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Q-talk 133 - My Last Year As Your Editor

At last year's Field of Dreams fly-in I announced that 2009 would be my 5th and last year to publish the newsletter. It is hard to believe it has been that long.

At the fly-in we discussed at length if the newsletter had outlived its usefulness. The internet has changed many things and I often wonder if I'm just repeating what was posted to the Yahoo Q-List. Most agreed that to some extent the newsletter is the glue that binds us all together, but none thought that without it, the QBA would "dissolve". At the time of this writing, only 63% of you have renewed your subscription, which is markedly down from previous years. I hope I didn't retire one year too late. And the Postal Service just announced a 2 cent hike in postage for this May.

What we also agreed on, is that maybe there was a better way to produce a newsletter of sorts using the internet. Internet blogs of builders, like the one Sam Hoskins (samhoskins.blogspot.com), Joseph Snow (www.corvairq.info), Mike Dwyer (www.geocities.com/fly-home/), and Jon Finley (www.finleyweb.net/) maintain, are very useful to other builders and I believe they are the future to disseminating information about the Quickie family of airplanes.

I have been working on some ideas with Quickie builder, Dan Yager who has created an impressive website for fellow builders at quickieheads.com. By the end of this year, we plan to move all the important stuff from the QBA web site to Dan's site. So is Dan the new newsletter editor? No, not exactly. What we are trying to create is a way that articles can be published at this site by anyone, but after they are reviewed by several trusted builders. Whether any of you will spend the time to write an article is up to you. I'm sure uploading photos will be an option as well.

I recently had a person tell me he was not renewing his Q-Talk subscription because he found no Q1 information in it and he found it of no use to him. I responded that this subject would make for a good article if he began it by writing about his Q1 project. I have yet to hear back from him.

It has been a privilege to do this work, but it's my time to move on. Now I have to get started on the next issue!

Yours truly, Hawkeye



You can order a printed copy of Q-talk #133 by using the Q-talk Back Issue Order Page.