Founder Jim Thorn hard at work with his trusty typewriter, circa early 1980s, in the three metre by five metre AA office in Manly.

Thirty years in publishing, for a small company of never more than half-a-dozen employees, is a great little achievement. Publishing and aviation are both fickle, demanding industries, so we're really pleased with this issue to be able to celebrate 30 years of Australian Aviation.

Since it's inception AA has been and remains the best selling aviation magazine in Australia (and a strong seller in New Zealand too). For most of that time under the stewardship of Jim Thorn and more recently with the Phantom Media crew, we at AA have strived to produce a high quality magazine that reports on the complete aviation and defence aerospace industry in Australia and more broadly round the world, in a high quality magazine featuring knowledgeable and passionate writers, great photos and high quality production values. For 30 years that same basic format has worked and worked well, and we have enjoyed great loyalty from our broad band of readers.

For my part, I've been with AA for ‘only' half of its 30 year life, but all but 74 of its 242 issues. It's a privilege working here, and I thank Jim for his stewardship of me in my early days and I want to recognise and thank the current team of business development manager Lee-Anne Simm, deputy editor Andrew McLaughlin, photographer Paul Sadler and circulation manager Danielle Cregan for making AA a fun place to work, and for their vital contributions in making the magazine what it is.

Just as importantly thanks to all our loyal readers, not a few of you who have been reading for 30 years, for all your support and feedback.

We wanted to mark 30 years of AA with a few pages in this anniversary issue, giving space to founding editor Jim Thorn and some of our key regular writers to recount their experiences of working on, and for, AA.

It's important to mark this anniversary, and I hope you find Jim's and our writers' reflections of interest. But apart from these few pages it's important that AA continues on with the work of providing news, features and analysis that make it the magazine it is today.

Where will AA be in another 30 years? Hard to say! But we're looking forward to the challenges and opportunities of the future, and I can guarantee AA will be here for many years to come.

Gerard Frawley
Managing Editor

(above) AA pitches its caravan at a Schofields Airshow in 1979. (below) AA staff circa 1997.

(above) Gerard Frawley with long time senior writer and book author Stewart Wilson.

Long time AA contributor Norman Lee (above) and ‘Air Safety’ columnist and Air Disaster author Mac Job (below).

Warbirds’ Dave Prossor at Avalon ’07 (above) and an older image of Traffic’s Gordon Reid.

(above) Deputy Editor Andrew McLaughlin at the launch of his Hornets Down Under book. (below) Current AA team: Bruce McLaughlin, Andrew McLaughlin, Paul Sadler, Gerard Frawley, Lee-Anne Simm and Danielle Cregan after Avalon 07.

1977 AND THE WAY WE WERE – JIM THORN

When Gerard Frawley rang me to ask whether or not I was interested in penning something on the magazine's early days it took two, maybe two and a half seconds to say yes!

I love history and there is no better history, in a real sense, than that which one lives through. September 1977 seems a long time ago, more than half my life in fact, and in that time so much has changed both locally and internationally.

At home, we have a totally de-regulated airline environment with more uplift in a month than we had for all of a year back then. Internationally a similar situation existed albeit at the expense of so many of the industry's pioneers. The Cold War ended with a win for the good guys (thank heavens!) though the mooted peace dividend was illusionary as a ‘new' foe seemingly from the Dark Ages makes its evil presence felt far and wide. Military aircraft nowadays seem to take forever to bring to operational status and at extraordinary cost and often don't work as advertised when they do arrive at the front line. Fortunately their weapons do and the latest generation of smarts provide levels of precision capability undreamt of even back in the seventies.

So how did AA begin? Actually it began life as Australian Aviation & Defence Review and as an annual. Though my day job was in another field outside aviation, all things aeronautical were my biggest interests since childhood. By the mid seventies I was entering my latter twenties and an avid reader of Major Peter Young's excellent Pacific Defence Reporter as well as a number of other aviation mags of the era. Already involved in publishing, the idea of a quality annual on all things Australian aviation came to me one night in bed. Yes, just like in the movies!

