As I hoped, this issue of AIR POWER was completed in record time. Since JD now has a Macintosh and since we can hook up online via GEnie, the effort involved in producing the newsletter is substantially reduced. This is good because my new job is certainly more demanding in terms of time than being a college professor (but then, what isn't?).
Also we now have a scanner available and with Tony Stanfl producing wonderful artwork for us, we hope to treat you to a really great look. You can see some of Tony's work in this issue and were adding him to our masthead as a staff member.
As JD mentioned, we are returning to bulk mail as our primary method of delivery. It is considerably less expensive than first class, especially given the postal rate increases, and we have a lot more going for us than we did when we last tried to use 3rd class rates.
First of all, Huntsville has a major ground mail shipping depot (it has to with the U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal just up the road), and we now ship in heavy paper envelopes which seem to protect the issues much better than the plastic we were using long ago. In addition, we now have far in excess of 200 domestic subscribers, so I don't have to mail multiple copies separately or pad the mailing with a bunch of issues going to myself any longer.
In fact, the feedback from the bulk mailing of issues # 11 and #12 seem to indicate that it is working very well. It looks like virtually everybody got the issue less than a month after they were mailed. I'm pleased and it means that we wont have to make a price increase to cover the postage costs.
However, the drawback is that one month lead time for mailing. To try and catchup, we're going to be trying to combine this issue with # 14 in another double mailing, and then we'll be trying to get issues # 15 and # 16 in the mail together shortly after ORIGINS. Hopefully by the end of August, everyone will have issues through #16 in their hands and we'll be back on track.
In case you hadn't noticed, this is the much-ballyhooed Gulf War issue. Our centerfold contains some of the reference sheets from 2nd Edition Air Superiority. Now I realize that since you don't have the complete rules body, you may not understand everything on it, but even those of us who have playtested Gunslingers will see new things on this summary! In any case, most of the material is self- explanatory for long-time Air Superiority gamers and you can try out some of the new rules before the game sees print. (We're so good to our readers.)
Issue # 14 will be fully dedicated to our northerly bretheren, the Canadians. All the material is provided by Canadians and is in that homey style their so famous for. We've got data cards for the Sabre 5/6, the CF-100 and the CF-105 Arrow, and some scenarios to use them with. So grab a brew, flip on the hockey game, and listen to the strains of "Oh, Canada" while you read.
I'm out of space again. Hope you enjoy the issue and let me assure everyone that we haven't gone away. See you in Baltimore!
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© Copyright 1990 by J.D. Webster
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