International F-104 Society Newsletter

In January 1990 a small newsletter was produced in an office somewhere in Holland by Harry Prins. He copied a template newsletter source which was produced by glueing pieces of text and photocopied "framed" photos. It was just a "fun" project as some kind of joke to surprise a view Starfighter interested friends. He never could have expected this joke to be a start of a very serious career of a true magazine. After number 1 a second one was produced because everybody liked it and soon interest arrived from other countries in the world.....
Soon this simple A-5 format magazine was released every 3 months. It was named "ASSASSIN" but in 1993 it was renamed into "ZIPPER".
By that time it had a number of interesting subjects which were: ARCHIVE (telling the story of all Starfighters build in the world one by one), COUNTRY-CORNER (giving the latest news country by country), AIRFRAME (technical information about for example ECM, RADAR, avionics etc), MOVEMENTS & TRIPS (information from trips made by members), CRASHES & ACCIDENTS (information about crashes and incidents from the late fifties till the nineties) and ADVERTISEMENTS (from members).
In between the magazine slightly changed from an easy created printer-quality newsletter to a high quality magazine with colored cover.In 2005 the latest ZIPPER magazine was released via surface mail. Since it was purely based as a non-profit task it took too much time from only a few people and it was decided to change from real paper magazines to electronic magazines which can be downloaded from the internet. This was quite a change but kept the 104 soul alive and the 104 Society community together. This was the main reason to continue our operations via the internet from the year 2006.

Beneath an overview of all released ZIPPERs (the covers) from 1990 till 2005 and information how to download the electronic ZIPPER magazines from 2006 onwards.

We still have a number of older magazines in stock. These are ZIPPER nrs 62, 63 and 64 only. If you are interested please email us and we will tell you the total costs and how you can pay. See email address beneath with IFS-info.

Since 2006 the ZIPPER was released on internet so members can download the magazines at home themselves, store them on the PC harddisk with the possibility to read them on the PC or simply to print them on their color-printer. The magazines are full color.
Since March 2010 we have changed the location of the e-ZIPPER magazines due to three reasons:

(1) The download was quite complex and not easy for the 104 friends who are not so experienced with computers.
(2) Space for storing the e-ZIPPER PDF files was limited and future was unsure (Bravenet server/provider)
(3) We have plans to scan the older ZIPPER magazines and make them available as PDF file as well in the future.

From now on the links to the downloadable ZIPPER magazines can only be found inside a word document on the YAHOO-GROUP server for the International F-104 Society members. So you must be a member and log in to the Yahoo Groups to find it.
Interested???? Just email us and become member!!! It is just for free....

Beneath an overview of all the released downloadable ZIPPER magazines sofar since we changed to download versions.

Be aware that the role of the magazine has changed drastically. To be up-to-date we have now all the latest news on our website (homepage) and so the magazines will not be released frequently anymore. From now on it will only contain stories etc.
The ZIPPER 70 is the latest released magazine for download.

For information, corrections, additions etc.. please contact : IFS info

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