I did the usual feasibility study that we would on any new magazine, although many of my major business decisions over the decades have been based on ‘gut instinct', and I had a clear sense that we could make a go of an aviation publication. My then wife Margaret and I enlisted the support of the printer and the newsagent distributor and so were able to start what is now AA on a shoestring, but if it failed, well, there went the house!

At the time the only local aviation magazine was, I felt, of exceptionally poor quality yet had an audited circulation of 4500 copies, all I really needed to break even. This gave me great confidence as I knew our level of quality would be far superior. Sometimes I have been wrong but on this occasion it all turned out better than hoped with above expected sales. We were in business. That recap is a bit like describing the history of the Second World War as ‘something that started in 1939 and ended in 1945', but it does give a flavour to the background of the magazine.

Remarkably, as the first edition of AADR was going to press I really became concerned that there would be nothing to put in next year's edition! Maybe I had already written about all there was to report on in the foreseeable future and there was nothing more to cover? But to be honest not continuing on that basis would have to be one of my dumbest moments, as there never was an issue of AA at any time that didn't have articles dropped due lack of space. The second annual in 1978 in fact turned out to be a third larger than its forebear and yes, articles were dropped from it.

Indeed the late 1970s provided much to report on. In the airline world Australia's Two Airline Policy was in its heyday, stifling innovation, made even more absurd by the growing number of jets and the public's growing disdain for parallel scheduling and inflexible and expensive fares. The Fokker Friendship had transformed regional aviation though the obvious need for smaller more efficient propliners wasn't to be realised for almost another decade. TAA was evaluating the brand new Airbus A300 widebody twinjet, while Boeing was still contemplating what to do in response as were rivals Lockheed and Douglas. The latter two ultimately decided to do nothing while Boeing launched the 757 and 767 together in mid 1978 as a response to the growing threat from Europe. Qantas was in the final stages of phasing out 707 operations and looking to become an all 747 airline, something that would end in tears as recession inevitably approached.

One interesting memory I have of that time was seeing the first Embraer Bandeirantes imported into Australia in their new Masling liveries at KSA and wondering how they would be accepted. At the time the Brazilian government was already stating to anyone who would listen that Embraer was to be taken seriously and was the beginning of something big. Meanwhile, at home we were still arguing about what colour to paint the Nomad demonstrator. Sad. Very sad.

Much was also happening in the military scene. In that first annual we reported in-depth on the RAAF Mirage, Aermacchi jet trainer and Caribou replacement programs. You've gotta laugh, right? The Mirage was ultimately, more than half a decade later, replaced by what in 1977 was a paper aeroplane, while the Macchi replacement didn't enter service until some 20 years later. As for the venerable Caribou, the program still breathes and, ironically, seems likely to be replaced by the C-27J, a modernised development of the  Aeritalia G.222, which back in the late 1970s was seen as a Caribou replacement contender. The more things change the more they stay the same!

One noted advertiser in the first AADR was British Aerospace with its then much derided Sea Harrier. At the time the RAN was debating whether to replace HMAS Melbourne with another large fixed-wing aircraft carrier or to invest in a smaller platform suitable for the new navalised Sea Harrier. Navy was also looking to replace its Daring class destroyers and River class frigates and naval helicopters loomed large on the horizon as both these types would carry helicopters. In retrospect, it has always been this writer's humble view that the helo we should have ordered for the FFGs and later the Anzacs was the tough little battle proven Westland Lynx. Instead we purchased the hugely expensive Seahawks, which didn't formally enter formal service until the final of six FFGs had been in the water half a decade. And the less said about the ongoing Super Seasprite debacle the better. 

The real bright spot, and the major difference between the eras, was General Aviation. Go to Bankstown, Archerfield or Moorabbin in the late 1970s and you had to virtually stand in line for your flying lesson. The atmosphere at all of our GA airports was electric with a veritable air force of lighties constantly working the circuit. GA was booming both here and overseas and the US factories were churning out as many as 17,000 airframes a year against less than a fifth of that today!

