Old Man
Active Member
Folks,
I'm gonna do another long winded post but I feel it's appropriate. First a couple of things. Bart and I had side conversations from time to time about various things and some plank RC stuff. Although Bart always tried to stay chipper I could tell he was getting pretty stressed. One person running a site can be a full time job and mixing that with a career will ruin one, the other, or both pretty quickly. Of all the people Bart could have sold to Marc Vigod and his team were a good choice, and could be very good for us. More on that later.
Marc, I owe you a big thanks. Without your RCU site I would not have been able to start a career in real UAV's. 12 years ago a discreet ad was posted in the RCUGiant Scale Forum looking for people that could fly really big RC airplanes and didn't mind being away from home for extended periods of time. I had closed my business some years earlier and was driving a truck while trying to decide what to do next. During all this my wife was giving me a lot of smack for buying a 286 desktop a couple years earlier we didn't really need and spending too much money that was needed elsewhere on RC stuff. That little ad changed everything. Now I can have all the computers and RC stuff I want without complaint or remorse because both the desk top and RC, with a bit of exposure due to RCU, helped me enter a new and very well paying career. I got to go places I would have never gone, lived in hovels that make anything look better, meet people some would call enemies only to learn we aren't as different as we think, done and seen things that would have never have been possible otherwise, and even got to get shot as as a side benefit. I would not trade those experiences for anything in the world. The wife has even been supportive of all the multirotor stuff since then. I won't say there hasn't been a little tit for tat along the way but the trade offs haven't been bad. So thanks again.
.The addition of some advertising does not have to be irritating or a bad thing. In fact, it can be good by providing exposure to new or old products we might have been unaware of that we would have been making use of had we known of them. If ads are targeted to the forums where they would be most appropriate a lot of people benefit. Yea, the site owners make money but what's wrong with that? How many people want to give their work away? Something has to pay for the time and effort it takes to run a site and they can be a lot of work. I came within an hour of buying Team Flying Circus some years ago at a price that would have been great at the time but the amount of work that would have been required would have put a serious hurt on my primary money maker. Not giving it the devotion it needed would have caused the site to do exactly as it has done, wither and die. I would really like to see ads from the high end product people. There's not too many places to get exposed to them and what they have to offer could be amazing. I'm not too keen of the entry level stuff but there's a place and people for that too. Without new people entering the hobby/endeavor our activities eventually shrink in size and scope to where the only people you see involved are as old or older than me, and I'm older than dirt.
Back to the old RCU. Marc and Nathan ran a pretty good site back then. I think is was close to 16-17 years ago when I first landed there. I watched, and perhaps helped from the outside, it grow to encompass just about everything in RC. The for sale department became stellar with a lot of good deals for the buyers and a good place to move stuff fairly quickly for the sellers. Marc was as fair as an Admin can be in a venue that served everyone and and all the different attitudes and morals that come with such territory. We bumped heads from time to time and despite how hard headed I can be we always worked through the rough spots. Thousands of people benefited from RCU. A lot of new people got to learn, and lot of experienced people got to share. Manufacturers sold a lot of product, some not so good but most pretty darn good. Some brand names became who they are today because of their exposure at RCU, and in doing so continue to design and market products that people want or need. Some rose to a peak and fell along the way too, but that's the nature of the hobby industry.
We need another good multirotor site that encompasses a broad spectrum of activities. The only other one that does that caters to beginners and one or two manufacturers. We need a place where those with experience can share that experience, both with ourselves and with those that qualify themselves to make the transition to greater aspirations. We need to be able to discuss all products without concern of being slapped down by a manufacturer rep or their minions. Beginners, racers, amateur AP people, inventors, potential clients, trade groups, etc., all could use a place where a single stop on the web could put them in contact with the people and information they need to see and talk to. Such a site comes about not just with the guidance and vision of the Admins, but from the desire of the users to make a site their home. Being gone from home as long as I have I can truly appreciate someplace that feels like home. Give it a shot and help make it what you want it to be.
