Years ago, on occasion I recall, my late Dad saying; “nothing material is forever”, as I matured in age, his phrase continued to take on new meaning.  Well, it looks like Dad’s old phrase appropriately fits my message today.  It is with deepest regret that we announce to our loyal readers and the RC industry, that after nineteen years of publishing, Linda and I have finally reached the decision that this January issue, will be our last.

As you might know, a publishing group acquired Rotory Modeler a few years ago.  Due to the complex nature of RC helicopter editorial and marketing, a decision was made to put Rotory back on the market.  This event enabled us to reacquire the magazine for a fraction of the selling price, thereby allowing us the opportunity of a controlled closing of the magazine.

While we presently have significant offers on the table from other publishers in the RC industry, we feel, since the names Rotory and Mike Mas are synonymous with each other, there would always be the possibility of the magazine not representing the ideals and policies its been known for, thus, the reason for this decision.

After 40-plus years of having RC helicopters in my life most every day, making this decision was not easy for me.  However, recent events in my personal life disclosed that the time was right.  This has been a tough year for our family; my daughter of only 38-years of age was diagnosed with Muscular Sclerosis. To make matters worse, we lost my dear brother, “Joe” due to hospital negligence during a routine heart surgery procedure.  Even today, we cannot accept the fact that he was taken from us for no reason.  These events made us realize just how important it is to have time for family.

Getting back to business, for the past nineteen years, Rotory Modeler has remained the worldwide premier publication for RC helicopters.  In our nineteen years of publishing, no one has achieved our level of quality or content value.  When it comes to longevity, Great Planes, Futaba, and JR Radio join Rotory as the only companies who survived almost two decades in this business.  We leave this industry as we started it, with the same quality product, financially strong, and with a solid advertising and subscription base.

I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the hundreds of thousands of subscribers we’ve had for the past nineteen years.  I want to thank our advertisers, since without your loyal support; none of this would have been possible.  I also want to thank all our writers who contributed to this great effort over the years.

I won’t disappear from helicopters; I love them too much for that.  You’ll be able to find me on the Rotory Forum, where I’ll continue to do some chatting and a few reviews.  So please stop by and say hello. 

Finally, my overwhelming thanks and respect goes to my partner and my dearest life-long friend, Linda Tilden, for putting up with both these greasy models and myself for over 30-years.  Linda has been there for me every step of the way, to include thousands of hours of trade shows, competition, practice, testing, a 10-year military drone helicopter project, years of running our motion picture company, and finally, 19-years of publishing.

With that, we’ll shut the computers down - when the drives spool down and the monitor dims, our years of contributions to this hobby will become but another piece of the cornerstone that makes up this great addictive sport of R/C helicopters.

Regards - Mike & Linda