about the site ...

modelflight sets out to be a friendly, open website intended for the enjoyment and participation of all model flight enthusiasts of all levels of experience and any discipline within the model flight world. It is purely amateur and is not directly sponsored by any commercial interests, nor does it generate any revenue. Nevertheless, contributions from distributors, dealers, publishers or whoever are extremely welcome, as is news of new products.

The site is designed for easy browsing with access to every page from every page. Extensive use of thumbnail images means you only download the larger images that appeal to you! A completely new edition of the site goes to the web every month, with the new issue appearing on the last Saturday of the month preceding the cover date.

Every issue of  modelflight since its start is now available on-line from the archive which is accessible from the main drop-down navigation menu that is on every page. This is something I set up after encouragement and help from Gary Clemans-Gibbon, a reader who also happened to own an internet hosting company and who kindly provided the necessary webspace for several years. Webspace for the monthly issue and the archive is now provided by another modelflight reader, Andy Green, through his company Carmelina Data.

modelflight does not set out to be 'high-tech' - that's something best covered by the modelling press who have more easy access to the best brains in the business - but if you care to contribute something of a technical nature then I will be delighted to publish it on the site. By the same token, this is also the place where beginners are very welcome.

So, welcome to modelflight! Use the e-mail facility that appears frequently throughout the site to get in touch or to introduce yourself to the rest of us with a personal profile and join the fun!

about material for modelflight ...

Generally speaking, you can send your articles and pictures in any way you are confident with, but the following information sets out my preferences for those of you who might like some guidance.

I am happy to accept articles as large or as small as you may write them, but if they are fairly large I prefer to chop them up and put them up on the site over two or three issues, if necessary. I do not normally carry out any sub-editing but do cast my eye over material insofar as grammar and spelling is concerned and would edit a bit if I thought it might offend in any way!

I do prefer the article and pictures to be kept separate. I prefer to receive the article text as a Word document or even as an email and the pictures as separate image files rather than being embedded in the article text. Having said that, I can extract picture files from Word documents but it is a bit fiddly to do so and maintain reasonable image quality. It is sometimes best to send text and images over several emails to avoid any size limitations that might be imposed by service providers (more on this below).

My preferred image types are .jpg (or .jpeg) or .bmp and .tif files, except the latter two may be very large for you to send. My graphics program can handle most image formats and I convert them to .jpg before inserting them into my web pages. As far as image sizes are concerned, I like them big if the original digital image allows and prefer them to be in excess of 600 pixels wide if possible (but not enlarged by you to that size if the original image is smaller, as that loses a lot of definition). Somewhere around 1100 pixels wide (or bigger) is ideal as that allows me to crop to effectively zoom in on detail if I want to, or to simply size down to my standard large image size of 600 pixels wide for linking to the thumbnail images which I will also generate from the original images. I do not mind how large the image files might be and prefer .jpgs to have minimal or nil compression if possible, but will compress them myself to get the best combination of image quality and size for eventual uploading to the web.

When sending image files, it is wise to avoid sending more than about 10 MB at a time as some service providers impose a limit on email sizes. My service provider is not supposed to have a limit and they automatically zip large collections of images, but I have had one or two people who have had difficulties in sending emails larger than 10 MB and were of the view that the limitation was down to my service provider rather than theirs.

Above all, please do not let technical considerations put you off from sending material for modelflight! Your news, views, pictures and articles are always most welcome and there is nearly always a way to surmount any little technical difficulties that might arise! If in doubt, consult with me by email first.

Please note that if you submit material for modelflight it is assumed that you make no copyright claims on it unless you specifically state otherwise at the time of submission. Readers are free to use any material that appears on this site that carries no copyright notice, but a credit and link to modelflight and the original author or source is required.