"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