While kicking around a new mission for the PRA, it's helpful to review history. It's had different missions over the decades since I joined at age 13.
Igor Bensen set it up in large part to promote his products. For at least the first 10 years, the magazine gave almost zero coverage to other gyro brands. It often repeated the "keep it Bensen-stock for safety" message. In return, Igor did write technical articles that few others had the knowledge to produce. As time went on, Igor's technical articles tended toward high-tech aerospace gadgetry with little relevance to us bug-toothed gyronauts, though.
Igor also apparently subsidized the magazine out of his company's funds. The magazine looked a lot slicker than you might expect, given its circulation. The mag had a paid professional editor, Mike Stockhill, whose next job was editor of Mother Jones, a big, nationally-distributed newsstand mag.
During Igor's tenure, there was some interesting engineering thinking going on in the shadows. Though we never saw it in the PRA mag, there was a spirited discussion about the need for real horizontal stabs -- this, in the late 60's-early 70's. The word didn't really get around until some 30 years later.
Bottom line: PRA was quite Bensen-biased at that time.
The incident I mentioned earlier about Don Farrington, in PRA's name, persuading the FAA to drop the gyroglider training regulation is another case of bias. Maybe the members would have agreed to the change, but the point is that we were not asked. We were presented with a done deed.
Although not a PRA venture, the Ask First Society was another infamous case of brand bias in privately rating CFI's. Heaven forbid THAT happen again.
The point of all this? If PRA goes on, it would be wise to pick both a structure and a mission that are not so easily warped into a promotional gimmick, or a way to trash one's competition. PRA as a sponsor of flyins could be a bias-resistant mission. CFI rating? Yikes.