I'm gonna do another long winded post but I feel it's appropriate. First a couple of things. Bart and I had side conversations from time to time about various things and some plank RC stuff. Although Bart always tried to stay chipper I could tell he was getting pretty stressed. One person running a site can be a full time job and mixing that with a career will ruin one, the other, or both pretty quickly. Of all the people Bart could have sold to Marc Vigod and his team were a good choice, and could be very good for us. More on that later.
Marc, I owe you a big thanks. Without your RCU site I would not have been able to start a career in real UAV's. 12 years ago a discreet ad was posted in the RCUGiant Scale Forum looking for people that could fly really big RC airplanes and didn't mind being away from home for extended periods of time. I had closed my business some years earlier and was driving a truck while trying to decide what to do next. During all this my wife was giving me a lot of smack for buying a 286 desktop a couple years earlier we didn't really need and spending too much money that was needed elsewhere on RC stuff. That little ad changed everything. Now I can have all the computers and RC stuff I want without complaint or remorse because both the desk top and RC, with a bit of exposure due to RCU, helped me enter a new and very well paying career. I got to go places I would have never gone, lived in hovels that make anything look better, meet people some would call enemies only to learn we aren't as different as we think, done and seen things that would have never have been possible otherwise, and even got to get shot as as a side benefit. I would not trade those experiences for anything in the world. The wife has even been supportive of all the multirotor stuff since then. I won't say there hasn't been a little tit for tat along the way but the trade offs haven't been bad. So thanks again.
.The addition of some advertising does not have to be irritating or a bad thing. In fact, it can be good by providing exposure to new or old products we might have been unaware of that we would have been making use of had we known of them. If ads are targeted to the forums where they would be most appropriate a lot of people benefit. Yea, the site owners make money but what's wrong with that? How many people want to give their work away? Something has to pay for the time and effort it takes to run a site and they can be a lot of work. I came within an hour of buying Team Flying Circus some years ago at a price that would have been great at the time but the amount of work that would have been required would have put a serious hurt on my primary money maker. Not giving it the devotion it needed would have caused the site to do exactly as it has done, wither and die. I would really like to see ads from the high end product people. There's not too many places to get exposed to them and what they have to offer could be amazing. I'm not too keen of the entry level stuff but there's a place and people for that too. Without new people entering the hobby/endeavor our activities eventually shrink in size and scope to where the only people you see involved are as old or older than me, and I'm older than dirt.
Back to the old RCU. Marc and Nathan ran a pretty good site back then. I think is was close to 16-17 years ago when I first landed there. I watched, and perhaps helped from the outside, it grow to encompass just about everything in RC. The for sale department became stellar with a lot of good deals for the buyers and a good place to move stuff fairly quickly for the sellers. Marc was as fair as an Admin can be in a venue that served everyone and and all the different attitudes and morals that come with such territory. We bumped heads from time to time and despite how hard headed I can be we always worked through the rough spots. Thousands of people benefited from RCU. A lot of new people got to learn, and lot of experienced people got to share. Manufacturers sold a lot of product, some not so good but most pretty darn good. Some brand names became who they are today because of their exposure at RCU, and in doing so continue to design and market products that people want or need. Some rose to a peak and fell along the way too, but that's the nature of the hobby industry.
We need another good multirotor site that encompasses a broad spectrum of activities. The only other one that does that caters to beginners and one or two manufacturers. We need a place where those with experience can share that experience, both with ourselves and with those that qualify themselves to make the transition to greater aspirations. We need to be able to discuss all products without concern of being slapped down by a manufacturer rep or their minions. Beginners, racers, amateur AP people, inventors, potential clients, trade groups, etc., all could use a place where a single stop on the web could put them in contact with the people and information they need to see and talk to. Such a site comes about not just with the guidance and vision of the Admins, but from the desire of the users to make a site their home. Being gone from home as long as I have I can truly appreciate someplace that feels like home. Give it a shot and help make it what you want it to be.
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