A Collection of Aeromodelling Magazines

This section contains scans of old model aircraft magazines. Due to space restrictions and time taken to scan them, I will attempt to upload magazines during the first week of each month (don't hold me to that). Feel free to send me any comments or suggestions on this project, it's a labour of love, I could do with some encouragement occasionally.

The scans are smallest file size I can get away with and still and keep the quality clear and the print readable. As always, there must be a trade-off between image quality and file size to give sensible download times; not everyone has broadband, and there is a limited amount of space I am allowed on my web host.

Please read the following in italics before e-mailing me about magazine scans.

I dispose of the original magazines once I have scanned them.

I am also not! a plans service. Please do not ask for any.

I often get asked for issues that I may have uploaded in the past; your first stop should be The Aeromodeller Index Project  This is  project by Colin Usher and resides on his website NOT mine. Colin has a lot of other magazines and information on his site, and it is well worth a look around, he also graciously hosts all the zip files I have uploaded in the past since I started. Again, if you download from that site and things are not as that are supposed to be, please contact Colin in the first instance.

Any of the zip files at the foot of this this page are my responsibility.

My own collection is by no means complete, and there are large gaps in in certain years. It is  not practical for me to to email complete magazines due to size limitations on attachments imposed by my service provider, unless only a few pages are required. I can, under duress! upload a particular magazine scan to an online storage server, 'if' I have the space, and only for a limited time. So you had better speak nicely to me and sign your soul over to me in blood if you want me to do that :-)

Model Aircraft Magazine
Some Interesting information has passed my way about it's publication. I take no sides and only quote what is passed to me, but it does make interesting reading. I have recently been informed that a lot of facts and figures quoted below are misleading and a more definitive history is being sent to me, I will update when I have it. In the meantime, don't take the info below too literally!

Source (Michael Jones, July 2010)
I did some dating work on Model Aircraft just recently, using the plans listed by X List Plans, and this indicated that the magazine was started in 1946, and not 1949. The Magazine was printed during the war, from 1939 to 1945,  not as a retail magazine, but as a SMAE membership magazine. This was because war restrictions prevented direct competition with Aeromodeller. There were still restrictions in place after the war but publishers Percival Marshall got around this by buying the publishing rights from the SMAE, and so the magazine was allowed to go on sale with Aeromodeller in January 1946. And of course it continued through the 40s, 1950s and into the 1960s. Publication ceased in December 1965 when it was taken over by Aeromodeller. . I've been trying to get some circulation figures for Model Aircraft but so far haven't managed to get any. But it must have been quite - 50,000 perhaps. circulation for Aeromodeller in the 1950s was 80,000. This is interesting because not that many modellers are aware that Aeromodeller had some serious competition in the 1950s. Also, the Model Aircraft plans were excellent.

Source (Colin Usher, July 2010)
We have to be careful regarding the exact date of publication. It was originally started as the in house magazine of SMAE and was published in a very amateur way on a /BANDA /machine by hand, in very low numbers and distributed to SMAE members only. Eventually it went "public" and was published as /Model Aircraft/ by Percival Marshall who wanted to move into the Model Aircraft magazine market. He saw this move as the perfect way, taking over an existing magazine and giving the SMAE a proffessional magazine with a colour cover etc. As well as the title /Model Aircraft it also stated it was the Official Journal of the SMAE./ So it all depends on what you want as to which date you pick. I would have thought that the date that it was available on bookstalls and generally available to the public was a more accurate date. Accurate figures for the number of copies sold is not available. The "expert" on this subject is David Lloyd-Jones who has, as far as I know, a full set of the old SMAE mags and the PM Model Aircraft Magazines.

This Months Magazines

Aeromodeller Feb 1962
Aeromodeller Mar 1962
Model Aircraft June 1960

I test links after uploading, so things should work. If you do have problems trying to unzip the files below, first try downloading them onto your hard drive, then unzip them using whatever methods you prefer. If you, still, have problems contact me.

Last Months Mag's

Aeromodeller6112.zip
Aeromodeller6201.zip
Modelaircraft6005.zip

The Copyright for Aeromodeller Magazine is now held by Key Publishing

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