The Incomplete Rotorcraft Catalogue; From countries behind former Iron Curtain

I owe you a bit more of the introduction. My name is Marcin Ruszkowski and I am listed as a co-author of this catalogue. Below is little personal note:

I came across Mr Leonid's catalogue in 2013. As an all rotorcraft enthusiast, design engineer and certified helicopter mechanic I was really excited to get a big heavy book that covers hundreds of small rotorcraft and helicopters in particular. The only thing I was not happy about when I was reading the catalogue was the language - the edition I purchased was the Polish one. As it turned out in an e-mail correspondence with Leonid, it was translated by another person to Polish (Leonid writes his books in Ukrainian and Russian), but unfortunately it happened to be often incorrect. Once I wrote an e-mail to Leonid: "Hey, why don't you publish your book in English - you then shall get a wider audience". Well… making the long story short, I ended up translating his catalogue. It wasn't and still isn't a commercial endeavour for me - It was part of my hobby in my spare time, so it has taken years to complete. I also focused on passing the technical information in a simple way so no-one speaking English will have problems understanding it. What you are able to see now is a new, refreshed, refined English version of the catalogue which Mr Leonid used to publish for many years now. I guess it will be not a cheap one as it usually was a low volume printed book - but it is like a Bugatti Veyron in the world of books - for those who want specific and rare knowledge put on paper it is worth a lot.

Best regards,
Marcin Ruszkowski​
 
That reminds me of an offer from Eric Fradet. Eric is/was the technical director for the Federation Francais du Parachutisme and he wrote a 600 page manual about modern parachutes (up to 2013 and maybe even more recently as he often updates his manual electronically). Eric invited me to proof-read the French-language original and then offered me the opportunity to translate the manual into English. At the time, I was too busy to start translating a book that long.
Would it be worth my time now that I am semi-retired from skydiving?
 
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riggerrob said:
That reminds me of a n offer from Eric Fradet. Eric is/was the technical director for the Federation Francais du Parachutisme and he wrote a 600 page manual about modern parachutes (up to 2013 and maybe even more recently as he often updates his manual electronically). Eric invited me to proof-read the French-language original and then offered me the opportunity to translate the manual into English. At the time, I was too busy to start translating a book that long.
Would it be worth my time now that I am semi-retired from skydiving?
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The answer is: it depends.

If you consider to do it for money, then I would say: no. Such catalogues/manuals are the publications targeted to rather narrow audience, so I guess there would not be a real profit. Only really well known people in particular niche industry could sell their books in a big enough number to earn some money. However, this is only my opinion, because…

… the other option is to do it for fun, because it is your passion or just for (in this case) no-french speaking readers (like me) and for the future generations and to make a kind of a snap-shot in a form of a paper book. For such enthusiasts - as I am - it would be a great thing - I in particular am attracted mainly by the rotary wing aircraft and I collect many publications or pieces of information even if it is not in my language or in English - but it makes it little usable for me - translation is hard if you do know the language. However if there is an author who is able to write in English or organize the translation of his book to English, then it helps spread the information further, to people like myself. This is so because English became pretty mush international language - as this forum is kind-of proving.

Also you must know that it takes quite a bit of time - I was translating this one in the evenings as I do have my day job and it lasted couple of years in this scenario - couple of hundreds of evenings. In my case however I needed to properly understand the details of particular construction and the sense of original book (Russian) as the Polish version I could read often mistaken it in my opinion. Often I made an on-line search of the rotorcraft I was translating - several time new information was gathered in this way.

If you have some time, I would go for it.
 
persil said:
Have you already ordered your copy?
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I haven't, but it really looks like a fantastic book, and I'll definitely consider a purchase!
Would you say shipping costs are reasonable enough? (I live in France).
 

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