ORIGINAL: TFF
I think Don Dewey, Dick Kidd, and Dick Tichenor died and Pat Crews closed up shop because there was no visionaries left to make it work. At least the plans are still around for now. Their Mag , late70s-80s, late grade school to the end of high school for me molded my idea of RC.
I'm in the same boat as you, TFF. I spent my high school and college years in the late 70's/early 80's reading RCM and all the others. I too miss RCM and many times picked up the magazine just for the plan(s) presented. At least there is still Model Aviation and Flying Models along with a few British magazines that have build articles in them. I don't bother purchasing many magazines today since to me they seem to cater to the ARF market and forgot the kits and scratch builders.
One thing I liked to do is scale the plans up by hand drawing them (something else that is becoming a lost art these days). If you see a plan in a magazine today many times it won't have a scale with it, or shows only part of the plan or has other markings making it difficult to read. I guess we can thank scanners and copy machines for that. My last copy of MA showed a plan that was printed so it would be difficult to hand draw.
At least RCM has kept the price of their plans down compared to what MAN wants for theirs.
ORIGINAL: cowboydfk
I don't even buy any new mag's except what the AMA sends me,it's all about what you can buy and not about what you can build anymore [&o]
Don't tell that to the Brits. They haven't completely lost sight of kit and scratch building yet, and I'd hate to see some of their magazines lose that aspect. Unfortunately they're a bit more expensive than US based magazines.
Hogflyer