[UK-CONTEST] GM4FDM (& Radcom)

[Ian White, G3SEK]

G3SJJ wrote:
>Three quarters of a page to say "RSGB IOTA 2002 Contest" really does 
>appear overboard, particularly when you know that over the years 
>constant pressure has been put on HFCC to reduce the allocation of 
>space, reduce the amount of wordage in reports and reduce the amount of 
>space taken up by contest listings. I personally had to fight very hard 
>at one stage against the strong suggestion that contest listings should 
>be reduced to show just the top ten because they were considered boring.

The two cases are not comparable.

The IOTA results are a 12-page pullout supplement, designed to be issued 
as a free-standing booklet for world-wide publication. The "three 
quarters of a page" is actually the front cover of that booklet. There 
is one page of paid advertising at the back, and all the rest is about 
the contest. It's really a prestige job - just what's needed to promote 
IOTA as a world-ranking contest.

Meanwhile, back in the main body of the magazine, I daresay Tim will be 
under just as much space pressure as ever.

As am I, but I don't resent the "waste of space" in the margins. Handled 
properly, it makes the whole thing easier to read. The big titles can 
also be an advantage, because they add some flexibility to the page 
layout. Articles and regular columns start out with as many words and 
illustrations as they need to tell the story, but they then have to be 
fitted into an exact number of pages. Until the illustrations are 
included, you can only guess how many words you "should" have written to 
fill the rest of the space. George Brown and I used to waste a lot of 
time every month on my two pages, trying to fill them exactly... and 
then George had all the other technical pages to do. Now that we have 
titles of variable size, it's going to be a lot easier - and the results 
will look better.

With the change to a smaller but more readable font, the number of words 
in my two-page spread is just the same as it would have been with the 
old layout.

The diagrams, on the other hand, are quite another story!


-- 
73 from Ian G3SEK         'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
                            Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek