Magazine and Mission Statements (split thread)

[Bill Berson]

This vague mission statement is no different from any of the past mission statements.
The fact remains, the Director of Publications has no interest or knowledge in the areas mentioned, as far as I can tell, from his articles this past year.

[Chad Jensen]

This vague mission statement is no different from any of the past mission statements.
That's because it hasn't changed since the beginning.

The fact remains, the Director of Publications has no interest or knowledge in the areas mentioned, as far as I can tell, from his articles this past year.
Mac is here to run the magazine. He is very good at it, and is the reason he was chosen. He has people around him now that will feed the content. What Mac is interested in doesn't correlate directly to what is put in the magazine. Sure he has articles that go in, but the articles he runs are always fairly highly rated from the membership.

He runs a good magazine...always has, regardless of what the content is.

[Jim Hann]

He runs a good magazine...always has, regardless of what the content is.

I agree with you Chad, Flying is/was a good magazine, it seems lately that the vocal minority has wanted to pile on the negative comments. Print is a declining medium, no matter what subject matter it covers. We do need somebody who can put together a good magazine.

That said, Mac flying an E-AB aircraft (not owning), or hanging with you building Tailwind ribs sure would silence some of this noise. Just sayin'

Jim

[Kyle Boatright]

Mac is here to run the magazine. He is very good at it, and is the reason he was chosen. He runs a good magazine...always has, regardless of what the content is.

He may be a good magazine editor, and the pubication has been excellent from a technical perspective in his short tenure. But his tenure has also included the least "enthusiast oriented" content of any run in the magazine's history. There wasn't a single feature article in last month's issue that translated to the proverbial guy in his workshop. That's just sad.

[jam0552@msn.com]

Mac McClellan may be a pilot but he is way out of touch with what is obvious to anyone with an aircraft maintenance background. For example he praised the design of the Airbus A380 after the Rolls uncontained engine failure caused extensive structural damage to several vital systems and almost caused a catastrophe. The correct response would have been to question why the cowlings did not contain or at least slow the engine fragments that not only destroyed sections of the wind leading edge and spar but also severed hydraulic lines and electrical cables. The number 2 engine could not be shut down after landing because the electrical cables had been cut! Bad call Mac. I sent him an email response to his article on the A380 but I never heard back from him. After sending him the email I found out that structural damage and control system impairment was even worse than my email.
-Joel Marketello

[steveinindy]

Mac McClellan may be a pilot but he is way out of touch with what is obvious to anyone with an aircraft maintenance background. For example he praised the design of the Airbus A380 after the Rolls uncontained engine failure caused extensive structural damage to several vital systems and almost caused a catastrophe. The correct response would have been to question why the cowlings did not contain or at least slow the engine fragments that not only destroyed sections of the wind leading edge and spar but also severed hydraulic lines and electrical cables. The number 2 engine could not be shut down after landing because the electrical cables had been cut! Bad call Mac. I sent him an email response to his article on the A380 but I never heard back from him. After sending him the email I found out that structural damage and control system impairment was even worse than my email.-Joel MarketelloEh....you should try pointing out the questionable judgment necessary to think that running an unshielded plastic fuel line throught the cockpit of a popular homebuilt is good idea and see the response you get. You can question Mac for not doing all of his homework. Given that I don't recall him being A380 type rated...some misunderstandings are to be expected. Folks who have built and flown a plane would be anticipated to have a better idea of the limits of the model. However, you be amazed the number of homebuildrs who seem to be just as oblivious to or willfully ignorant of the design issues of their aircraft as Mac was about the A380.

[Chris In Marshfield]

I find it interesting that almost all posts in the last week, regardless of topic, come back to a Mac-bashing event. Really? Can we at least start a new thread instead hijacking another if we want to start a discussion on magazine content? I understand that this is "Hangar Talk", and hangar talk is often a moving target, but it's getting really hard to get any useful information out of this thread (and others) that may have some useful information on the original topic.

Thanks gang :-)

~Chris

[Chad Jensen]

Agreed Chris. I'll run up to talk to Hal. I don't have moderator privileges in 'Hangar Talk'.

[Hal Bryan]

And...done. :)

[Bill Berson]

The reason for so much discussion about the EAA mission is because no one has explained how the direction of EAA will save private aviation. The new mission seems to be: "lets include everything aviation" with a new focus on the top end (twins, turboprops and hard IFR flying articles).

I have been fortunate to have owned and restored or built 8 airplanes in the past 35 years. Semi-retired now, I work almost full time trying to come up with ideas to promote aviation from the bottom up. My motivation (including criticizing EAA here) is mostly a desire to help the next generation afford the freedom to fly as I did. I am looking at ideas for low cost engines, low cost structures, home storage, how to improve the restrictive FAR's.... things EAA was about in the past.

This may be my last comment on the topic, I will continue my work in my own way.
If someone can explain the logic of the new EAA direction, I would be interested.
I simply do not understand how promoting the top end will help.

[Chad Jensen]

If we're speaking of the magazine being an outlet for the mission, let me see if I can clear up some things.

Phase 1 of the magazine began January 2010 with the new format.

Phase 2 was Mac, Lane, and Jeff coming on board to help cover the broader GA prospective.

Phase 3 is just beginning, and that's where I come in. Expanded coverage of homebuilding. I will be working with Mac closely to bring more coverage of the current homebuilt world. There will be coverage of all ends of the contemporary homebuilding arena.

Twins, turboprops, and IFR articles was never going to be the focus of the magazine, but it was part of a phase of development. EAA's mission of growing participation in aviation is what it's all about, and growing a younger membership is going to be a big part of EAA going forward.

[steveinindy]

The reason for so much discussion about the EAA mission is because no one has explained how the direction of EAA will save private aviation.

Because none of the subsets alone have sufficient numbers to garner the clout necessary to protect our interests. Welcome to diplomacy ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if I happen to think he's a self-righteous bigoted douche"; Josef Stalin during WWII anyone?).


My motivation (including criticizing EAA here) is mostly a desire to help the next generation afford the freedom to fly as I did. I am looking at ideas for low cost engines, low cost structures, home storage, how to improve the restrictive FAR's.... things EAA was about in the past.

The issue may be that those of us in the younger generation aren't as interested in "low cost engines" at least by the same definition that the older generation is. That is to say, a large number of us we don't see the idea of heavily modifying a car engine as a reasonable option to get a low power aircraft or resorting to using one of the other cheap options out there as a viable alternative. Most of us have grown up around unreliable cars that are more or less disposable commodities. Fewer and fewer of us grew up tinkering with cars that had an engine that didn't have problems if the driver sneezed at the wrong moment.

You also have to remember that many of us are more comfortable with reasonable government oversight than those who grew up with the McCarthy era or ensuing propaganda campaigns about the "red menace" so we tend to look at what you see as a restrictive FAR and see the reasoning behind it instead of a reason to hoist the "Don't Tread on Me" flag. That said, my only major gripes with the FAA are the user fee issue and the current state of medical certification.

Regarding another point, a lot of us are not inclined towards slow aircraft and those of us that are (myself included) tend to think that if we want to poke along at 80-120 knots, we're going to buy an L-bird (for the historically mind) or a Cessna. Why spend four, six, eight or ten years working on something that in any significant headwind goes slower than many people on the highway when we can spend much less money (even with a cheap engine)? This is going to tend to make "low cost structures" (wood and rag and tube construction) and "low cost engines" (unless you're talking about a major breakthrough in the ability to make a real aircraft engine that is able to give decent performance) less and less of a concern. The focus is going to continue to shift away from the "classics" and towards aircraft that are functional and in keeping with the desires of the current crop of pilots. There will be those of us who still fly the banner of the classics, but I don't think you're going to see the low and slow crowd maintaining its majority among builders over the ensuing years.

The "home storage" issue is going to continue to fade as many of us grow older and the desire to live in places where one could have a backyard that could be liberally described as a runway tends to wither on the vine with the passing of the older generation. Outside of those of us who grew up in really rural environments, it seems that the idea of living in non-urban settings is less attractive than it was to previous generations. My generation and to a much greater degree the generation that followed are spoiled and hung up on the idea of convenience. These are not the sorts of folks who are going to likely be pushing a Sonex out onto their lawn and taking off from their home in the country because living in the country means less access to the things that attract the average person of those generations.

We see aviation as a means to an end without the "romance" for anything that leaves the ground that former generations seem to have felt. It's a tool.....a very fun and exciting tool but flying just doesn't carry the mystique for many of us that it does for our elders.

I would imagine that what you're experiencing is similar to what the generation that first experienced biplanes felt as those designs fell by the wayside in favor of monoplanes or how those pilots who worked on the classic prop airliners felt when the 707 and its brethren eclipsed their piston-engined predecessors.

[Dana]

Twins, turboprops, and IFR articles was never going to be the focus of the magazine, but it was part of a phase of development. EAA's mission of growing participation in aviation is what it's all about, and growing a younger membership is going to be a big part of EAA going forward.

You're not going to attract a younger membership by running articles about airplanes that are marketed to middle aged businessmen.


You also have to remember that many of us are more comfortable with reasonable government oversight than those who grew up with the McCarthy era or ensuing propaganda campaigns about the "red menace" so we tend to look at what you see as a restrictive FAR and see the reasoning behind it...

I'm too young to remember the McCarthy era but I'm old enough to remember when flying was a lot less restricted. I do see the reasoning behind it... and I don't like what I see.


The "home storage" issue is going to continue to fade as many of us grow older and the desire to live in places where one could have a backyard that could be liberally described as a runway tends to wither on the vine with the passing of the older generation. Outside of those of us who grew up in really rural environments, it seems that the idea of living in non-urban settings is less attractive than it was to previous generations.

I disagree, home storage is becoming more important, as small airports everywhere keep closing. And young people aren't moving to the cities so much as the cities are moving to them.


We see aviation as a means to an end without the "romance" for anything that leaves the ground that former generations seem to have felt. It's a tool.....a very fun and exciting tool but flying just doesn't carry the mystique for many of us that it does for our elders.

Then AOPA is probably a more suitable organization. EAA is (or was) all about the romance of flying.

[Bill Berson]

If we're speaking of the magazine being an outlet for the mission, let me see if I can clear up some things.

Phase 1 of the magazine began January 2010 with the new format.

Phase 2 was Mac, Lane, and Jeff coming on board to help cover the broader GA prospective.

Phase 3 is just beginning, and that's where I come in. Expanded coverage of homebuilding. I will be working with Mac closely to bring more coverage of the current homebuilt world. There will be coverage of all ends of the contemporary homebuilding arena.

Twins, turboprops, and IFR articles was never going to be the focus of the magazine, but it was part of a phase of development. EAA's mission of growing participation in aviation is what it's all about, and growing a younger membership is going to be a big part of EAA going forward.

Thanks Chad, phase 3 sounds good to me.
The late Jack Cox did very well writing his detailed articles about homebuilts and classic restorations (with no actual hands on experience), perhaps with your help Mac can do the same.

[Mike M]

Most of us have grown up around unreliable cars that are more or less disposable commodities. Fewer and fewer of us grew up tinkering with cars that had an engine that didn't have problems if the driver sneezed at the wrong moment....many of us are more comfortable with reasonable government oversight than those who grew up with the McCarthy era or ensuing propaganda campaigns about the "red menace" so we tend to look at what you see as a restrictive FAR and see the reasoning behind it instead of a reason to hoist the "Don't Tread on Me" flag. That said, my only major gripes with the FAA are the user fee issue and the current state of medical certification.

i thought you're in your thirties, steveinindy? unreliable cars for your generation? i'm in my 60s and we expected a car engine to need a valve or ring job by 60k miles and be ready for overhaul at 100k. as to mccarthy and the 'red menace', well, it's too late, he was right. and wrong. they didn't invade, we grow them here now. 'reasonable government oversight' is a lot different for your generation than mine.

dana is on target. we're not going to attract a younger membership by running articles about airplanes that are marketed to middle aged rich people.

[Mike Switzer]

we expected a car engine to need a valve or ring job by 60k miles and be ready for overhaul at 100k

An old car dealer I know told me once the only reason people still thought that after the overhead valve engines came along is because all the used car dealers were rolling the odometers back. He told me that he sold many cars more than once after they were traded in & the odometer got rolled back every time. :D