I'm not sure about Pilot contributions currently but several years ago I was thinking exactly the same and stopped buying a lot of the aviation magazines in general as I thought the articles were not really up to scratch and weren't talking about what I wanted to see. Following a discussion with my wife (of all people - she noticed a reduced spend in WH Smiths and was curious why!!) she basically said "Well if you think you can do better write something yourself"!
So I did.
It was rejected outright by Pilot but I enjoyed the writing so much I (eventually) got several articles published on historic aviation and got paid along the way (and the odd one that wasn't but I'll not say which publisher that was...).
I'm not sure whether Pilot currently takes unsolicited contributions (I'm guessing from the articles they may use writers from their other magazines??)