Spooky 3 – The webmaster replies?

:confused:

Originally posted by kev35
Alastair.

Should you feel an urgent need to buy a future copy of flypast, I’m sure WH Smith would be able to obtain a copy for you as a special order. (At least they did when I last worked for them 13 years ago.)

Regards,

kev35

Thanks Kev , If Flypast has any up to date news in the future , anything less than 3 months old , could somebody drop me a mail and I’ll go buy a copy , hell I might even drive the 5 miles to Livingston to get a copy .

Alastair.

Should you feel an urgent need to buy a future copy of flypast, I’m sure WH Smith would be able to obtain a copy for you as a special order. (At least they did when I last worked for them 13 years ago.)

Regards,

kev35

I have no choice anymore , my local stockist of Flypast ,WH Smith’s in Bathgate (West Lothian) no longer stock it or AFM , so I’m stuck with Aeroplane Monthly

Mmm.

That told us.

Might be better if all we posters went away and left a nice tidy Forum.

Moggy

Why should we demand an explanation of why posts were deleted? We should be greatful we get such an excellent forum with such high tolerances, granted this may not have shown in Flypast, but look at teh AFM forum, they have been threads in there that other forums would have deleted but have not been.

After all it is a Flypast forum run by Key Publishing and if they want to remove a thread it is there business. You dont go into a supermarket and find they have stopped doing a certain product and demand an explanation, or similarly with most consumer goods, i know so do want an explantation but a majority dont.

I suggest we stop badgering the webmaster, before its too late and we face the possbile closure of the forum.

Well thats my pennys worth

Nikumba

Hi Guys,

If you go back to page 6, you’ll find Spooky half way down. Can’t make a reply on that thread, as it’s been closed:confused:
Don’t know where Spooky 2 is though!

Cheers,
Neilly

Dunno; Scarlet Pimpernel? James Bond? Osama Bin Liner? Some other highly elusive person?! 😉

Has anyone checked out the webmasters name. Might throw light on the subject.

Absolutely top-class analysis Steve, very well done.

As I’ve said before, my regular purchasing of Flypast stopped ages ago, and now I’m just a Smiths browser/occasional buyer, if there’s an article I want to file away for future reference. I really disliked the massive sudden swing over to jets under Ken Delve, which does seem to have been sorted out a little since Ken Ellis returned. I’ve NEVER bought a copy of Aeroplane Monthly just browsed it in the shop now and then, and would consider myself ‘loyal’ to Flypast even if I don’t buy it regularly anymore.

Re. this online debate, I would suspect that the elusive Mr Webmaster doesn’t join in simply because it would become a pretty endless debate, and might well turn out to be something they just don’t want to go into.

BUT:

Why the censorship? 😡

A few years ago, Aeroplane got into the habit of perdicting their news stories a bit. This ended up a bit embarassing as the promised events didn’t happen. This practice is long stopped though.

As I’ve said before, I only purchase Aeroplane as I have found Flypast to have too high a ‘jet’ content.

That’s just personal taste though

Willow

I too buy both mags and one thing I will say is that Flypast is light years ahead of where it was 10 years ago, however some of the inaccuracies really wind me up, first we had the rehashed Warbirds survey, now in the June edition a piece on Lightnings tells me that Ormond Haydon-Baillie bought the ex Saudi Lightnings, come on boys you should know that this could not possibly have happened as sadly he was killed in 1977, and it was indeed his brother Wensley who bought them. I don’t notice the same errors in Aeroplane Monthly however.

Now I’ve said that Flypast will redeem itself tremendously in my eyes in either the next edition or the one following. I can hardly wait 😀 😀 😀

Seeing as this had dropped down to page 2, I thought I’d just bump it back up to the top… 😀

Right, joking aside, this thread has only come about as a result of threads being pulled from the forum; the first one contained references to FlyPast vs its competitors, the others were follow-ons.

