Thanks for the quick response. And for the suggestions on what to try, however, all those things have been considered (multiple browsers on multiple machines) and ensuring the machines were 'clean'. Recently got a new laptop and the performance of RCU on a brand new machine was basically the same. Your suggestion that it is my machine is the problem and no one else is reporting a lot of problems with slowness seems a bit strange after reading many threads here on RCU as well as talking to flying friends. They all report the same, RCU is by far the slowest RC site they visit.

Out of curiosity, I tried pinging various sites, all of which responded. pings to rcuniverse.com time out. Don't know if that means anything.

thanks again for the quick response
Woodie