Aviation periodicals

4RNB

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4RNB
There are too many!

We signed up for a good handful, curious what you find of value.
It seems we get 2-3 Cessna specific, maybe a couple from AOPA
What I like best is General Aviation News along with IFR magazine (https://www.ifr-magazine.com/)
I need to downsize.

What is your preference for such things? What is worth it?
 
"Sport Aviation" and EAA's "Vintage" are the only ones I really enjoy. I dropped "Flying" a few years ago and am toying with the idea of punting AOPA in the near future.

Edited to add... Kitplanes is another favorite.
 
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IFR, Sport Aviation and Kitplanes. I don’t know if I will ever build but the knowledge shared in KP and the archive exceeds EAA’s website.
 
Kitplanes is the only paper mag I get nowadays. I miss Air Progress.
 
I dropped AOPA. The magazine was never that interesting and the organization went into the toilet in my opinion. I get EAA Sport Aviation and Vintage. Just for jollies I get the NTSB Reporter. I intermittently subscribe to Aviation Consumer and IFR, but after a few years it gets to be repetitive and I let the subscription lapse for a while.
 
Somehow, I got a subscription to FLYING. I didn't want it or ask for it. It is truly a boring read and obviously focused on the business jet crowd. All the ads are for Gozillion Dollar toys.
 
Smithsonian Air & Space has some interesting articles. Not relevant to day-to-day flying, but solid aviation content.
 
Sport aviation:. I found this rare airplane and spent .ore money that will will ever see on your lifetime to rebuild it to factory new.

Or worse, another RV article, or worse yet, anything oshkosk related.
 
Sport Aviation has drastically improved in the past four years. It was absolute crap for a while. They had one article I remember on flying through class C airspace and the like that was completely and dangerously incorrect and when called on it the editorship just doubled down on their stupidity. Fortunately, Pelton seemed to have cleaned up that nonsense.
 
IFR and here's a lonely vote for AOPA Pilot.
 
Kitplanes. I get Sport Aviation too, but half the time it goes unread or I just skim through it. @pfarber was spot on there.
 
EAA, Flying (free to me), AOPA, NAFI, and the bonanza society. I dropped IFR years ago, although I’ve heard the content and writing has improved.
 
Best aviation periodical ever was Light Plane Maintenance. I was late to the party and only got it for a few years before its demise. I wish I'd gotten on the bus years earlier.
 
Funny that no one has mentioned Aviation Consumer. It is, obviously, the best mag out there.

...no really, it's the best. Flying gets super repetitive after a while, same for Plane and Pilot, if it even exists anymore. AOPA is too dry. Cessna Flyer is pretty good, honestly, but if you want to geek out and get legit reviews on planes you could actually own and fly and gadgets you might actually want... Aviation Consumer all the way.
 
Funny that no one has mentioned Aviation Consumer. It is, obviously, the best mag out there.

...no really, it's the best. Flying gets super repetitive after a while, same for Plane and Pilot, if it even exists anymore. AOPA is too dry. Cessna Flyer is pretty good, honestly, but if you want to geek out and get legit reviews on planes you could actually own and fly and gadgets you might actually want... Aviation Consumer all the way.

Aviation consumer is a good publication. I dropped it a few years ago because it seemed to get repetitive. Probably time to jump back in for a year or two.
 
I guess I could see that, @kyleb. One thing I really appreciate about AC (and I don’t mean to be a booster - I am not getting paid for this post lol) is the articles about GA planes that you can realistically own. That is one thing that grates on me about FLYING, it’s pretty much all planes most people won’t ever touch. Here’s a $10 million jet you will never see the inside of, and next issue, a $1.2M Cirrus that maaaaaybe you could spend the entirety of the kids’ inheritance on in 20 years or so, but after that, it’s back to $10 million jets!, woohoo!
 
Aviation consumer is a good publication. I dropped it a few years ago because it seemed to get repetitive. Probably time to jump back in for a year or two.
That tends to happen with most aviation periodicals.
 
These review are not really helping me, I've already added a new subscription.

There does seem to be too many Cessna specific, perhaps I need to drop some of those.
 
Best aviation periodical ever was Light Plane Maintenance. I was late to the party and only got it for a few years before its demise. I wish I'd gotten on the bus years earlier.


I have the book series and it’s pretty good. A bit dated, but so is my plane. And so am I.
 
That is one thing that grates on me about FLYING, it’s pretty much all planes most people won’t ever touch. Here’s a $10 million jet you will never see the inside of, and next issue, a $1.2M Cirrus that maaaaaybe you could spend the entirety of the kids’ inheritance on in 20 years or so, but after that, it’s back to $10 million jets!, woohoo!


FLYING certainly earned that reputation in the past, but I'm not sure it still holds. I have the latest issue in front of me right now, and I see:

- A Carbon Cub on the front cover
- A feature article on the Cub
- A feature article on the Beech Skipper
- A feature article on Van's
- A feature article about learning to fly in a 150
- A feature article on dog rescues
- An ILAFFT story involving a 1979 Cessna 210
- A Sam Weigel column about acquiring a Cessna 195
- Columns from Ben Younger and Martha Lunken. Ben owns a '60s Bonanza and Martha has an old Cessna 180.
- A back page flashback to the first RV12​

To me, that looks like a ton of content that is NOT $10M jets. It seems like quite a bit of affordable aircraft coverage. They do run stories about jets, too, but it appears to me they're striking a balance.

Now, lots of the advertising is high-end, granted. But the magazine has fewer ads than they once did, so I suspect that they're charging quite a bit more for advertising space now. And I wouldn't expect to see an ad for a 40-year-old 172 anyway.
 
What do I currently find of value? not much in the world of print sadly...but mostly that's me and the time I commit to looking at it.
Currently I get several non-aviation magazines as part of memberships that go straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin. Hmm...I really should see if I can deselect the option to receive.

For aviation I currently only get AOPA's Pilot and EAA's Sport Aviation. I subscribe to neither of them for the sake of the magazines though. I keep a lot of them but sadly do more then flip through them. Like them both ok.

It's funny, I used to consume aviation magazines cover to cover. I'd sit while watching TV or whatever whenever I had spare time, and read probably 95% of every word cover to cover within a few days of it's arrival. Now days I do the same thing but that time is instead spent on youtube, POA, etc... and that seems much more random and unstructured. I'm old fashioned and somehow partial to print but I've become both lazy and busier.

Thinking back my favorite probably was IFR from a pure educational standpoint
and I used to get one (really more like a simple newsletter, that went through the accident reports. I stopped that one though since it was getting into my head too much.
I stopped getting Flying a very long time ago because of the big $$$ jet focus

I might just look into ordering 2 just for fun
Kitplanes and IFR
 
Many of the articles were compiled into the "Light Plane Maintenance Library" and published as a series of books. A little googling will find them. They're a bit pricey on Amazon; I got most of mine off eBay for less...
Awesome! Thank you. It's not hard for me to buy books. I ordered 5 of the LPM books for $33.
 
Flying. Since the late 60s'. My yearbook has a picture of me asleep in the library. My chin is resting on a copy of Flying. It got me started in the air, and Peter Garrison, Gordon Baxter, Richard Collins, etc. were my first instructors.
 
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