Hossfly

Thanks, Mode 1. I have been wondering just as you. I was waiting for the Dec issue to be posted on the Web site or for mine to arrive. However since I give Liberator very little credit, and now that he, himself, has fully demonstrated he doesn't comprehend the meaning of "....this month..." I have no reason to upgrade such credit (or lack thereof). Looking for the magazine. [8D]

Hossfly

Except for the last sentence (snipped), 106, I agree with your post. In my contacts with the organized FF and CL groups during 3 attempts to get back on the AMA EC, I found that within those groups there was very little positive reception to any change in AMA's incumbent hierarchy. Interesting item: one FFer, not a really well known name in the competition circles, was very pro for me until he was advised that if I should win the AMA Executive Vice President position, I was NOT going to immediately jump into getting AMA into purchasing 100 acre+ facilities for FF modelers around the country. Then I lost my popularity there! []

I also have at least weekly contact with the Chairman of the CL Combat Contest Board. At one time I was a hard-core CL / FF Contest flier. I am still very familiar with many of the "Names" in CL and some of the FF people. With all this association and recent contact with various group leaders, I still firmly believe that the CL / FF AMA member community is composed of mostly competition oriented modelers. They are very aware of general AMA make-up and they deadly fear AMA's leaning to the majority of the RC sport community. Therefore they will continue to hold on to TODAY and hope for today's reality to take care of tomorrow. After all they have no need for frequencies, FAA/NTSB possibilities, etc. All they want is that NATs each year with many many events and applicable plaques.
While I don't recall exact numbers, in the past 10 years there have been published numbers indicating some 3000+ AMA FFer and 10000 AMA CLers. THEY VOTE!

Dave has made a few mistakes in his columns, and he has hit the nail on the head with a few -- which are probably the worst ones as far as the Rank & File sport RCer is concerned. [8D] After all he is trying to maintain some form of equilibrium within the structure and maintain insurance at a reasonable rate. OTOH he never addresses the cost of the largest single expense outside salaries and benefits which is of course the "MA" cancer that is eating up the organization in cost well outside of the actual $$ expense. That has been explained in this forum a number of times. In addition Mr. Holland never addresses his own performance and lack thereof, as Chief Financial Officer. So it ain't all DB!!![:@]

Stickbuilder

Me, I'm stayin' outta this one (ain't I good?????)

Bill, AMA 4720
WACO Brotherhood #1
J.R.T. Member #4

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I hear that same complaint from CL and FF guys....

"Why didn't the AMA buy us a field?"

RC guys often say the same thing.

I was at one very prominent CL club, and they all hated AMA to a man. They had found a field, and they expected AMA to BUY it for them. AMA was willing to co-sign on a loan, but the members themselves felt AMA should just PAY. None of the members were willing to sign on the loan with the bank, and the club was unwilling to spend their $15,000 club treasury on the downpayment, they wanted the money for field improvements after AMA just BOUGHT the field for them.
Seen a bunch of that kind of thing. Same as RCers. About the same ratio of anti-AMA or anti-DBers as RCers. Which is to say, an overwhelming majority are pro-AMA and pro-DB. Oh, well.

Liberator

Holy crap Hossgnat gives me very little credit?!?!?! You have no idea how good that makes me feel!

Hoss, you are a funny guy.

Liberator

Mode,

Do you want me to read the article to you as well? Think for your self man!! I know thats a change for you, but try it...you may like it.

Liberator

Hoss are you not the guy that has all the newest, latest, greatest ideas of how to make a magazine "pull it's own weight"? You know all this and can't figure out that "this month's" may mean the most recent magazine?

They don't call you brilliant for nothin!!

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Jeezuz....THIRTY YEARS of complaining about the magazine. Enough already.
You know what? I LIKE the magazine. A majority of AMA members do, too.
Don't like a democracy? Go pound sand. Majority rules. Tuff toenails.
Give it up about the damn magazine already.

