Plane Sense and Perseverance

by Oleg Roud
(Windhoek, Namibia, Africa)

To be honest, writing was not always was my passion.

My first experience was when I tried to write some science-fiction while in school. It did not go well at all, so I abandoned writing for a while.

A few years later, when I was in the air force, my will to write came back again, and I wrote couple of short stories. I tried to published these, with the result being that I heard some very nasty words about my abilities to "destroy clean paper". So again, I left it, this time for a really long while.

Some ten years later, after moving to Namibia from Russia, I tried to write again. First I attempted to write a short non-fiction story about Yuiri Gagarin (the first man in the space). I sent it to a couple of South African magazines, but again, I heard many "nice" words about my abilities to write.

You might have thought I had given up by now, but as the saying goes, success happens when opportunity meets persistence.

I had begun working as a flight instructor in Namibia, and I realized that there was very little good study material available for small aeroplanes. If you looked for information on more advance aeroplanes, like the Beechcraft King Air or Cessna Caravan, then there were some decent study guides available, but for the smaller type's there was nothing. Not in my point of view anyway. The variety of aviation training books is huge, however none of them seemed to cover the aircraft technical information in depth. Some may argue, (and it is these ones that find it hard to spend US$20 to buy a book, while paying US$200 per hour to fly a US$100,000 aircraft, that might save their life), that when flying a Cessna 172 it is not important to know all the technical systems in detail, or that the systems are so simple a specific manual is superfluous. I do not agree at all, of course knowing minor details like the pressure rating of the auxiliary fuel pump may not be important, but knowing when and why this pump needs to be switched on during normal operations is of vital importance. It is this type of knowledge that will prevent the, still not uncommon, 'pilot-induced' engine failures.

Seeing this need for information in the light aircraft market, I decided to write a technical series for small aircraft. The series was aimed at assisting students with initial aircraft conversions or providing reference information for rated pilots, and is even useful to instructors providing training. Talking to friend of mine, Danielle Bruckert, I realised that both of us had similar ideas, and could work more effectively as a team. So, one day we decided to join forces and, after few months of writing, and several long months of editing work, the first book "Cessna 152 Training Manual" was seen in public.

Webmaster's note: see what Danielle has written about this self publishing experience.)

A few years has now passed, and the one manual has become the series initially planned, including the C172, C182 and C210, and a few more books are in our heads or in discussion to be written.

We publish and sell the books ourselves, and recently have put them online, although it is a slow process of getting them known to the international market.

Apart from the Training Manual series, I also write operating manuals under contract to some local aviation companies, which pays somewhat better as the manuals are written to order and you do not have to worryabout marketing. This type of work also suits my rather technical writing style.

Despite all the early criticism I am glad I have now found a niche, and that I didn't give up, and the feedback from the manuals is proof it was worth it.

The Cessna 210 – our latest in the type series will be available soon on Lulu.

See the manuals at Red Sky Ventures.