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Military Aviation Monthly


davidelvy

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" . . but my copy of SAMI has a small article on modelling a VVS Airacobra"

You're right - I missed that one. Not quite what I had in mind though but it does point out the problem of having the historical feature in one magazine and the modelling article tucked away in another!

Agreed - and the VVS Airacobra article is the sort of thing that hasn't been published anywhere since Air Enthusiast stopped.

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To be brutally honest , one sees this in all magazines. The the tendency is to rebrand towards what is perceived as the market leader. The problem being that there is no real market leader - so all titles rejig themselves towards each other; ergo similar content, similar style etc etc.

None of the current bunch of editors have anything to show between them in my opinion (sorry to be so blunt there chaps). All that has happended since the inception of SAM back in, what 1978?, has been in the UK , reactionary.

As readers of a rather titghtly defined hobby format magazines we dont help either; we are a picky, prickly bunch so an editor will never please everyone all the time. BUT there was a good point made about a magazine having soul - which is what SAM used to have, good or bad.

The other problem is of course cross polination. Publishing in general suffers from the same people working for different masters, so you are bound to get similar looking results. This is amplified in a niche publishing market.

And I'll go one more stage further here: Its such a niche publishing thing , that I'll wager no one involved really wants to have any new blood in at the top end, because new blood and new ideas in; means old blood out.

Neil Robinson is great - but perhaps if he does retire, we might just get someone else in with some fresh ideas.

( PS to any publisher reading this, I am in the market - just mail me, you need me more than I need you, but you cant afford me, or can you?)

Jonners - on for a job, and a challenge

Jonners

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Jonners - on for a job, and a challenge

You say that every Saturday night down the docks Jonners, but none of the sailors ever take you up on it :shrug:

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  • 3 weeks later...

At one time, I used to buy both SAM and SAMI practically every month - there was almost always something to interest me. Then I started to find that there was less and less that appealed to me, and I left them on the shelf more often than not. I haven't bought a copy of SAM for over 2 years, since it changed to its current format, which in my opinion is dumbed down and superficial. I can't remember when I last bought SAMI, which has become a mixture of adverts for products I'm never going to buy and build articles on kits I'm not interested in. Even when one of them does cover a topic that appeals to me, the coverage never seems to add anything to the information I already have.

I looked at early issues of MAM in the shop but they did nothing for me. It was only when Neil became editor that I started buying it, and soon that became an almost automatic purchase. However, over the last 12 - 18 months, it's become increasingly rare for me to get a copy, as issue after issue has either had nothing to interest me or nothing sufficiently fresh to make me spend the money. I have got the April one, purely because of the Soviet Airacobra article (the only one on a pre-1950s subject), but, after reading the list of what's going to be in the May issue, I can say now that I won't be buying it. As long as the magazine covers WW2 or earlier topics, there's a chance I'll buy the occasional issue - if it offers me something new. If it's going to be primarily modern aviation, with the odd post-WW2 article thrown in, then it's very unlikely that I'll bother.

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Agreed - and the VVS Airacobra article is the sort of thing that hasn't been published anywhere since Air Enthusiast stopped.

..not true.. the MAM article was a translated re-hash from a lengthy piece by the same author on Soviet Airacobras which appeared in Avions magazine a while ago

one of the best aviation magazines on the market in any language

http://www.avions-bateaux.com

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