Liberator

Umm I like the Magazine as well, Just not some of the erroneous content....is my point.

Hossfly

Sometimes I certainly am not very brilliant. After reading some of your posts, I still gave you credit for being able to say what you mean versus what you MAY have meant. YUP! that ain't very smart on this end!

You can't say what you mean, yet I have to interpret what you MAY mean. Well I have never been known to be a politician as I say it like I see it.

I'll have to leave to you that political art of your method of side-stepping what you think you said as you may have wanted to say when you think about what you said during YOUR WRONG TIME OF THE MONTH.

edited to add: BTW if I became AMA President, within 1 year that magazine staff would learn how to break even and within two years they would learn how to make a profit. If they resisted strongly, the new staff would do it from the start.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Well, either that, or you would well and truly screw things up beyond all possible recognition within six weeks or so...being that you have no experience whatsover in publishing or editing or anything like that, and that you have it in for the magazine anyway before you even start.
But since you won't be president, I won't spend a lot of time worrying about how you might mess up one of my favorite magazines, Model Aviation.

You know, someone once said "for every complex problem, there is an elegant and simple and obvious solution...that WILL NOT WORK. That's where you are, Horrace. You speak great platitudes of what great acts and rapid fixes to this situation or that that you would do, were you President, but the reality is that leading a group of 170,000 or so does not require a benevolent dictator, it requires a politician, one who can make people arrive at a concensus, arrange comprimises, smooth over rough edges, and try not to flip the boat completely over, so that it is still at the very least slightly servicable for the NEXT generation. Remember, AMA has been around for seventy years, they must be doing SOMETHING right.

Liberator

There ya go again Hoss, ever the comedian.

I posed a question for you quite a while ago that you chose to ignore.(I guess that would be YOUR brand of political side stepping).

So ever the optimist...here it is again. You claim that simply increasing the ad cost for MA would somehow make it the money maker you think it should be. So I ask you, why would an advertiser wish to pay more for a magazine that essentially has a free distribution?

If they are a current advertiser I can tell you what they would say...cram it Hoss.
If they are a new client they would say, no one buys that thing, it's mostly given out free...and they would be right. Where is the added value proposition for the increased cost?

Cmon Hoss I know you can spin some form of good ole boy horse crap..let's hear it.

littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

Liberator,
Come on now. You know that if a current advertiser told Hoss "stick it where the sun don't shine" it would open up a spot for rubber motor distributors and tissue paper sellers that have been waiting all these years to get in. Hoss is on the trail of a big change that we should all get behind.

Sport_Pilot

Anyone who only had supporters in the FF and C/L croud would not win an election. They are a small minority in AMA. Apparantly you do not know his past history, which is why his support comes from the pattern and IMAC crowd.

Sport_Pilot

I have read the entire thread to figure out what Dave said. So for us who are December issue impaired, could someone tell me what the H@!! we are talking about?

Silent-AV8R

Apparently, neither do you. Dave is not very pro-big gas plane, which is what we in IMAC mostly fly. I can say that most IMAC pilots are not strongly in DB's corner. And with a grand total of 800 or so members in the IMAC SIG, I doubt that the IMAC group can have much direct impact.

warbird_1

My Feedback: (61)

trying reading the article before you post your opinion

STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

Raising the rates would only decrease the amount of ads placed and spending, that's all it would do, period. For some reason Hoss thinks that MA is doing companies favors by keeping their rates down??? Prices are set according to what advertisers will spend. If MA could charge 5k for a full page spread, they would do it, but they cant get it.

If MA was sold out of ad space every month, then they could bump up pricing, but it's not, anyone can get a spot in MA any month.

