ORIGINAL: tailskid
I'd love to see the entire magazine 'on-line' and let me opt out of the hard copy....boy that would be some .pdf file wouldn't it
Jerry
Hi Jerry-
Many clubs are doing this to save on copying/mailing costs. An MA issue would perhaps be an unwieldy .pdf if you downloaded it in toto, but why not give you the index so you can decide what parts you want to download and read?
Not reinventing any wheels here - you can do it now for archived issues of MA, so the mechanism is already in place.
Dunno if that reduces membership cost enough to make a difference to the non-members that Red would attempt to make it palatable too, though. I have doubt, based in part on the figures JR supplied. My take, in the very broad brush perspective, is that the park flier guys view AMA as an insurance provider just as do a large majority of current AMA members. The latter pay $58 for that insurance, whatever the actual portion insurance represents in that total. The difference is the park fliers don't perceive a need for the insurance, and they aren't being pressed by need of a fixed-base club site to buy it. If, hypothetically, the magazine and enough other 'bennies' of AMA were made optional to reduce the cost by
half for a $29/yr bare bones membership, would that have the modelers (or
non-modeling fliers as some would have it) in the "new market" beating the doors down in Muncie?
I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Abel