I remember through the early years of the magazine attending new GA model launches every few months. Airtests of new types came thick and fast and I got to fly in a wide variety of types that I only previously dreamt of. To see what happened to the GA environment through the 1980s and '90s is tragic and, quite honestly, heart breaking. The only bright spot is the recent resurgence of grass roots aviation through recreational and light sport aircraft, a field largely free of CASA's never ending bureaucracy.

From its humble beginnings AA grew rapidly and went quarterly from late 1979, bimonthly in 1985 (the same year we relocated to Canberra) and ‘monthly' from 1990. In all those years it has always been the largest selling aviation magazine in the region and with the credibility of an audited circulation to boot. We also ventured into book production from 1987 and in the following decade and a half produced a total of 60 titles. And all this came from a small group of less than half a dozen people, for the most part from what was a converted garage in suburban Canberra operating on a very modest budget.

Then in the mid-late nineties AA was also one of the first magazines in the world to launch a website.

I am indeed very proud of what AA was and what it became. I am also very proud of something else and that's that when I researched for this story, all the research data I needed was readily at hand via the many books we had published.

Australia's entire aviation history is now professionally documented at both civil and military levels thanks to the excellent efforts over the years of such writers as Stewart Wilson, Macarthur Job, Eric Allen, Steve Eather and more latterly Gerard Frawley. In fact one of my current volunteer jobs is working with the research centre in the Online Gallery at the Australian War Memorial and many of the books that AA has produced are used constantly as reference material when we are helping people research their family histories. All concerned can take that as a gold plated compliment.

Whether it was accurately documenting the past or reporting on the present and perhaps surmising the future, your aviation magazine has always been the one to beat. May it always remain so.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Of all the things that have changed these past 30 years the technology used to put AA together has advanced even more profoundly than that found in aviation.
I will run you through how it was done in 1977 and you can be the judge.

Each article was written on a standard typewriter. Mine was a cherished plastic portable. Typing mistakes were removed laboriously (well, kinda sorta) via Tippex. One positive of this was that writers of the era certainly quickly learnt to spell correctly and write concisely as removing errors was a tedious and boring task. You then sent the typed copy to the printery's typesetting division to be retyped into their first generation computers (a big deal in those days, vast forbidding looking machines occupying refrigerated rooms and with the firepower of today's mobile phone) by typesetters who worked in a mysterious language known only to them. This returned several days later in the form of photocopied galleys formatted to the size you required. Naturally the photocopy paper was that awful heat sensitive stuff, not real paper that was easier to read and work with.

From here I would proof read the galleys, marking up the plethora of literals. The theory was that these would return and be cleansed of errors. But the trouble was that in most cases the typesetters would see a single error in a paragraph and retype the entire para as it was often too complex to change just one word. Mostly this would fix the original error but create another one that you didn't always pick up or didn't then have time to correct. Great!

Finally the clean galley proofs would be (and I am for real here) hand cut with scissors and overlaid onto preprinted dummies of your magazine page with the text border and column areas marked by thin light blue lines. You then set up the layout in this way leaving space for pics and naturally the title. Letraset was in its infancy and this helped make up some interesting titles. And yes, all this was affixed to the magazine pages using Clag glue.

To accompany each article you enclosed the pics with measurements and their captions with each pic and cap marked in alphabetical order. To make it easier it was ops normal to photocopy the picture and cut a portion of the photocopied pic out to glue into the designated space in the layout for identification purposes. At times some of the people at the printery could be well, incredibly dumb, and think that was what you wanted and the final proof would come back with a portion of a wing, canopy or person's head there instead of the real thing. Incredible!

When all this was done it was time to do the pagination where you allocated all the articles, ads and whatnot to fill the exact number of pages you had available and in precise order. This was always a mental challenge of extreme proportions, but the best thing about producing an annual was that you only had to do one pagination each year.

