VMARS manuals download

[Mike Kelly]

The VMARS manuals are now easier to access. The old VMARS system was messy , a download code was required , you applied for permission to obtain the manual and they sent you a code or something.


Many manuals available for download:
http://www.vmarsmanuals.co.uk/archive/files_index.htm



One 19 set example:
http://www.vmarsmanuals.co.uk/archiv..._Equipment.pdf


WS22 installation in jeeps or cars 5 cwt .
http://www.vmarsmanuals.co.uk/archiv...rucks_5cwt.pdf

[Bruce MacMillan]

VMARS manuals have always been readily available for download. The only docs that were controlled were the Clansman manuals due to copyright.
Are you maybe thinking of the Wireless Set 19 (Royal Signals) Group?

[Mike Kelly]

Originally Posted by Bruce MacMillan

VMARS manuals have always been readily available for download. The only docs that were controlled were the Clansman manuals due to copyright.
Are you maybe thinking of the Wireless Set 19 (Royal Signals) Group?

Yes, sorry, it was the Royal Signals museum or whatever . Used to be terribly awkward , you asked for a manual download and they got back to you when they felt like it.

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

Yes, sorry, it was the Royal Signals museum or whatever . Used to be terribly awkward , you asked for a manual download and they got back to you when they felt like it.

Still terribly awkward, I'm afraid (and for the same reason: our little "friend" the manual pirate and his/their helpers, plus the Chinese).

Alister Mitchell (who did a lot of the scanning and PDF production) is no longer with us. I have a full time job and scan what I can, when I can, but run Macs which are not suited to the production process, so Keith gets to do most of the cleanup and PDF production. We've also had endless fun & games involving the "Canadian Pharmacy" spammers using GoDaddy for redirection that leads to the site getting blocked by Google (and the email forwarding blocked by Spamcop), both of which were outside our control.

The somewhat Byzantine rules were there to stop the piracy attempts, and evolved over time (You used to be able to download documents and then request the passwords - until some sites in China took to downloading the entire archive every week and cost us a fortune (relatively) in excess bandwidth charges, likewise our little chum "Franz the Schwanze" and friends with his Russian PDF password cracking tool (Pirated! As he was too cheap to buy an official "legitimate" copy, as we discovered when we upgraded to AES encryption with random passwords and spotted him asking if anyone had a "hacked" copy of the password cracking tool they could send him.)

I've spent a lot of time, effort, and actual money on the manual archive, as have other people. It's a free service because when the WW2 kit was being sold off as surplus the documentation was still classified and a lot of stuff that should have been preserved (or used as-is) was stripped for "useful" parts and the rest discarded. We had the opportunity to do something about it, it was an interesting project, so we did it. We're careful about not including other people's work in the archive - and it's surprising (not to mention depressing) how much stuff we get "offered" with various different copyright notices embedded in it.)

Anyway, rant over. It's there if you need it and don't mind a bit of "hoop jumping"; right now I'm going to open a beer and put my feet up for a bit.

Chris.

[David Dunlop]

For what it is worth, Chris, I have found the imaging, cleanup, scanning process on your site excellent, compared to a number of others on the Internet.


David

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

For what it is worth, Chris, I have found the imaging, cleanup, scanning process on your site excellent, compared to a number of others on the Internet.


David

If the original is poor quality there's only so much you can do with it. I have manuals ("Notes for RAC Wireless Instructors 1947" springs to mind) that was mimeographed with poor quality ink (faded to grey) on low grade paper (oxidised to brown) and the only thing to do with it is retype it (very carefully, because some parts are virtually unreadable by the Mk.1 eyeball) and probably re-set it as A4 because the original is foolscap (13"x8").

Early photocopies are a disaster area for images.

Post-WW2 manuals can be horrendous: they used up all the decent paper, so the 1948 training materials (hand-mimeoed by bored National Service conscripts who didn't really know what they were doing) have to be seen to be believed - I've got "Trade Training" handouts that were inked in by hand where the duplicating faded out due to too little (or too much, which is another failure mode) ink being fed. Those will need to be re-typed.

...as will the "samizdat" copies of WW1 R.E.Signal Service manuals, though I may just scan them as-is because the hand lettering is a tribute to the officer(s) who couldn't get printed copies!

I have a large backlog of scanning, mainly due to $Dayjob and ill health, but the current project is Clansman Installation manuals for the Land Rover and its variants - which at least will whiz through the scanner after I get the staples out.

Best regards,
Chris. Nearly midnight and I'm on-call all week.