Favorite aviation magazines

S

skynewbie

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Feb 17, 2013
Messages
371
Location
San Jose
Display Name
Display name:
checkmysix
I like Plane and Pilot and Flying magazine and get AOPA Pilot as an AOPA member. What are your favorite aviation pubs?
 
AOPA, ABS and Flying start fires as good as any. It's too close to call between ABS and Flying on which one hits the fire pit first. Sometimes I actually flip through AOPA before lighting it up.
 
I am done with magazines. I get all the information I need via the Internet.
 
I like EAA SPORT AVIATION because it's more about restoration than anything else. I also kept all of my FLIGHT TRAINING magazines from AOPA when I was a member. Really good refresher articles.
 
Aviation Consumer
Aviation Safety

....both are free of ads and seemingly free from editorial bias. :popcorn:

(What's ABS?)
 
Eaa sport aviation,gave up on flying mag.
 
I like Aviation History. It has great articles about military and civilian aircraft. There's always good stuff like this article about Neil Armstrong's midair collision with a cable over a river in Korea:

http://www.historynet.com/a-wing-and-a-prayer.htm

Armstrong kept his F9F Panther flying in spite of losing almost half of the right wing. He climbed to altitude and ejected...but I'm ruining the story. Read it.

neil-armstrong-222x300.jpg


Advertised subscription price is $26.95 for one year of bimonthly issues but they have specials. I think I'm paying around $10.

I still subscribe to six or seven magazines. There's something about print media I really enjoy. Internet magazines don't work in the bathroom or in bed. :D
 
I used to like the flight training mag before AOPA got their hands on it. Currently just get P&P and some issues are better than others, the AOPA mag has gone downhill a lot recently, even the quality of the paper is questionable and more ads per square inch than most.
 
Flying magazine is the best I've read so far. I'm not paying the extra for the AOPA magazines when it comes time to renew. Same articles over and over again and AOPA pilot is just flat out boring. They need to recruit some you get writers, at least to keep this 30 something reading.
 
They are all horrible. Was in a Barnes and Noble the other day ever notice how many nonpilot aviation magazines there are? By nonpilot I mean RC, Flight Sim, the history/avaition stuff, all written for nonpilots.
 
Sport Aviation and Vintage Airplane from the EAA are my favorites. Mac and his IFR/business travel articles have made the magazine more like Flying/AOPA, which is a step in the wrong direction but,... theyhave gotten slightly better lately.

Sportsman Pilot from Jack Cox was a small quarterly magazine all about fun flying with articles about people and their planes, whether they were warbirds, classics or hombuilts. He covered local fly-ins and planes that didn't make the big magazines, too bad it ended a few years ago when he passed away.

I dumped Flying magazine years ago when I was getting too many magazines each month to read. It was getting tiring to read almost the same pilot reports each month back to back in Flying and AOPA.

Oh yeah, the separate issue of the Turbine Pilot of AOPA was the worst ever, ads for $25,000 watches and other worthless cr*p, if I won the lottery today I wouldn't spend my money on that junk.
The title said it all, For the Turbine Owner and Operator. Just because of my ratings they assumed I was a turbine owner, I operate one for work but, I'm not an owner and will never be one.
 
Last edited:
I have subscriptions to:
AOPA
Flying
Air & Space
EAA Sport Aviation
IFR refresher
Aviatiin Consumer
World Air Show News
Warbird Digest
Combat Aircraft report
 
Flying remains my favorite, for the writing mostly, not the product reviews but the regular features.

EAA Sport ------ is good since I'm a experimental builder & flyer.

Kitplanes ditto but it's a better mag than Sport.

AOPA I get but rarely read much.
 
I subscribe to Flying, AOPA Flight Training and Plane & Pilot.

I enjoy the columns in Flying Mag the most. Dick Karl and Martha Lunken are my favorites. I've read one or two from Sam Weigel, and enjoy his so far. I like the nostalgia of it, also, because it was my gateway into aviation when I was a youngster in the mid 90s.

AOPA Flight Training is great, but I see more errors than I should for a regular publication. They should also consider ditching their standalone app, which is buggy. I use Zinio for Flying, P&P and a number of other mags. They should really consider moving their mag to Zinio or something like it.

Plane & Pilot has some good articles, but their text format makes it at little more cumbersome to read. It feels as if they try to fit too much into an issue.
 
