ORIGINAL: MikeL


Which is exactly what it is supposed to do. All aspects of the hobby, and all that. I may not participate in them, but I'm glad they get some representation from an organization that takes their dues money. Sometimes I learn a bit from the different disciplines, too. The day that the AMA forgets about its non-RC members is the day that their dues money stops coming in. Coincidentally, that's also the day that my dues go up, again. I don't mind one bit that the indoor free-flighters subsidize my insurance costs, and if part of the trade off is a few magazine pages devoted to their aspect of the hobby that's fine. And let's face it, doing away with the non-RC articles won't result in more RC articles. There's not exactly an overflow of quality submissions being made to MA, as I understand it.

Product reviews are marketing. That's just the way it is--it's the same deal here with the RCU reviews. What I'd like to see is a review done after, say, a season of flying the model. That won't happen, because the companies that give the products to the reviewer (gratis, of course!) want the reviews out to coincide with their advertising materials. It would also be nice if the reviewers paid for the model themselves--my opinion of a product usually differs based on how much *I* personally paid for it--that's how I judge value. The other thing I'd like to see when it comes to ARFs is the quality of the construction. I don't mean whether the covering is wrinkle-free, I mean the quality of the build. In order to judge that, however, a person has to take off the covering and take a look. Reviewers who keep the product as their own (or sell it after their photos are completed) rarely, if ever, do that.

All of that is why the most valuable reviews are the ones that come out of the forums here. Everything else is just marketing, plain and simple.