Dick Whitaker

docbob · #1 05-08-04, 07:39 PM

There are lots of birthdays and other life events in my family in May (son, daughter, brother, daughter-in-law to name a few). So at this time of year I think about these kinds of things. Among these thoughts is that Dick Whitaker died on May 10, 1991 (and he was born only one year before I was). Dick was a nice guy and a real lover of our favorite airplane. He left us with memories of some fun fly-ins and great coffee and snacks at OSH. So I take the liberty of reminding everyone.

Bob

kevin · #2 05-08-04, 11:47 PM

Thanks for reminding us Bob. I was a subscriber to Dick's newsletter well before I owned my first 337. I screwed up, at one point I gave up on ever owning one, and threw the newsletters away. Now I really wish I had them.

I never met him in person, but traded letters (not emails ;-) with him frequently, and enjoyed a couple of phone conversations.

Whenever I am trying to decide how best to proceed with our site, I think about what Dick would have done. He made a great contribution to the community of Skymaster owners and pilots. We miss him.

Kevin

docbob · #3 05-09-04, 12:19 PM

Kevin, I may be asking for trouble here. I have all of the newsletters from 1978 to 1991. As you may remember, Dick printed them on legal size paper which makes them somewhat unwieldy. But if there is anything specific that you might want to look at, let me know and I'll make a copy. I'm going to talk to my computer guru (aka wife) about maybe scanning them into the computer. Might be a big job. Any ideas?
Bob

kevin · #4 05-11-04, 02:24 AM

Bob,

I have two ideas.

First, I don't think scanning them into a computer would be worthwhile. Each page would be a fairly big file, and would not be searchable or indexable. It would also be a pain to page through.

I think the best ideas are either to have someone type the text into text files (and scan the pictures, drawings, etc., although there were not very many of those). This would be the best path, because we could put them on the site, and they could be searched, etc. But I don't have anyone to offer to do the typing. Maybe someone on the site has an idea on who could do this.

The alternative is if you could send me one really good copy, or let me borrow your original (copies), I could get them duplicated, and make them available for copying and postage charges only. This would get the information out to folks, even if it was not indexed.

They made interesting reading for a Skymaster owner, as I recall.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Any other suggestions from folks out there. BTW, they were mostly typed in an italic typeface as I recall, so trying to use OCR to get the data scanned would not be likely to work.

Kevin

stackj · #5 05-11-04, 06:48 AM

I would volunteer to type two or three. If we all took a few, maybe we could accomplish the task without anyone being overburdened. Kevin, you would probably need to coordinate who gets what.

Mitch Taylor · #6 05-11-04, 09:24 AM

If anyone has good OCR software, most of the text can be pulled out of the scan. It still needs editing, but it's faster than typing it from scratch.

WebMaster · #7 05-11-04, 09:35 AM

I volunteer to type.

kevin · #8 05-11-04, 12:46 PM

Mitch,

Do you know of OCR software that will scan italic typeface? I have never seen that work, since the letters all run together. See previous message.

Kevn

docbob · #9 05-11-04, 01:29 PM

A quick look at the stack tells me that about 30% is in italics. But in many cases italics and plain are present in the same issue. Seems that this would make it difficult. Another fact that argues for typing and against OCR is that in some of them the quality is not good. Typing would "fix" this. But typing is time consuming. The stack is 1.25" high of legal size paper (8.5by14) printed on both sides.
If we split them up among several volunteers for entering into the right format such as Word they could then be sent to Kevin as e-mail attachments. I would guess that they all would have to be in the same format-but I'll leave that up to the experts. There are some reproductions of letters to and from various peoiple such as Cessna engineers but very few photo's. Maybe some of the authenticity would be lost but we could at least preserve them.
If we could get a few volunteers, I'll be willing to make copies and distribute them as appropriate. I could do this in small increments-not all at once! This project could take a while but would probably be worth it.
Bob

kevin · #10 05-11-04, 06:40 PM

Whoa. I talked to Scott Smith today. Scott acquired the copyright to the newletters from the Whitaker family after Dick's death. He sells copies of the newletters through his web site, www.skysmith.com. He prefers not to grant permission to distribute the newletters as we have been discussing.

Kevin

stackj · #11 05-11-04, 06:46 PM

Ah... didn't realize they were the same. I retract my offer. Sorry Scott!

docbob · #12 05-11-04, 07:00 PM

I suspected that, hoped for the best but am not surprised. I was going to call him myself. I thought he had sold them to the Cessna Owners' whateveritis. Money beats camaraderie every time.

rick bell · #13 05-11-04, 07:54 PM

at the risk of being caddy, thier are thoes who care and thoes that prey, i suggest offering to pay for the right (even whoever paid for the rights, i'm sure paid very little, but will want to make a 1k % profit) based on purchasing mx insurance for $450 wiile others sold it for$100 (baja bush pilots) they still are able to make a profit without craming it! i use to subscribe to that newslletter, he was always late or missed additions and very little if any useful/interesting info. {Last sentence removed by webmaster.}

kevin · #14 05-11-04, 08:06 PM

Oh, I'm gonna hate this...

Guys, please try not to cross the line into personal attacks, however accurate you feel they are. I have drawn a line that prevents flamewars on this site, and I *hate* having to enforce it equally for everyone, because it always makes the "enforcee" angry, and I value each and every one of your contributions here.

Kevin

Pat Schmitz · #15 05-12-04, 12:59 AM

Here's a thought.... Clearly Scott saw the value of these newsletters, and was willing to put up his money to buy the rights. We have all acknowledged the value of this information, and the fact that it honors Dick's tremendous contribution to the owners of the 336/337. Perhaps we could offer our groups collective typing talents (which has considerable value!) to take this content from it's current form, to a more useable, searchable format in exchange for the right to have access to it. We can provide that same content back to Scott so he could sell it, or use it in the new format.

As a gesture, we can put his advertisement and contact info, along with a thanks for his contribution on all the pages/access to the content.

He paid for the rights,
We type, We share, He gets more usable content, and we get access. He gets more advertisement for the people who access it..

I guess that is up to Scott - he has value there he can sell, but it is questionable how much he makes selling it in it's current form.. but, it would bring more attention to his business through the online access to that content w/ some embedded appreciation ads for SKYSMITH..

Just my .02