Greeting loyal airmen.  The above picture is highly representative of what my spirit went through this past week and is only now recovering.  After having posted one of our most popular Log Entries last week (and thanks to all of you to took the time to write and tell us how much you liked it), I was flying pretty high.  Then I received a letter from one of our Airship 27 Prod. writers, Andrew Salmon, telling me there was a major printing mistake in our recently released Captain Hazzard # 4 – The Cavemen of New York.  Somehow, through some totally weird voodoo glitch in our computer programs, the text for page 182 was swapped around for the text on page 185 and vice versa!!! And none of us caught it!  Your old Air Chief takes full blame here for not sitting down and re-reading the entire book when it was printed.  After having spent months with the script, and then seen multiple pdf versions as Rob put it together, I was lazy and although I did look through the book, I did not actual read it.  And so was done in!  Crash and burn big time.

Andrew was set to write a review for Amazon and asked me how he should proceed.  As sick as this entire affair made me, I realized, in complete deference to all you loyal airmen (& and our readers) we simply could not ignore this.  That's like ignoring an elephant standing in the middle of one's parlor.  Nope, we would not do that ever.  We value all of you and your support too much.  So I asked Andrew to write his review as planned and add an epilogue explaining the printing error.  In the meantime, Andew has also volunteered to go through the entire book one more time and he and Rob are going to assembe an entire new pdf for our publisher, who stands ready to delete the corrupt old files for these new ones.  In the meantime I wish to make this up for all of you who have already bought this book.  Simply write to me and tell me the last word in the novel to confirm you do own the book.  I will in turn digitally send you (free of charge) a copy of the clean pdf files so that you can at least have a clean version in digital format.

By the start of next week, those bad files will be history and people buying the book will get clean copies. All of us involved with Airship 27 Prod. and Cornerstone Book Publishers are truly sorry for this snafu.  It is never our intention to produce anything but the highest quality books.  Granted, this is an imperfect world and you will never ever see a book free of a single typo or mispelling etc.  It's impossible.  But that does not excuse them either.  After several days of discussing this situation, all of us decided something concrete had to be done to prevent any reoccurences.  To that end we recruited a communication professional (and long time loyal airmen) John Bruening to assume the role of our Official Proof Reader.  John is a great guy and dedicated typo hunter/destroyer. When we offered him the job, he responded immediately, rolling up his sleeves ready to charge out of the gate at once to tackle his new assignment.  All of us feel lots more confident with John added to the team.  In a way, this negavtive event was the inspiration for us to work harder and make our process even better.

Finally, should any of you ever pick up an Airship 27 Prod. title and find a similar error, never hesitate to inform of us such.  Again, none of us here claim perfection and your aid and support are always valued. 

                              Kristi  – Valerie – Chelsea –  Alex – Cora
On a much happier note, while out in Colorado for Thanksgiving, Valerie took lots and lots of pictures.  One of the joys of the trip was in bringing our two Maine based grand kids, Kristi & Chelsea (along with their mom, our daughter Michelles) so that they could at long last meet their Colorado cousins, Alex and Cora.  The wonderful picture above was taken just prior to all of them sitting down to a super Thanksgiving meal.  Valerie's smile still hasn't left her face.  It was a super trip and the cousins totally enjoyed each others company.  The greatest gift God gives all of us is family.

Meanwhile, with Turkey Day behind us, life at Hangar 27 is one frantic beehive of activity.  Val and I only have a few weeks before we fly back to Colorado for Christmas.  And a hundred and one things to do before then.  Its going to drive us crazy, but hey, it's a fun crazy.  Stay tuned…and sane.

Ron – Over & Out