The Thirty Eighth issue of Air Sports International is with you. I have very consciously and deliberately reminded our readers of the fact that it is our 38th Issue that has now been put up on the net, in as many months, since January 1998.

Considering the upheaval in the dot com world this is no mean achievement, to have sustained a monthly magazine with the regularity that we have achieved.

Any magazine is an important tool for external and internal PR of any organisation. The same is true of Federation Aeronautique International (FAI). We need a magazine to highlight our achievements, provide a common platform for our members and use this medium for the dissemination of information. We have for many years used the print media. Initially for many many years the FAI had published an Annual Bulletin. It was in 1990 that a decision was taken to move away from the Bulletin format to the magazine format. That decision resulted in the emergence of "Air Sports International". For seven years we published the magazine as a tri-annual (three issues a year), in the printed format, a very well produced glossy, but we had to change. Changes in technology and the need to disseminate information faster and cheaper resulted in the decision to go digital.

From January 1998 we moved to the latest in technology and the newest in media - the Internet. The magazine was made into a monthly. The printed format was completely given up and we had Air Sports International being published in its present format.

Back issues of Air Sports International are there for our readers to see our range of coverage and our evolution. We are once again on the threshold of yet another landmark. The technology landmark, we now need to study what technologies to use ? How many of our readers are equipped to read the magazine on-line with the technology that we currently use ? The days of a simple HTML pages are over and we now move into Java scripts, Flash, ASP, SQL, WML, XML, etc. Terms that are alien to even better informed people than me. We all learn't the Internet and soon we will master the tools/languages that the Internet has now throw up.

This is just an advance note to our readers - watch out for technical changes in Air Sports International in the coming issues. This is not to scare you or to put you off but to advise you to keep you browsers and work-stations updated and get the latest software to enable you to get the best out of your web viewing. Air Sports International will be part of this technology update.

Happy Reading !

Atul Dev Editor-in-Chief & Publisher