! Oh yes - how incompetent most of the managers I encountered in the CAA were, particularly post late '80s. But that must surely have been self-evident!

Brian

JW411.

Good you have made a start on your book. Stay with it.

When the time comes I can give you the name etc. of my publisher. They specialse in one off publications. Not cheap but good value.

Clint.

Getting them started - chapter headings
 

If you have an elderly parent, relative or friend who has told you bits of their story in the past, but is unlikely to sit down and write it all out, why not list a few chapter headings based upon memories they have told you previously, and ask if they would tell you again with a recorder running? Once they are going it should prompt a few questions from you, and before you know it there will be plenty of material.

Its usually possible to find someone who can touch type who could get it onto a computer or paper for you; capturing the memory before its too late, is what matters.

I only found out a few weeks ago that when my mother went to RAE Farnborough in the early 50s (ending up as an aerial photographer in a Dakota) that she was interviewed, at all three stages of the process, together with her twin sister!

My typing is strictly two fingers and thus very slow, so when I was asked to write about my experiences the thought was rather daunting.
If anyone else is in the same situation you could try what I am doing.

I bought a Sony IC Recorder and am dictating the story into that.
As each episode/chapter is finished I back it up in the PC and also onto CD.
When complete I will put it all on DVD.

I realise this is not as permanent as a printed edition, but at least the story will be there for others to transcribe if they want to.