The fate of old Aviation Safety Digests and their ilk

[Centaurus]

Inevitably the time approaches when one has to clean out the shed and dispose of all the old aviation magazines acrued over the years including about 200 Aviation Safety Digests, plus aircraft flight safety articles, maps etc.
It would be a great pity if one is forced to bin the lot and I wondered if readers could come up with workable ideas? Enthusiastic collectors even? Are there organisations that could put them to good use? I am sure there are hundreds of Ppruners getting long in the tooth sooner or later faced with a similar situation.

I remember about 35 years ago bundling up my then collection of Aviation Safety Digests and taking them to a flying school at Essendon. The CFI said he would leave them in the crew room for students and others to read and keep. Three months later I dropped in to the flying school which was a busy place in those days, only to find the whole bundle still tied up with string laying under a desk unopened. I took them home again disappointed that few if any pilots showed interest. Yet in my long career as a pilot I had learned so much from reading those magazines.

Some years ago I placed them on a desk in the cafeteria at the former Ansett Flight Simulator Centre. There, pilots of different nationalities including Australians thronged the place; most of whom seemed more interested in their mobile phones than taking home an Aviation Safety Digest or two or three and reading it them. The reasons aircraft crash hasn't changed much over the years. Again no one seemed interested. Fortunately I was able to stop the cleaner who was about to chuck the lot into the rubbish bag along with used tea bags and tissues. Bloody sacrilege. Once more they currently rest peacefully in my shed. Free to a good home. PM me if necessary

[Frontal Lobotomy]

Hi Centaurus

PM sent.

Cheers
FL

[triadic]

I had a complete set and contributed to the scanning mentioned in the sticky thread in the header of this section. I gave the lot to the ATSB in CBR who did not then have a complete set of paper copies. You might try the CAHS at Essendon, they are often on the lookout for such things. I recall as a student & private pilot I used to hang out for them to arrive in the mail. The culture now is much different and even at a recent CASA safety forum the average age was over 50! Certainly the teaching of good old Airmanship was fallen off the desk!

[mustafagander]

Hi Centaurus,
I wonder whether HARS might be interested??
They preserve historic docos as well as aircraft.

[machtuk]

Ah the memories!
the magazines are all but gone, the pilots of the era are too almost gone but the very planes we used to flying during those times live on, now being flown by pilots who have no past, no long ago history or stories to tell of enthusiastic times sitting around club room tables reading those stories & not an iPad in sight!
An era has now passed into history.

[Centaurus]

You might try the CAHS at Essendon, they are often on the lookout for such things.

Thanks for the thought. Being a member of the CAHS museum I have already been given many copies of ASD's which are surplus to their requirements. Every few weeks members occasionally donate their own copies to the museum. Because the museum library already has the original bound full set of Aviation Safety Digests, the others that come in to the museum become surplus to requirements.

You are right in saying the culture is now different. I attended one of those roving CASA flight safety forums several years ago where around 100 people turned up at the Mantra Hotel at Tullamarine in Melbourne. Tim Penney ran the show very well. I dropped the hint to the organisers to remind the audience of the ready availability of the digital versions of Aviation Safety Digests now on the CASA website as it has been my experience that most pilots are unaware of this gem of information.. Maybe the organisers either forgot to mention it to the attendees or thought there was no need. Either way, my idea wasn't taken up, much to my disappointment.

I think in future tours of this nature around Australia it should be an opener to each flight safety forum to tell the audience about the CASA website and the availability of Aviation Safety Digests. After all I note that at the beginning of each speech by senior RAAF and other aviation luminaries at the recent 100 years of the RAAFcelebrations at Canberra, formal acknowledgment was made to the aboriginal owners of the area. What's wrong about putting in a plug for Aviation Safety Digest, Mac Job's masterpiece?

For those who kindly replied with suggestions, thank you very much. Within ten minutes of my placing the request on Pprune, a friend of mine whom I trained for his instrument rating countless years back rang me at home and said he would love to have the lot as he had lost all his ASD's during the bush fires last year. To him the magazine was sheer gold. I agree.

[cattletruck]

Just came across this thread a bit late Centy, I was thinking Macarthur Job's & co safety articles would provide a great insight from the pilot's perspective of weather related incidents for the Bureau of Meteorology's recent program of developing Meteorologists specifically for the Aviation industry. I know they have a library with some aviation material, but with the program still being developed by the Bureau then perhaps it was best your friend got them now.