(F)AQ
Contents
(Frequently) Asked Questions
Whats with the (F) in the Title?
Well rarely do FAQ's actually contain questions "frequently" asked. Its more of a place to put interesting stuff. So since most people *might* want to know, ill put them here. In reality though.. its just stuff i want to say or explain.
Why did you do this? Seems like alot of work.
Yes, it is alot of work. Radionerds was created for me to publish information about my experiments, hacks and general cool stuff with military gear. It quickly turned into a method to allow publishing large numbers military radio manuals. PS Magazine is a "Post Script" to the manuals (PS Magazine, Post Script get it?). So I started searching for the issues. I quickly found issues 1-229 at Virginia Commonwealth University, but they were presented as single page Jpegs. Kind of a pain to deal with if you want to just print the issue. Radionerds wants to make stuff useful for people to use, so we formatted everything in a way that makes them easy to use for normal people.
Where did you get all these issues?
Issues 1-229 were downloaded from Virginia Commonwealth Universities archive, (yes one page at a time) then bound into a PDF. Issues 230 - 445 are scanned from original books obtained from various sources, and issues 447 - current were provided from backups provided by LOGSA and the PS Magazine Team at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Roll Tide).
What resolution are your scans in?
Well there is a great deal of vitriol over the "proper" scanning resolution for "Archival" work. In full disclosure, I work for a global scanner/printer manufacturer and have a bit of experience in this area. Most archives are at 600 DPI. If you ask them "why" they use 600 as opposed to others 200,300,400,1200 etc, they simply say its what they have always done. Some will say its for "purity" of the image to get all the details. If that were the case why aren't they scanning at 1200 dpi, since scanners can do that now? The reality is that 600 is used, because when these "standards" were devised, that was the highest resolution available, so they still use it.
The issue here is that the higher resolution you use, the larger the file size. If you are expecting large amounts of data, it will be important to make good decisions with this.
The book scan we make are done at 400 dpi. This is used because it provides the best tradeoff between file size and clarity. The file size at 400dpi is ~25mb while 600 dpi is ~85 Mb, while the clarity is slight, and not noticeable by the naked eye at its natural scale (where its not "blown up" larger). At 600 dpi, you start to detect paper imperfections, printing dots, and creases. This is not desirable for documents that are designed to be used by the public at large.
We aren't really concerned about archival or historical purity since we own a physical copy of most of the magazines anyway.
Why aren't your scans separated by article, like other archives are?
Radionerds wants to make stuff easy for normal people. If you try to print an entire issue, where some pages are singles, others doubles, separated by articles, you will have more paper, and a mix of page sizes. By presenting the pages all the same size, in the same way they are presented in the magazine, its much easier to print one out and use it.