I like the AOPA magazine. I take Flying, it's cheap and as long they have Peter Garrison I'm OK with it.

I'm an EAA member and get their magazine mainly because some years I go to Oshkosh, and I think it's worth the price just for the support the EAA gives to all GA. I don't find the magazine particularly relevant to my little world.

The magazine I really look forward to is Aviation Week & Space Technology. Besides always having great Aerospace photo porn in it, the articles are all written for adults, and 'AvLeak' breaks aviation stories more than anyone else.

I also like AvWeb on the web.

I like Aviation Consumer a lot, but I'm not currently subscribed. There are too many tempting expensive toys talked about there.
 
Flying for the articles, don't put much faith in the product reviews,

Jets
Airline World
Airways
Warbirds..
Both AOPA magazines as well.

I get most of my info from the web, but nothing better than sitting in the Pub with a pint and an airplane magazine. Beats the hell out of watching some stupid ball game on the TV:rofl:.
 
I sure agree with those who like sport aviation and vintage from eaa. Both are very interesting and excellent aircraft rebuilding techniques by real pros. Years ago Baxter was just great, writing articles often humorous, for flying magazine but he's long gone.
 
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I like EAA's Sport Aviation and AOPA's Pilot magazines. I also subscribe to Aviation Week.

I'll look at Flying and Plane and Pilot online, but I wouldn't pay for them. I still laugh at the career guidance given by both.
 
Nice, I like Aviation Consumer magazine and IFR magazine as well as Light Plane Maintenance. Will subscribe to IFR magazine once I get some instrument training underway.
 
I remember the glory days of Flying magazine -- the soaring poetry of Gill Robb Wilson; the "just-the-facts-Ma'am" reporting of Dick Weeghman; the humor of Frank Kingston Smith and later Gordon Baxter; and the early careers of such talents as James Gilbert and Richard Bach. With his innocent awe of flying and insatiable desire to educate himself to become a better pilot, Frank Kingston Smith stoked my passion for flying more than anyone else, rest his soul.

I still have every issue of Flying from September 1960 to the early '90s.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, the publication and its advertisers took aim squarely at the diamond-studded end of the general aviation spectrum. It might as well have been called "JetFlying". It made B&CA look like a hang-glider flyers' newsletter. I expected the masthead to repeat the incredulous words of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, "Flying an aeroplane with only a single propeller to keep you in the air. Can you imagine that?"

Flying has improved substantially, though, in the last few years. I wish them well.
 
Last edited:
JimNtexas said:
The magazine I really look forward to is Aviation Week & Space Technology. Besides always having great Aerospace photo porn in it, the articles are all written for adults, and 'AvLeak' breaks aviation stories more than anyone else.
Click to expand...

I also enjoy AW&ST. I had dropped my subscription years ago when it was crazy expensive. About eighteen months ago a received an offer in the mail for a $55 annual subscription and snapped it up.

The weekly cover price is $7.95...that's more than I pay for my annual subscription to Flying.

:D
 
The key thing with AW&ST is to haggle with them. I normally either let my subscription lapse or they will call just before it expires. I normally get B&CA bundled with it.

3393RP said:
I also enjoy AW&ST. I had dropped my subscription years ago when it was crazy expensive. About eighteen months ago a received an offer in the mail for a $55 annual subscription and snapped it up.

The weekly cover price is $7.95...that's more than I pay for my annual subscription to Flying.

:D
Click to expand...
 
Pilawt said:
at the diamond-studded end of the general aviation spectrum.
Click to expand...
I can't confirm that, I have been reading FLYING for the last 20+ years and don't see such bias at all. I was always able to find plenty of stuff in the prop category.
 
olasek said:
I can't confirm that, I have been reading FLYING for the last 20+ years and don't see such bias at all. I was always able to find plenty of stuff in the prop category.
Click to expand...

I don't know if it is so much matter of bias. I think it is lacking all around. I've been reading FLYING since the mid-80s. It has been crap for the last few. IMO, I don't think I have spent more than 5 min flipping through it since Mac left. I finally got tired of throwing it in recycling the same day it arrived and let my subscription expire this year.
 
ClimbnSink said:
They are all horrible. Was in a Barnes and Noble the other day ever notice how many nonpilot aviation magazines there are? By nonpilot I mean RC, Flight Sim, the history/avaition stuff, all written for nonpilots.
Click to expand...

They have any for wanna be owners?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top