Is it just me?

You have made an interesting observation, Abel, and one that I tend to agree with, now that I have thought about it.

I too have become interested in electric flight, but not to the point that I have many questions to ask. I'm still in the Wingo stage, more or less.

Many of the traditional IC type builders/flyers still are not connected to the net. Many of those that are, are shy about getting online. Some have reservations because they feel bad about not knowing how to type. That one I never figured out, because no one knows how long it takes for you to type your message but you! And no one cares anyway. Some feel bad about not spelling very well. The latter are usually just far enough behind the computer learning curve to not know that most newsgroup software has a spelling checker built in.

While I enjoy new and different facets of modeling (sp?), I have become interested in building and flying models that I really enjoyed in the seventies. I just received a fresh copy of Kaos plans from RCM's Plans Service and look forward to producing various sizes of the original Kaos. It flies like no other model. Not even the Super Kaos flies as well to me.

Over the years I have yearned for a scorching hot version of the B-58 Hustler. My all time favorite airplane. Instead, I am thinking about fooling around with Bruce Tharpe's Delta Vortex.

Since someone already made a giant version that is powered with a Zenoah G62, I have scrapped that plan and now am thinking about modifying the standard kit by using three .34 size engines for power (or more). Can you imagine how that will present in the air with three or four screaming two-strokes?

Ed Cregger

One aspect of the web forums that I find a little confusing compared to usenet is that I often find it unclear *who* is being replied to. Admittedly I don't often visit them, and maybe I'm missing some subtle clue. However unless the poster quotes what they're replying to, or mentions the person that they're replying to by name, the threading is a lot less clear than on usenet.

Ditto.

Usenet has the unique magazine rack feel to it with a very clean fast interface and nearly unlimited topics. A few techie groups I read are thankfully immune to trolling. RMRA is pretty good actually. Scary statement considering the flying Jesus post, eh? For the rest, especially pop culture groups, ehhhh. Usenet is virtually dead for those groups, the participants just haven't realized it yet.

List serves are my other main reprieve from trash posts. Dunno if there are any rc related ones, but there are certainly plenty of professional and technical ones that I subscribe to. The "interface" is as clean and fast as any e-mail client. Posts are delivered like a newspaper - vast improvement over me polling 100 bookmarked web forums. Good compromise.

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:43:56 +0000 (UTC), Brian wrote in :

Agreed.

I like the google archives for newsgroups, too. I can usually find what I want in a reasonably short time.

I've added a lot of filters in the last couple of months, both for authors and threads. It helps a lot.

"Usenet is Dead! Film at 11!"

If I'm not mistaken, the fatal blow was struck in September of 1993. It's just taking a surprisingly long time for the corpse to rot. :o)

I'm on several mailing lists. I have created or subscribe to 11 yahoo groups. They serve a purpose that Usenet can't--well, plus the fact that I'm too cheap and too inept to create my own news server with a private hierarchy.

Marty

| List serves are my other main reprieve from trash posts. Dunno if | there are any rc related ones, but there are certainly plenty of | professional and technical ones that I subscribe to.

There's a large number of R/C related mailing lists out there. I'm on RCSE, e-flight, zagi, slope-soaring-sim (for the Slope Soaring Simulator, of course) and others.

| The "interface" is as clean and fast as any e-mail client. Posts | are delivered like a newspaper - vast improvement over me polling | 100 bookmarked web forums.

As for polling a bunch of web sites, that's what RSS is for. It works very well, but it's still not as convenient as it would be if everything was on Usenet.

But as people have said, the big drawing point of web forums is control over content. Usenet really doesn't let people control what is posted, and this is good and this is bad.

Ultimately, the masses appear to have spoken, and they seem to prefer moderated forums to unmoderated Usenet. That, and they seem to like the pretty pictures and animated avatars and such.

(And I can understand that. But still, they can have my Usenet when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.)

| Good compromise.

Back when I was runn I should resurrect that, and write something that uses RSS to import posts from all the sites I care about. Now that I think about that, it's not a bad idea at all ...

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:22:09 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@frenzy.com (Doug McLaren) wrote in :

Yup. It's a "tragic flaw" in the Greek sense: the thing that makes Usenet great (freedom of expression) is the very same thing that makes it horrible.

October 1, 1993, may be just around the corner. :o)

It is astonishingly resilient. Something like the fungus that causes athlete's foot, I think. :-O

You are a dangerous man!

For now, I'm satisfied with r.m.rc.air as it is, with all its warts and foibles. May the Higher Power of your understanding give success to your experiments with a New and Improved Usenet.

Marty

FWIW, gmane.org does this for a _ton_ of mailing lists. If only they could do it for web forums...

That would be cool. I like to read rcgroups electric airplain groups once in a while, but the UI drives me nuts. Even after using adblock to get rid of the avatars and ads, it's still painful.

I see that you are using slrn... ever tried using links, or elinks, for browsing web sites. It cuts out all the animated displays and fancy graphic thingumies... it is therefore blisteringly fast >:-)

A page in rcgroups comes up in a blink.

Reg

I've used links in the past, and I still use w3m sometimes, but I haven't tried them with any of the forums. I'll have to give that a shot.

Spending a lot of time mowing our two flying sites....AND flying. Not so much time in the NG right now. But then we fly and mow year 'round here in Florida! ;-)

It sounds like you're having a good time, Jim. Keep it up.

Ed Cregger

Fun Fun Fun!