I’ve gone back to basics, and decided to get back to the point of the original thread, which I believe was entitled “Which is better, FlyPast or Aeroplane Monthly?”. I went out and bought both FlyPast and Aeroplane today, as I do every month, and I’ve done a quick comparison.

FlyPast cost me £3.50 for 100 pages. 3.5 pence per page.
Aeroplane cost me £3.40 for 104 pages. 3.27 pence per page.

Now lets strip out the advertising, find out how many pages of quality reading there are, and work out the cost per ‘quality page’.

FlyPast has 21 complete pages of adverts (including classifieds), so therefore 79 pages of quality material = 4.43 pence per quality page.

Aeroplane Monthly has 20 complete pages of adverts (including classifieds), so therefore 84 pages of quality material = 4.05 pence per quality page.

Okay, so quality is subjective – it depends on what the individual wants to read, but this exercise strips out adverts which either pitch the magazine, it’s services and products, or those of it’s advertisers. And I’ve only excluded full pages of advertising.

So what are we left with?

Quality articles on various aspects of vintage aviation. Both magazines cover those, but as I’ve said, perception of these articles is subjective.

What about news?

FlyPast trumpets proudly on the cover “Extra news latest and best!”. Okay, let’s have a look at the first five main stories FlyPast cover – that’s anything covering half a page or more:

“First Milestones enter Hendons new hall” – Aeroplane covered this last month.

“Newark set for major expansion” – no equivalent piece in Aeroplane.

“Shuttleworth – ready for take-off” – again, no equivalent piece in Aeroplane.

“Dutch Historical Flight gets ready” – same story, nothing in Aeroplane.

“Museum at the crossroads” (Toronto Aerospace Museum) – nothing in Aeroplane.

Looking pretty good for FlyPast then.

Wrong.

The news about Newark refers back to a piece last year about an expansion, and so is rehashed, while the Shuttleworth and Dutch Historical Flight ‘stories’ are just updates on their preparations for the airshow season.

To FlyPast’s credit, the Toronto Museum piece is new, and also gives details on how readers can help.

Aeroplane on the other hand run the following as their first five major stories:

“TFC Mossie emerges at Duxford” – nothing in FlyPast.

“Me262 engines running again” – again, nothing in FlyPast.

“Last Puruvian Jug back in the USA” – still nothing.

“Sun ‘n’ Fun shines on again” – Nope, still nothing…

“Oldest BAC111 to retire” – you guessed it. Nothing.

Aeroplane and FlyPast seem to cover different news articles, but I have to say that Aeroplane’s news is more ground breaking and ‘newsy’ than FlyPast’s.

FlyPast management / webmaster take note – it doesn’t matter how many threads you pull, you are lagging behind the competition.

Unfortunately, a boycott would hurt us as we would lose this otherwise excelent forum.

An explanation would be nice though.

Willow

‘The truth is out there’

Steve.

An interesting suggestion. But if Key react the way they have to the threads which they have apparently found offensive, then I fear they may shut down the forum.

So, come on webmaster, can we please have a dialogue? As you can see most of the people asking questions are members who are among the most helpful and knowledgeable. A simple explanation of the reasons why you feel these threads had to be removed will almost certainly satisfy.

Regards,

kev35

If anyone chose to up the ante in this quest for an explanation, I guess they could propose that forum members boycott FlyPast magazine in protest at the apparent censorship and suppression of individual opinions. After all, the opinions quoted have not broken any of the forum rules in terms of insulting or offensive language or behaviour.

Not that I could possibly condone such a suggestion of course.

Ha! The old ‘Nuremburg’ defence.

“I was simply following orders”

Doesn’t wash any more. Face the music Webmaster or crunch on the cyanide capsule – the choice is yours.

Moggy

perhaps its not the webmaster doing it, or perhaps the webmaster is ‘under orders’

coanda

Never happens on the Aeroplane Monthly board.