How To
Get Your
After Action Reports On The Website
Combat reports have significant value to those in need of dealing with their past. Finding out what happened, where it happened and when it happened, along with learning what the military had to say about it can validate and reconcile a person's perception of their Vietnam experiences. And it can also do just the opposite. The Black Knights are always available to assist anyone in whatever way we can. Contact a member of the Website Development Team through the Contact Us Page for assistance.
Getting the reports into a format suitable for publishing to the website is pretty straightforward. The pages must be scanned at approximately 150 to 200 dpi (dots per inch) and saved in JPG format. During the save process, which is also known as the Export process in most scanning programs, the file is compressed, to reduce the file size and preserve quality. 60% compression is a good number.
Scanning 8 1/2" X 14" document sized paper is usually more complicated unless the scanner can handle that size. The page usually ends up as two "pictures" which must then be sliced and spliced together to produce one image. We will do that. Just scan once with the top of the page aligned with the top edge of the scanner glass, then the bottom of the page aligned with the bottom of the scanner glass.
If you don't have access to a scanner, places like Kinko's will scan your documents and put them on a CD for a small fee. Usually, the page files will be too big to put on a 3 1/2" diskette.
Once you have the documents scanned and either on your hard drive or on a CD , there are two ways of sending them to a member of the Website Team.
1) Send them page by page over the Internet by attaching them to email addressed to one of the Team Members or-----
2) Send the CD by snail mail (regular Post Office mail) to one of the Team Members.
This option could also include mailing copies of the actual documents.
Combat Operations After Action Reports (COAAR), After Action Reports/Lessons Learned (AAR/LL) and similar documents can be obtained by completing a SF-180 and sending it to The National Archives. Use this link to to the "How To File a VA Claim" Pages for information.