We have before you the third issue of Air Sports International, since we started publishing on the web.
This issue carries a very interesting article on microlights and their application in helping some birds to fly ! Almost like - "taking coal to Newcastle". What is of greater interest is that the organisation conducting this research contacted us after they read the first (January 1998) issue of Air Sports International on the web. We hope you would enjoy reading this unusual story. The organisers of this project are making every effort to publicise their efforts and look forward to receiving donations for their project. We also carry a well researched article on the first ever crossing of the English Channel in a balloon. Apart from the research that went in to the writing of the feature, the interesting thing is that this article was written for a mainline daily published simultaneously from New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and London. This just goes to show the interest the media has now begun to take in air sports activities. It has been a long and cold winter in the Northern hemisphere. All air sports except ballooning have been dormant. Ballooning has been very much in the news with the number of attempts made by balloonists to circumnavigate the globe. We hope to carry some interesting tales of these attempts in future issues of Air Sports International. We have other interesting stories in this issue. The report from down under - Australia - on the 11th World Hang Gliding Championship makes good reading. What will be of interest to our readers is the fact that this report was condensed from a mass of information already put up on the web site of the championship. Such web initiatives will certainly help to keep the air sports community informed of events the world over. It will also be a good trendsetter to get sites on the internet activated well before a championship and remain permanently after the event is over. I am glad to report that Air Sports International has been promptly listed by the world's most popular search engine - YAHOO ! With this listing and listings with all the other popular search engines, we will soon be 'visible' to the casual browser and thereafter they will make it a monthly habit to visit us. Some of our readers have come back to us with problems of not being able to view our site with their browsers. To all of them we have replied individually. To others we wish to say, please try and upgrade your browsers to the latest available version. We are not participating in the Netscape Vs Internet Explorer war nor do we wish to take sides. We test out our site using all the popular browsers so that there are no problems in it appearing the same to all our readers the world over. We may be sacrificing the use of some of the very latest in technology but we rather move slowly and carry everyone with us. We, no doubt, have already used frames and Java. These are easily viewed, without any distortions, with the current versions of the browsers. If we do move towards a more hi-tech direction while designing our netzine, we will make it a point to advise our readers accordingly. Till then enjoy our netzine and do write in. We look forward to your views and contributions
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