Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Ugh

Well friends it happens, you write enough and eventually you offend somebody you like.
Glen Mallory dropped a note the other day, apparently he'd seen my VSCA post (which I'd actually forgotten about) and was hurt. I took a look back and apparently " Glen Mallory has the best article in the whole issue" didn't balance "too bad the pictures suck". Yeah, I was probably overly harsh on that one.

Glen wrote a nice note explaining that the pics that left his camera were better than those that were printed and his captions got deleted. I'll take him at face value, everything he's ever said to be before has been spot on. That still leads back to those who publish the VSCA mag as either having low standards or being a bit..... I can't come up with a word other than inept and thats a fairly harsh word but it'll have to do. If you're insulted by "inept" think up a better word and substitute it.

Anyway, Glen did mention that with proper jetting my Tigre should be safe even in warmer temps, I asked for clarification on that, we'll see what he comes back with.
At the risk of delugeing him I've got questions about the points on my wankel Panther, we'll see.

The snow is gone, the grass is green, the birds are chirping, the snowmobiles have been put to sleep for the summer. The motorcycles are awaiting parts, I ordered them a week ago yesterday, they shipped today. I'm not happy with the vendor, I've emailed them with my complaint. We'll see what they do. If nothing good happens I'll let you know and you can avoid them.

-Curt

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

VSCA?

Is anybody else in the VSCA? What do you think of it?
It seems like in the last couple years the quality of the VSCA magazine has plummeted. I'm thinking back to the end of the Charles Pluddmann (oh lord forgive me for butchering his name) administration when the pictures were very high quality though black and white. Then the crooks bought it and things got colorfull and exciting and then missing entirely.
I'll give the new crowd credit the magazine comes out reliably. Here its the first of April and the March issue has just arrived but thats okay, it got here...
Still the quality of the images is generally pretty poor the stories are at best lightweight and the copy editing (for spelling and typos) is terrible. In the latest issue the title for one story reads "Eagle River Vintage Wold Championship". Not to mention that they've run the Widowmakers article AGAIN.
I like the Widowmakers article, the thing is I've read it. I read it once on Ev Regal's website, again in the VSCA magazine, again in the VSCA magazine and now a THIRD TIME in the VSCA magazine...
Glen Mallory has the best article in the whole issue, too bad the pictures suck. If I didn't know what I was looking at I'd be hard pressed to figure it out. Its not the angle or lighting its the low quality digital photograph. The publishers needed to send Glen a disposable FILM camera and not accept the digital pictures that were sent. I'm all for digital pictures on websites but they are generally NOT acceptable for print. To make a good print picture you need at LEAST 5 megapixels, nothing less cuts it.

Anyway consider that I'm being generally postive here, Glen's article is good. Theres a Cheetah build article thats totally lightweight but interesting, the Widowmakers and of course everything else is show coverage... This is an improvement over previous issues where it was basically ALL show coverage...
I dunno, I've been thinking I'd let my membership lapse, but this issue shows promise. I hate to write a critical note to the VSCA people, after all what have I ever written to go in there? Still if they could improve just a bit...