However advertisers don't care about free magazines and paid subscriptions, doesn't matter. They just want eyes to be looking at their ads, they don't care whose paying for the magazine. Just like RCU, it's a free publication with lots of paying advertisers.

glowplugboy

My Feedback: (17)

My company was paying $1,400.00 a month for a full color, 1 page ad in MA. After four months, we had sold 20 kits in our now defunct ARF line. Nice ARF's, but even with the second most expensive kind of advertisement MA offers (most expensive is inside covers and back cover) did not attract enough curiousity to even come CLOSE to our breaking even on the advertising cost much less the cost of a container of ARF's. We advertised in RCM before MA. When they raised the monthly rate by some 25%, we left. RCM lasted about three more years and now they are gone. Small hobby industry businesses strain to pay what are already high advertising rates. Raising the rates will not pay for MA.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I truly don't mean any offense, I really don't, but it's not MA's fault if your stuff did not sell, it's the product itself. Importing a container of non-exclusive run-of-the-mill ARFs is a mug's game. It sounds great on paper, does not usually work out in reality. Others have had great results from MA. I'm sure you get at least SOME result from your smaller ads for estate sales, or you would not still be running them.
I agree, though, that raising the rates would not be a smart idea.

glowplugboy

My Feedback: (17)

How true, how true....[&o]

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I'm sure glad you did not take that the wrong way.
I have nothing but the nicest things to say about you, you are not my enemy or rival, I did not want my comment misinterpreted.

You are not the only guy to be sitting on a container full of very decent(or very crappy!) arfs that did not sell. When you are getting the kits for $30 or something each, it APPEARS that you can do no wrong...but you don't know if someone ELSE is getting TWO containers at the same time, paying $20 for each, and already has $10,000 put away for a huge advertising budget. Your container arrives just as theirs does, or whatever. Or you got the factory seconds, or that kind of thing. There is a staggering amount of ARF product out there, a staggering number of Chinese companies looking for somebody, anybody to take a containerfull off their hands...and a staggering amount of unsold stuff sitting in warehouses here in the USA already. On the exclusive and interesting stuff, someone can do really well, but if it's neither exclusive or new, it had better be dirt, dirt cheap, or you won't move a thing. And dirt, dirt cheap means not worth your time to sell. Tough business!

Hossfly

HA!Ha! Gee, et. you are da' main man! [:-] I have also been around 70+ years and you never say the same for me. I'm so hurt! [sm=cry_smile.gif]


That question has been explained so many times in this forum that anyone should have an idea about it. If you visit this forum 1/10 as much as I do, one might think that you would have absorbed the explanation if only by osmosis.
The advertiser doesn't care how the material is distributed, only the number of circulation and when the number is high BY PAID SUBSCRIBERS, that means that extras are not being dumped in the dumpster but going into someone's hands.

You don't think the local newspapers are getting all that money for all those beautiful paid multi-page ads now coming out if they did not have a high subscriber listing do you? (OTOH, you just might think like that if you have to ask such a question.)
Today I went into Home Depot for some super sale goodies in the paper Thurs. They sold out by noon YESTERDAY. The more people that see the ad the more that will buy the product.

Why do you think the first day of medical school's FIRST LESSON IS: Preventative Medicine KILLS FUTURE RETURN BUSINESS? (Bizarro, Houston Chronicle, 11/23/06) It's the money that counts.

If you know, no explanation is needed, but if you really don't know the answer to that question, all the explanation in the world can't help you.
Economics 101, Lesson 1: Don't spend more than you make. You should understand that unless you are a congressman.

Hossfly

Mike, I don't wish to argue with you. We're friends. However why did you select MA when you could have gotten twice the ad for the same money in RC Report? Would the "circulation" have something to do with your selection?

RCM was always the high-priced spread. There were many other reasons that that magazine folded, not just pricing.

I'll be flying one of your models tomorrow. I'm very sorry that the kit business did not work for you. However even a broken clock is right twice a day and so ET is very right about a flooded market which you and I discussed sometime ago.

It's hard to believe how so many individuals are getting caught up with that business.

Next someone will also be blaming that problem on DB.

warbird_1

My Feedback: (61)

anyone seen dave brown. i know he's in this post somewhere