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Jared Yates
4663 Pittstown Road
Hickory, NC 28602
A Brief History of Beartracks
Back in 1995, Bob Barrows started publishing the Beartracks newsletter. Those early issues contained lots of crucial building information that expanded on the information in the plans. Bob consolidated the pertinent points from 1995 to 2001 into the bound Bearhawk Book that ships with plans sets today. The book is also available for $50 from Bob Barrows directly.The 2002, 2003, and 2004 issues were provided by Bob's friend Mike, and back issues are not available.
Starting in 2005, Mark Goldberg and his associate Justin Brown produced the Beartracks newsletter. They announced recently that 2011 would be their last year. The reasons for this decision included the low number of subscribers and the low number of contributors. Back issues are available here: http://bearhawkaircraft.com/bear-tracks/index.htm
Since we would hate to see the newsletter end, we've decided to give it a go. I called Bob Barrows, who said that while he would like to see the newsletter continue, he wasn't going to be able to do it on his own. He said that he would allow us to carry forth with the "Beartracks" name and his endorsement as long as he was able to approve the content before publication. That sounded like a fair arrangement to us, so here we are, in the newsletter business.
After lengthy discussions with fellow builders and newsletter subscribers, we've decided to make a few changes to the business model. First, Eric and Mark will provide engineering changes on their websites as previously announced. We'll archive service difficulties and make them available too.
Second, we're going to start offering a small stipend for contributors of feature articles. If we publish your previously unpublished article in the newsletter, we'll pay you $25 via Paypal. What does "previously unpublished"Â mean? It means that there is a substantial amount of content that hasn't been available in any other sources, such as the email groups. One example would be a detailed first-flight write-up. While you would have likely announced the first flight, we'll still consider your article to be "previously unpublished"Â if there is enough new information to provide value to your fellow subscribers. Our goal here is to encourage writers to send fresh content that isn't available anywhere else. The decision of which articles earn the stipend will be ours entirely, but we'll tell you one way or the other up front. We're also glad to run previously-published articles that are especially good, as long as you're willing to donate the articles.
We're going to make every effort to keep the production schedule as follows:
| Issue | Articles Due | Issues Available |
| Q1 | 3/15 | 4/1 |
| Q2 | 6/15 | 7/1 |
| Q3 | 9/15 | 10/1 |
| Q4 | 12/15 | 1/1 |
We will be later with Issue Q1 2012, due to the late changeover of publishers.
Builders are welcome to submit classified ads for the newsletter. For now we're going to provide these listings free of charge.
Finally, we're going to change the price structure going forward to more directly reflect our costs. The hard-copy print pricing and terms will remain the same for now. The price will be $18 per year, but back issues will not be available in print. As postage and print costs change in the coming years, we may re-evaluate this rate.
Electronic .pdf subscriptions (starting with 2012) will cost much less- formerly $16 per year and now just $8 per year. Individual issues are available at $2 each, and automatic subscription renewal is also available. Why would we reduce the price so much? First, it will provide an incentive for most readers to opt for the digital version. Postage and printing are expensive and time consuming, and we're glad to pass along the savings to you. Second, we suspect that the price reduction will result in an increase in the total number of subscribers. We believe that everyone who is flying, building, or even planning on building a Bearhawk should subscribe. Hopefully a lower price will help make this more of a reality.
Since Beartracks is the official newsletter of the Bearhawk and Bearhawk Patrol, all final editorial decisions for articles and ads rest with Bob Barrows.
We welcome your input and hope that you'll continue to subscribe! If you have any questions or suggestions, please send me an email (web@bearhawkstore.com) or call me at 828-308-1543.
Sincerely,
Jared Yates
Bearhawkstore.com