All this took weeks and much patience and it was a good idea to visit the printery and work with the compositor in the final stages to ensure he was on the same page as you regarding the ultimate feel and look of each layout. I have got to say, though, that these were great times and one of the best things about being involved with AA was doing all this by hand. It never seemed the same when it was fully computerised from the mid nineties and though it was a zillion times faster and more exact it lacked that hands on feel of using a biro, ruler and doing all those measurements by hand. Then again, maybe I'm just old fashioned.

The end product was not that different to today except that now, via then undreamt of printing technology advances, we have affordable full colour, greater paper choices and news of course is much more current as production times have come down from weeks to days and days to hours. Then again, the cost of a bottle of Clag, my little portable, some Tippex, a ruler and a blue biro certainly left me with a lot of change versus the later era of having to buy then expensive computers and software, go to training courses that left you a major in endemic confusion and then upgrade the lot just three or four years later when it was deemed ‘obsolete'.

I am indeed fortunate to have experienced it all first hand.

AA WRITERS
While Jim Thorn was the founder and lifeblood of AA through until his retirement in March 2005, AA's stable of writers have been a critical element of the magazine's success. We asked some of the current team of writers to write about their experiences working with the magazine.

ERIC ALLEN – I initially met Jim Thorn in 1979 at his Brookvale office as I needed a missing copy of his annual Australian Aviation & Defence Review. I explained my interest in aviation and mentioned my collection of colour slides and black and white negatives accumulated during a misspent youth spent around airfields.

My first contribution consisted of photographs in issue No 6 in March 1980 followed soon after by my first article. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to pursue an interest and I have derived great satisfaction seeing the magazine prosper from an annual to eventually 11 issues per year. I was somewhat sceptical of the merits of Jim's move from his next office at lovely beachside Manly to the ultimate location at Fyshwick. However, in retrospect, Jim's judgement was correct.

One highlight was my visit to the aircraft carrier USS Midway at sea off the NSW coast. When Jim asked what helicopter was used for my transportation he was slightly peeved when I told him it was an arrested landing and catapult takeoff in a Grumman Greyhound. It was something Jim had been longing for. Thank you for the opportunity Jim!

With the magazine's change of ownership, Gerard and his colleagues have continued to develop the publication in a convincing manner. With aviation being such a stimulating and exciting industry, the next 30 years are sure to be full of advancement and interest.

TONY ARBON – I joined the AA team during 1985 and my first ‘Register Review' column appeared in the September issue of that year. Of course my interest in aviation started long before that – I recall being fascinated by DC-3s, Bristol Freighters and DH Herons flying over my school in the UK on approach to my local airport.

I emigrated to Australia during 1973 and immediately became interested in the local aviation scene, later expanding my interest to New Zealand, PNG and the Pacific Islands. I have travelled extensively around Australia, poking my nose into hangars, pointing my camera lens at all sorts of different aircraft and meeting many interesting people. People that have opened their hangars, photo albums, private records and hearts to me. People that have positioned their aircraft in the best spot for a photo or have just talked about their experiences and their aircraft to me. People that have helped me with information and have pointed me in the right direction for more information to bring the readers of AA the most interesting column that I can produce.

The Australian aircraft industry is one of the most vibrant in the world and I make no apologies for supporting it in my writing. Thank you to companies like Qantas, Jabiru Aircraft and Kavanagh Balloons, the management and staff at airports such as Bankstown, Archerfield and Ayers Rock, and hundreds of individual pilots, engineers and enthusiasts around Australia for helping me compile my column over the last 22 years.

My wife, Bonnie (who contributes AA's annual ‘Helicopter Operators Directory'), and my family also deserve thanks for enduring my ‘plane talk' for so long without complaint!

MACARTHUR JOB – My association with AA came about by chance. A few months after I left the editorial chair of the Department of Civil Aviation's ‘Crash Comic' (aka the Aviation Safety Digest) to become deputy editor of the then iconic Aircraft magazine, I was at Sydney's Schofields covering the 1978 airshow there.

