If you want interesting reading, you should get a subscription to Aviation
Week.

Mike Schumann

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
. ..
[...] I have a tremendous interest in aviation and love to read, so why
don't the aviation magazines interest me anymore? Have the magazines
changed? Is it me? Is it that the subject matter is finite and after
reading 20 years worth of aviation magazines, there is very little left
that is new and interesting to me?

Only you can say. However, if your experience is similar to mine, it's a
combination: you have read the same thing over and over again often enough
that it's no longer interesting; but also, I feel that Flying in
particular has been going downhill. I can't stand either Mac or
Collins -- Mac just seems like too much of an idiot sometimes, and Collins
is just too full of himself. When Collins came back, the magazine
practically turned into "The Richard Collins Magazine".

Back in the day, there were several authors in the magazine that I enjoyed
reading: Gordon Baxter (duh), Len Morgan, and Peter Garrison being the top
three. "I Learned About Flying From That" kept my interest occasionally
as well. But Baxter and Morgan are both gone and while their replacements
are competent enough, they don't draw me hopelessly in the way those two
did (especially Bax). The stories in "ILAFFT" have gotten old (I guess
there's only a limited number of ways most people wind up crashing or
nearly crashing an airplane). And Garrison on his own isn't enough to
keep me resubscribing, especially when I not only have lost interest in
most of the rest of the magazine, but the principals in the magazine are
people who irritate me.

That said, every now and then Flying runs a feature that seems
interesting, and it's one of the least expensive aviation magazines I've
seen that's worth reading. But I already have a LOT of reading in my
life. Aviation isn't the only topic for periodicals to which I subscribe,
and there are still books, and of course online resources to read.

If I had nothing better to do, maybe I'd have kept up the subscription,
but when it came time to do some paring down, Flying was one of the first
to go.

Have you tried Air & Space Magazine? It's not targeted at general
aviation per se, but rather runs a broad gamut of aviation topics. IMHO,
it is to Flying Magazine what Scientific American is to Discover Magazine.
I also still keep my subscription to Flight Training Magazine, even though
it's now published by AOPA and has a lot of duplicated content. I am
especially interested in the topics targeted at flight instructors, or
which address the learning process generally; as far as I know, there's
not another aviation magazine out there that provides that slant.

But as far as general aviation, and general piloting topics go, I think
the two you're getting now are about the best around. Hopefully they
still interest you, more than Flying Magazine at least.

Pete