The Trailing Edge
So when do new issues come out, anyway?
Okay, okay we know — the May issue didn’t hit the streets until the 5th of the month. In addition, readers will likely have noticed that as each month goes by, another day is tacked onto the schedule. Trust us, it’s not intentional. It’s simply a bi-product of the ever-increasing workload associated with getting new issues out the door.
We are taking steps to try and get the schedule back on the rails. First, we’re bumping ahead by five days the ‘new issue window’: that’s the point in the month where we switch over from mostly working on the current issue to mostly working on the next issue. That will mean having to make our marketing programs associated with issue release more efficient. Part of the way we’ll do that, as The Ed mentioned in his In The Air piece this month, is by officially giving Twitter the boot effective immediately.
Next, we’ll be encouraging contributors to write more of their stories right on the publishing platform as opposed to using other tools. That can greatly impact the amount of time each story takes to ‘process’ and make it ready for the new issue.
Finally, we’ll be looking at some additional automation tools which will whittle away at all the highly detailed, potentially error-prone administrivia required to make a given issue ‘click together’.
We’re hoping these things will once again inch the new issue release forward with our longer term goal of getting the new issue out at 12.00am of the first day of month in every timezone around the world.
Wish us luck and thank you for your patience!
New in The RCSD Shop
Featured on the May 2023 Cover Photo merchandise is this remarkable photo by Jonathan Demery, who caught the exact right moment when these four young RC soaring enthusiasts let loose their glider over the bluffs at the Great Orme, Wales. Jonathan, who is a teacher at St. David’s College in nearby Llandudno, runs a unique Silent Flight program for students, of which these kids are members. Order the beautiful t-shirt or the mug today.
All items in the Shop are made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why they are fairly priced and it takes us a bit longer to deliver them to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction and waste. Everybody wins. Thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
Make Sure You Don’t Miss the New Issue
You really don’t want to miss the upcoming June, 2023 issue of the New RC Soaring Digest when it’s out — closer to the beginning of the month, this time. Make sure you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Post News or simply subscribe to our Groups.io mailing list. Please share the New RCSD with your friends — we would love to have them as readers, too.
That’s it for this month…now get out there and fly!
©2023 The New RC Soaring Digest Staff
Resources
- Alien: A Carbon Encounter of the Bird Kind by Pierre Rondel in the April, 2023 issue of the New RCSD. — “The new flying wing designed by Christophe Bourdon and manufactured in Ukraine by Anton Ovcharenko (OA Composites) is aptly named as the concept goes off the usual track…”
Read the previous article or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
