Today is the fifth birthday of JOINT-FORCES and later on I plan to eat some cake ~ I really like cake, as those who know me might suspect.
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If our UK readers cast their mind back five years they may remember the legendary ‘Beast from the East‘. No, not Vlad the Invader but the meeting of Anticyclone Hartmut from Siberia and Western European Storm Emma which generated much lower than usual temperatures over England and exceptional snowfall in the normally mild south-west.
To cut a long story short, as The Beast struck I was over in Bonn visiting the I²PS test laboratories to learn about the comparatively new GORE-TEX Pyrad system incorporating electric arc flash protection in rain suits. A little over a year earlier Britain’s Royal Air Force had procured, though the NSPA, around 5,000 rain suits for rotary and fixed wing aircraft aircrew manufactured from this revolutionary fabric system.
It was while I was stuck in Manchester for three days and two nights through flights and train services being cancelled, having already been stuck in Koln (Cologne) for 24 hours by a first leg flight cancellation due to snow-blocked runways, the penny dropped that something was definitely wrong with the publishing house behind COMBAT & SURVIVAL Magazine and its sister titles. Even though they knew I was stranded on company business over 300 miles from home, but just 30 miles from our Huddersfield head office, neither my then publisher nor then managing director would accept my calls and so I began putting Plan B into action over the weekend. By the following Friday, 9th March 2018, it was clear that all company assets and goodwill (built up over three decades by the hard-working previous owners) had vanished and the newly created publishing house was going to the wall with its staff and magazine contributors hung out to dry, so the JOINT-FORCES.com website was launched along with supporting Facebook and Twitter pages.
The following day the first three embryonic pages were created: EyePro – Ballistic Eye Protection; Marching Ammo Introduction; and Under Test ~ LOWA Innox In Black. This current post is No.4979, so I think it is fair to say that what was originally conceived as a temporary stop-gap measure to hold our team together while we waited (forlornly) for a new publisher to pick up the C&S baton has turned out to be more successful than we ever dreamed.
A lot of hard work by Carl, Mike and myself (Bob) and our other occasional contributors has gone into the production of this little corner of t’internet over the last five years, but without the sterling support of our Sponsors / Advertisers we simply could not have succeeded. Please show your thanks by visiting their websites whenever looking for kit, or just to see what they have on offer that is new. Thanks.
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