So during this time when when when talking at to was quite successful I thought of going to take you to America oh really? So I um rang up, rang up America CU I had to start at 2:00 in the morning cuz that was their only time and I rang up a big um a printing company over there uh um uh some an international type uh printing company to to print the magazine and I said uh you print magaz oh yes of course we print magazines and I said do you do distribution oh yes we do distribution as well. So wonderful. So I got uh some magazines already here to to take over and got all the Articles and everything ready and I took the computers over, put the computers in in in a in a in a um on a palet and things like that I took the hard drives myself. there were no notebooks back in those days, no hard drives and everything I took the hard drives out and put them in my own suitcases I took the suit in my own personal bag, took the hard drives and went over there and went to the publishing, went to the printing place, got ,000 magazine printed and I said well they're ready now and and uh, do the distribution.

So give me the name of distributor yeah I said but you do distribution oh no, we'll give us the name, we'll distribute it for you. Oh so I had all these magazines I may have known a fraction before that. So I went to Um Capital Distribution Company which was in New York and they wanted a schedule of when you're going to produce the magazine On that particular day it had to be had to be slotted in on that particular day. Why was that? Oh because they they they they distribute so many hundreds of magazines it all had to be all fine line.

They wanted samples of the magazine so I mocked up a couple of samples and of course then they said okay then we'll give it to our board to to to to analyze the magazine and see if it's successful I said it's not a pornographic magazine. of course it's going to be all right I know we have to assess it and and and and have to say where it's going to be accepted or not. So two weeks later I rang them up say no, it's not accepted. we don't accept it's too.

it's too the Market's too limited and it's too. it's too technical. Unbelievable. So I then turned around and I found out cuz in Australia I was dealing with 1,200 shops that was up to 12200 shops and then they had sub agencies.

so I had 2,400 shops. Possibility of news agents in Australia Well America in those days was about 170 million and we were about 17 million. so there was about 16 or 17 times the size I thought well there's 20,000 shops in America that will sell my magazine. Do you know how many news agents there are in America No, how many 20 what? 20? 20 Pett news agents? How do you figure that? Because that's all there are.

really. Yes, all the rest of them are chains of bookstores that have magazines there, right? or department stores that have magazine racks I Can't say I've ever looked when I've been to America That's the huge mistake I made. Oh no, you, you just assume that right I thought I Thought right. No, our American audience are probably that's wondering what we're talking about when we men.

That's right, they don't have them. So even even to this day, even to this day, they've got. they've got uh, different. Like um, 120 stores of bookstores like like Barnes and Noble Yes, they got 120 stores.

Then they've got another one. They got 120 stores and but you got to go to the CEO of that store to distribute through there and it's enormously complex. They do have Distributors that distribute in America but they only Distributing four or six. States And then there's another one that delivers in the Central And then there's one that delivers in in the West Coast or the East Coast.

So you got to go through at least five different distributors. There's no uniform Universal distributor. so it was enormously complex and it was all too hard. You just gave far too hard.

So so what did you do with 100,000 Well, what I did was is that I turned around and I bought a CD that had uh are are 10 million 100 million businesses on I can't remember I remember those CDs in the day y it had I think 10 10 million businesses and they had 20 to 30 different categories and you could do uh magazines you could do um dolls? you could do uh uh trains. you could do whole different categories so there was one there for electronics magazines right? So I thought well that's great. So I picked out that had a computer sort on it so I just put in the computer, sorted out that I bought some stickers and I put them in the machine to to to to print on them and I printed all these stickers for all these different shops and I just put six magazines in it on sale or return with if they want to sell them they can sell them or if they don't want to uh don't worry. So I started sending out these magazines in packets of six I h shun them myself I bought a heat shrinking machine and I put I got a hot wire and I seal around there and I I just brought some hot hot air guns and I heat bought the heat shrink stuff and heat shrunk them and sent them out with with stickers and things like that.

3 or 4 days later I got pretty nasty calls all coming through really um where am M and pop store? We don't sell these magazines I said but you've ticked the Box Oh, we just tick the whole 20 boxes right. So most of the shops do. You know that there's hundreds and hundreds of church shops in America really just selling Church stuff? Oh that? That wouldn't surprise me. it's America that's right.

Yeah so out of all these magazines, these packets are magazin which cost me $2 or3 a pack I sent out hundreds thousands of them five in a packet. over 50% were Church shops that don't sell anything except Church things. Then there's the mum and pop stores which just have dolls in glass cages. Then there's the M and Pop stores that sell all the the the Indian stuff or all the Mexican stuff totally or or shells or nickn or all sorts of nothing to do with with electronics or Mcra or sewing or needle work or Point work or everything.

So that there was none that Sld magazines. there was five electronic shops right? Only that I went. So where did they sell the electronics magazines in the in the books? They was all subscription, all by subscription? Oh got it. That's right, right? So what they do is that a magazine.

It costs $19.95 for a subscription. Y $250 was a magazine $250 Time? Uh, 12 comes about $24 $25 They don't bother charging you for um Postage and things like that Mhm. So the competition was Um, Poptronics. Yes, So Poptronics.

had a subscription page $19.95 for 12 issues now1 199 5. It went through a subscription agency which they got $6 So Poptronics only got $12 for 12 issues. It cost them 50 cents to post it. Wow, That leaves them 5050 cents to print it.

They made nothing out of it. How only the advertising, Only the advertising? So right it was. That's why they had a lot of advert. It was very expensive to advertise so nobody else could come in.

