Pilot Magazines

I use https://gb.readly.com/ and get all the magazines inc US Flying for a low monthly fee, and I can read all other stuff I am interested in as well and family on same account, great value I think.

I get the AOPA (US) rag as well as FLYING and the CPA (Cessna Pilots Association) mag. Flying will hardly ever write something negative about an airplane, but the Peter Garrison articles are worth it. It’s cheap here in the US, so I keep it. AOPA of course is a club mag and of varying quality and the CPA one is highly specific to Cessna operators (I get it because of my role in our club).

I read flying and motor mags in the Aberdeen town library as a student. I get the LAA mag as a member benefit. I skim through most of it. I’ve bought maybe as many as 6 flying mags in my lifetime, for specific adds. I’m not very interested.
But I do look at the AAIB and NTSB reports, and daily check ANN and Avweb.
And I buy a motor mag every 12 years when I’m thinking of changing my car.

I like the technical articles of kitplanes, which is available on their website. How they are still free I don’t know but it’s great !

I read just the US AOPA one which comes monthly with my US AOPA membership. For me, the content is OK for a quick thumb-through.

For some reason I receive Flight Training News – basically an FTO industry newspaper. It’s not bad for a 5 min read and after that is it very good for lighting the incinerator in the garden, or mixing up epoxy on. They dedicate a whole page to CAA license issue statistics, but they end in 2016 and they never realised that the CAA recently added later ones to their website

BTW I have a large quantity of the US AOPA mag, going back to 2013. Free to anyone who wants to collect it or pay for shipping

It’s quite a good “grass roots” type magazine; lots of taildraggers. Appeals to the broadest part of GA, supposedly.

There seems to be two extremes with niche magazines:

• The specialist, by/for passionate people, usually membership, full of technical information but badly written, doesn’t appeal to a large market.
• The generic, maybe a cash cow owned by a publishing house, no interest in innovation, journalistic language but very little valuable content, appealing to as wide a market as possible.

US

• AOPA Student Pilot. Only read one, but I thought it was good, with a mix of reviewing basic knowledge and aspirational articles about what can be done with a pilot certificate.
• EAA Sport Aviation. Only read one, which I found it hard going: it’s very much a members’ magazine. I did read it on a transatlantic red-eye so I probably wasn’t very receptive.
• Flying. I read a few a year 2007-2018 (somebody donated them to the local public library) and liked it, especially the opinion-type articles.
• Avemco’s On Approach. A free quarterly email newsletter. Not much in-depth content, but worth a quick flick through. There was a very good article a few years ago about the problems encountered by someone who went back to a C172 after 20 years of airline flying.

UK

• Pilot. 10-12 years ago I’d occasionally buy one in the airport to read when flying commercially, but I realised after 3 or 4 that the format was exactly the same every month, all the planes reviewed are good, every airfield is friendly etc. They used to summarise accident reports with epigrams or humorous headlines, which I found in bad taste.
• LAA Light Aviation. I’ve read borrowed copies the last few months, but it’s very much aimed at the homebuilt community. If you skip the news, build reports, ‘meet a member’, and technical articles like I do, there’s not much left. There’s a monthly article about flying outside the UK which recommends hotels and restaurants. Gives free landings.
• Flyer. Only read one, seemed ok (can’t remember). Also gives free landings.

France

• Info-Pilote. The magazine of the FFA, to which I’m loyal. I think it’s intelligently written, but the last few years either I’m losing interest or it isn’t as good as it used to be. Living in the UK it’s one of the few sources of French language.
• Air & Cosmos. Read a few copies left at the aéroclub. It’s mostly military/commercial/space, with little GA content below Gulfstream-size.
• Aviation et Pilote. Also left at aéroclub. Only read one or two, can’t remember much.

The UK Pilot magazine has just run an article on the new aggressive CAA infringements policy, including the “interesting” conduct of certain of its officials, which goes way beyond anything that any other UK publication would dare publish. It is also spot-on in its information. I admire the magazine for that.

Poland has PL AR which is useful as something to browse in the pilot’s lounge, especially that the AD is NOTAMed closed due to constant rain since Sunday.

Poland used to have “Pilot Klub” but it shut down some years ago. They published a lot of my articles. The guy who ran it became an airline pilot, I think.

I’ve found them pretty poor for many years. I always thought the USA aopa mag was the pick of the bunch but I have to say I haven’t read it for many years.

I’ve always thought Propliner was the best of the aviation magazines and even now when I read back editions I think it’s quite a good historical account.