Modeling Spoken Here
Bob Hunt — Aeromodeling Editor
The cover date of this issue is February 2004, but I’m writing this editorial at the end of the production cycle for this issue in early November 2003, and you are probably reading it in mid to late December, so let me start off by wishing you all a great holiday season. Confusing, eh?
I’ve never liked magazine lead times; we are usually approximately three months out of sync with the “real world” and reporting on stuff that happened in a completely different season. Consider also that any “coverage”-type articles take the author at least a month to write after the event in question has happened, and it’s easy to see that being topical and timely is difficult at best.
Add to that the fact that at any one time we have multiple event-coverage pieces in the files or scheduled to arrive—and that we can’t possibly print them all in the next scheduled issue because of space constraints—and it’s easy to see that we have a real problem with reporting on newsworthy modeling events in a timely manner.
In this world of instant communications via e-mail, Internet forums, and bulletin boards, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce a magazine that is essentially a viable news medium. Today’s news is distributed today, and in three months it is stale.
Does that mean the magazine’s day has come to an end in our society? Hardly. In Model Aviation’s case, if we can all agree that immediacy is not the goal, we can restructure the magazine to become a tool that teaches and informs about things that help us become better model-airplane builders and fliers.
I have always believed that I should inform the readers of this magazine, and the members of this organization, about the realities of any situation, good or bad. That’s the only way I can hope to retain any shred of credibility in the long run.
The scope problem: events vs. space
Of late, we have faced the fact that there is no possible way to cover the myriad events that take place in the many modeling disciplines. There are literally hundreds of events each year, and we have a finite amount of space to offer up for coverage. So how do we equitably distribute this space, and what do we opt to cover? Let me clue you in to the math of the situation.
- We produce 12 issues of Model Aviation each year.
- The December issue is dedicated to covering our AMA Nationals, leaving 11 issues for other event coverage.
- In each issue we publish no more than seven feature articles.
- 11 issues × 7 features = 77 possible article slots each year.
- Those 77 slots must be divided among Control Line (CL), Free Flight (FF), and the many Radio Control disciplines, and further into construction articles, how-tos, technical features, product reviews, special-interest articles, and contest/event coverage.
- We can generally run one event-coverage article per issue (although sometimes we can publish two shorter ones, and occasionally we won’t run any), meaning we nominally include no more than 11 coverage articles per year.
Given those constraints, we cannot even begin to feature all that is happening in the wide world of aeromodeling.
Seeking solutions: SIGs and the web
There are no absolute solutions; there is no way that everything that happens in modeling competitions and at fly-ins will be reported. This subject has been vigorously discussed by the Publications Committee and the magazine staff for a couple of months, and we have had valuable input from AMA President Dave Brown.
Dave suggested that we contact the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and ask them to recommend what events they would like Model Aviation to cover. They would make suggestions with the understanding that perhaps only one article per year, or even one every two years, might make it into print. Keep in mind that there are 25 AMA-recognized SIGs — that kind of puts it all into perspective, doesn’t it?
AMA’s web site (www.modelaircraft.org) lists the various SIGs’ contact information and links to their web sites. Most groups have newsletters (in many cases they are fairly thick magazines!) that cover all aspects of their particular type of modeling. We are offering to list all of the features that can be found on the SIGs’ web sites each month.
In this manner, all SIGs can have a direct path to all interested members and vice versa. Then the SIGs can publish, on their web sites, all of the contest/event coverage they want, secure in the knowledge that AMA will help them get the word out. That's about the best we can offer.
How we decide what to publish
We have a database of information about the average AMA member. For the most part, scale modeling in all of its many forms is a member favorite. I'm not suggesting that the majority fly scale models or compete in scale competition, but they have an interest in scale-looking models and enjoy reading about them.
Therefore, we try to feature several scale events each year. Top Gun and the Scale Masters competitions are popular, and we usually cover each of them each year. Beyond that, we try to spread it around as best we can.
FAI competitions and World Championships
One of the most difficult things to cover is FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) competition. The various countries hold competitions under FAI sanction that culminate with the World Championships. The U.S. sends 12 teams to their respective World Championships every other year. There are even more team selections because CL and FF have several events and teams for each event, and team selections are held for each event.
Featuring even all of the team selections would be impossible to do in the magazine, and covering a World Championship is difficult. We cannot ask any of the contestants to cover one of these events; they are far too busy competing, and we want their focus on the job at hand. Spectators and supporters may or may not be qualified to prepare a World Championship report, so we run a chance of getting uneven coverage.
The team manager is supposed to write a report on the contest as part of his duties, and it is supposed to be included in the "Focus on Competition" section of Model Aviation. Sometimes we get good coverage and sometimes we don't. We've decided to let the team manager's report suffice for World Championship events that are held in other countries.
Model Aviation will strive to feature the World Championship events held on U.S. soil because we can more closely control it. That's not a sublime situation, but it is how we are going to do it for at least a year.
Competitors and readership
Perhaps the most difficult obstacle to get over in contest/event coverage is the fact that few of our members (less than 10%) compete, and they have indicated little interest in reading about any type of competition. In fact, we receive a number of complaints each year when we present our Nationals issue. Many cannot fathom why we spend so much of magazine space on competition when so few compete.
Being a competitor myself, I try to present them with the logic that much of AMA's heritage was built on competition. I further explain that dedicated competitors developed much of the technology inherent in the products we use, and often take for granted, in sport flying today during many years of competition flying. Many see that logic and understand the need, and many still prefer not to read such content.
Summary and next steps
Model Aviation is going to work with the SIGs to try to promote and publicize the coverage on their web sites in any given month, and we'll try to present as much coverage as we can in the magazine in a fair and balanced manner. We'll also try to be as timely as we can with the articles we choose to present.
The preceding is probably not what many of you wanted to read in respect to coverage articles. It is, however, an honest look at just one of the many problems we face on a regular basis when trying to bring as many facets of our sport to as many members as possible in a finite format.
We are all going to have to try to work together and use the resources that are available to us to increase all aspects of reporting on all modeling subjects. The Internet is now, and will continue to be, a big part of the solution to getting out the maximum amount of information.
You can get in touch with me via e-mail at bobhunt@mapisp.com. My address is Box 68, Stockertown, PA 18083.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