Yep, because you couldn't make any money. Yeah, unless you got the that's right, yeah which people. the advertise already committed within it with with the Poptronics on on the 12mth basis and they were spending enormous amount so you couldn't get in on Advertising. So I just packed up everything and came home.

How how long did that? Months? Six months, Six months. Wow. Yes, un. and when was that what? Oh I I just can't remember now what issues about Issue 13 or 14 or 15 Cuz you stopped.

What? What issue did you end at? Uh, Issue 15 I Thought it was issue 15 because I went to America And of course that cost me a lot of money. Lot of money by the time I printing 120,000 27 cents a copy. Um getting over there renting accommodations months putting putting the phones on. um buying U printers over there buying I Bought huge printers to to do to do all the the printing to all the fers and all the leaflets that went into it.

So I got a big room just like this big room and put the great big old photo copier uh in the room, turned it on and and hiccuped and stopped. And you'll start up again every time it went through the hot rollers. Yeah it stopped because it took about 2,000 Watts at 110 volt. oh it was your supply.

Yes and it dropped down to about 80 volts 80 90 volts instead of 110 120 volts. So it hiccuped and it wouldn't go ahead. What was that? The wiring to the premises? Was it? No, it wasn't the wiring in it was the wiring around the wall. So I went back to where it came in and I plugged it in over here where it came in and it worked.

The voltage drop going around the room was so much at 2,000 Watts that it just hiccuped. Well cuz they're only at 110 Vols So there yeah twice everything over there was like going back 20 years. Things were just going down and down and down. So then I rang up.

um uh, the the editor of Poptronics and I said that, What about putting Poptronics on the web? Mhm? So I put Poptronics on the web, started all all the all the projects and things like that, put it all on the web and he turned around said oh look I'll give you 25% of the subscription and I got quite a few subscriptions and I sent an article off to Poptronics to to promote the the website. So I set the article off, waited for the first month, waited for the second. Artic going to on the Magaz on on the website. yeah no there special articles for the magazines which promoted the website.

okay it was his website, it wasn't mine. he was getting 75% of the website. Not as though that I was making a huge amount out of it. he was going to make a huge amount out of it.

So that first month, second month, third month he didn't even put the articles in the magazine. Oh and then the fourth month came and I heard the Poptronics just just died. just f was right then and there on the spot. No yes so that the Magaz.

so the the website didn't do too well. So that I said well okay I'll transfer it over to Talking Electronics website and and it just boomed from then on. Once once I got into Google it took a while y it does and now of course it's just. it's just the traffic's hug.

astronomical now. So that was a huge success from then on. right? So, but that's what happened with Poptronics. It just died then then and of course I had huge huge ideas for Poptronics.

I was going to put a P chip. Yep, uh. a little tiny project with a surface mount Pig chip on it or even a a through hole Pig chip because I could get them. Now do you know that there are better pic chips than what you can buy? Are there yes in in what way? Well there's a a Pck chip.

Instead of buying the Pck that we buy, there's an 08 version which has got all the best features in it. y only available in China Oh okay I Finished up getting the the uh the data sheet for it and it has got one ATD in it and a few other things where the other ones either do have an ATD or don't have something else. This has all the sort of things the Chinese would want and it's much cheaper than paying the 32 cents. They get it as a d which is 5 to 10 to 12 cents as a D.

So all these Co things that you see are all a P chip. a Chinese version of the P chip at between 5 and 12 cents a die. Is that a genuine thing or is that a ripoff thing? A genuine genu microchip, right? Yes. Okay, but they don't tell you about it.

I Found out from the Chinese There you go. Oh the Chinese are brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Were there any plans to get back into the doing the magazine after that? Did you have any? No.

As I said my auntie passed away and um I had to do a lot to help help her so I could I couldn't do the two things so that's why I had to my mother and my auntie so my time was taken up. but um for poptronics I was going to I had a whole Road I've got them still there I've got 10 different projects using and the eight pin pick chip I've got an alcohol detector I've got games using all sorts of different things so talk about an alcohol detector. So I I contacted some Chinese people for for for buying the actual Uh gas detect the actens the sensor right. they wanted 70 cents uh for order for a th000 to 10,000.

70 cents I had to buy th000 to get the 70 cents. so it was quite a big bulky thing. but and you need to pick chip and you needed leads and things like that. So I thought well I'll look around and see on the internet and see if I can buy something else.

So I put disposable uh alcohol detector on the on the internet right and I came up with a whole unit with an LCD display with the alcohol detector and you blow in it and it has the chip in it and it times you out and does everything like that. The whole thing for A120 fully assembled I know you can't compete. how could you possibly compete you so that knock that straight on The head right? But what I was going to do is is have all these things to educate people. but you You just can't beat the Chinese yely.

I've still got those 10 different projects there and maybe I'll put them on the web as different projects because they're brilliant project and of course it teach to programming. It does and that's what you. where you start. You know you start with just a you know 20 or 50 lines of code but it starts you off with assembly code and it teaches you how to program and if you like it you can go ahead but it doesn't frustrate you.

It's not a language you got to learn to start with. there only 35 instructions and you learn the language and it. You can't go wrong because my concept is that you cut and paast. So basically I'll give you the whole 50 instructions, just put them in and burn your chip.

Yep. then if you find it successful then turn around and change a few instructions. Yep. but the whole idea is not to get you frustrated.

don't don't make it complicated, make the whole thing simple so that you can just and if you like it then you can go ahead all.