What's In A Name?

Now that I've seen two issues, I think I can safely comment on the new Model Aircraft Monthly...no Military Aircraft Monthly...no Model Aircraft magazine from SAM Publications. No need to worry about a name or branding in the magazine publishing world, eh.

Now called Model Aircraft...at least for this week...the premier April issue was heavy on the MiG-21 with a nice 1/72 kitbash of the Fujimi and Zvezda kits. Also in the DSS realm was an article on early Spitfire colours with many many Airfix Spitfires included. Devil Scale modeling was focused on a Hobbycraft A-4 Skyhawk, and the real airplane section featured the fixed wing products of Martin Baker, some Pfalz biplanes, an article on the ME-410, and the inevitable Harrier retirement and Centennial of Naval Aviation photo features. Overall not bad, though there are way too many typos and spelling errors and the six page Kit News section listing of new products seems superfluous, much better suited for SAMI.

The May issues features Jaguars, with a nice Devil Scale build of the Airfix kit by Bill Clark. 1/72 scale features include a South African JU-86 and the AZ Breda 27. The Roden 1/32 Sopwith triplane is paired with a short feature on the real Triplane along with some scale planes. The esoteric history feature of the month is on the Battle of Lake Khasan, there is an article on the Avro Athena, and finally there are nice photo features on the Japanese F-1 and F-2, and some RAF Typhoons going off to war. The proof reading is better, but not perfect and again six pages are wasted on the Kit New section. But issue two is an improvement on issue one.

Overall, there is some potential here. Neither magazine rises to the level of the Neil Robinson edited years, and at times the topics just seem thrown together, but things are much better then the pointless Military Aircraft Monthly issues of 2010. Now if only they would hire a proof reader and not change the name every few months...