At the time, Jim Thorn had asked the Air Tourer Association for a piece on Henry Millicer and the unhappy demise of Victa aircraft production. Talking to a prominent member, I learnt the article was in difficulty because of a looming deadline, and he asked me, “Will you do it?”

So it was that I wrote my first contribution to the then quarterly Australian Aviation & Defence Review. Another piece in the next issue was on the rapidly growing ultralight aircraft movement. But the next year, drawing on my own chequered experience, and what I had seen in 14 years with DCA, I began a series of fictional ‘learning the hard way' air safety yarns, all based on actual events, which ran under the masthead ‘Pilot Error'.

One landed me in strife, when a very senior retired chief pilot thought he recognised his own organisation in the story, demanded to know “where did you get it”, and threatened me with “trouble” if I persisted!

Not long after this, having been promoted to the editorship of Aircraft, I was solemnly told by Herald and Weekly Times executives that in my now “exalted” position, I could no longer “wear two hats”. So my efforts for AA had to cease until I went ‘freelance', resuming in 1984 with a new regular series that AA still calls ‘Air Safety'.

DAVE PROSSOR – Write for AA? The year was 1983. I had just completed a stint as the founding editor of Rag & Tube, the magazine of the Antique Aeroplane Association. Indeed I did most of the researching, writing, typing and production of R&T between 1976 and 1983.

Then I got a call from Jim Thorn. Would I be interested in doing a column in AA, about warbirds, which were then starting to take off?

Would I ever! Jim said ‘ok, can you have your copy to me by Thursday'? That was Monday night but Jim got the copy on time! It was published in the September 1983 issue of AA. 

I had joined the deadlines treadmill!

Over the years we went from mailed typed submissions, to PCs with 5 ¼in discs, then 3½in discs in the mail, to emailed copy. Many big technical changes in a very few years.

The main drive of the column has been to be a news clearing house on warbirds, antique aircraft and aircraft museums in Australia. Along the way I have been able to open a few otherwise closed doors and meet a few characters.

Every magazine has to change with time or die. Jim talked about possible new columns. I submitted a second column, one based on issues that I saw as a flight instructor. That was first printed in the November 2000 issue of AA

Both Warbirds & Right Hand Seat continue today.

GEOFFREY THOMAS – When I think of when I first saw AA I shudder as it so quickly dates me. Yes I still have the first issue amongst my massive library of magazines. Who was this chap Jim Thorn? What would he know? Well he knew a hell of a lot and was never afraid to say so and I liked that, as it was a reflection of myself. So Jim and I would time and again be in hot water on the same issues. We were both passionate about our industry and the destructive interference of some politicians and carpetbaggers.

With Jim at the helm there was probably no room for another controversial writer and I doubt Jim had a big enough legal budget for us both. With Jim's retirement,
I snapped up the opportunity to write both in the general pages of the magazine and the Contrails back page which has enabled me to develop think tank pieces to possibly develop new lines of thought or put the correct perspective on issues where the lay media have run with popularist lines. Today the magazine is clearly one of the world's best – passion for accuracy and fairness yet never afraid to tackle the hard issues and never afraid to speaks its mind. It's an honour to be part of the team.

OWEN ZUPP – Not long after losing my job at Ansett Australia I began pursuing my passion, writing. Admittedly, I mainly wrote about aeroplanes, aviation, air forces and astronauts, but it was still a different approach. I wrote for association journals and historical magazines and relished the new challenge. Soon after, Robert Corben at Hawker Pacific suggested that I ought to speak to the team at Australian Aviation.

Two years later, I am having a terrific time researching all manner of aviation topics for Gerard Frawley and his team. I've had the opportunity to speak with industry veterans like Macarthur Job and Max Langshaw, flown new Australian designed synthetic trainers and visited airshows from Avalon to Duxford. For someone who loves aviation and writing, it's the perfect mix. The highlight, and greatest shock, of my time at AA was winning the National Aviation Press Club's “Aviation Technical Story of the Year” award in 2006 for my article on ADS-B.

Happy 30th birthday Australian Aviation, it's been great. I look forward to celebrating many more years with you.