This report covers the 6 issues of the 59th year of our Tankette magazine.
As ever there are some thanks I must give. To Paul Gandy, Paul Middleton and Dick Harley for assisting me by proof-reading each issue once I have put it together and before I send it off to our printers, Edson Print, who do a consistent and good value job in producing our printed copies. Thanks also to Paul Middleton who looks after Tankette distribution for us. I also continue to create an electronic pdf file of each issue of Tankette, which I pass on to John Paulding so he can post onto our MAFVA.com website for our Digital subscribers. Also my thanks to John Woolford for providing us with such great covers.
Over the year I have been able to continue to include the Members Models feature in each issue, highlighting some of the ongoing work of our members. While I have managed to keep it going for every issue, I still welcome additional submissions from our wider membership, so share what they are working on. I have also been supported by the regular contributions from Dick Harley, David Fletcher, Andy Lang and book reviews from John Ham. I addition to our more regular contributors, we have been lucky enough to get an ever wider variety thanks to some newer names who are adding additional value for our members. Coupled with regular news and book reviews, I try and feature detail for armour modellers which goes beyond what you find in the wider modelling press.
As we move on to volume 60 in 2025 it will be my 8th year as editor and will also mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of MAFVA. At the same time, we have reached the 80th anniversary of both VE and VJ Days. I hope we will be able to reflect these anniversaries over the coming year. I will add that I always welcome contributions from all MAFVA members at any time. These can be feature articles, pictures of recent model builds, book or kit reviews, reference pieces or maybe a show or museum visit you have recently made, whatever. Not all are necessarily used immediately as I like to have something on hand so I have material to try and get a good mix of topics for each issue and am not rushing around looking for content as each issue comes due.
Robin Buckland