The Best of QSO

Those of you that attended the AGM last year know that the Committee agreed to undertake the task of seeing if a book that was generically titled “The Best of QSO” could realistically be created.  There have been many excellent articles in QSO over the years and it was thought that not all members will have had the chance to read all the QSO’s over that time plus the Committee wanted to leave some form of legacy of the Radio Officer’s profession and this seemed the best way.

I am delighted to advise you that due to the hard work of Ian Channing and Roger Bentley a most interesting selection of stories has been pulled together.  Tony Selman is currently proof reading the copy and making some layout adjustments.  We will have a draft copy to present to members at the AGM, although the final published version will not in actual fact be produced in the same way, but the contents will be the same.  A title that the editors think is highly appropriate has been chosen but we will save this as your Saturday morning surprise at the AGM!  As it stands we expect the book to comprise some 400 A4 pages and will contain some 30 pages of photos within that total.  The total number of pages has not yet been finalised.

This has not been an easy task as QSO over the years has been created and edited on 5 different computers and saved on 5 different media formats and standardising the layout, tabbing and paragraphs has been in the nightmare category.  Some stories from early QSO’s cannot be traced electronically.

If all goes according to plan we would anticipate publishing the book during the late Spring/early Summer and the cost will be kept as low as possible as the Committee does not intend this to be a profit making exercise.  It is to be hoped that as many members as possible will purchase the book.

Tony Selman

21 March 2012