Originally Posted by init4fun

Mike I look at it this way , if someone says something like "The MR sig is the biggest sig in all of the AMA !" and I want to see if this is for real or if it's somehow based on bogus information , I'll try to look at as many surrounding details as possible as to how this stellar performer compares to all the other sigs to establish if there is an outside reason , beyond popularity , why this would be so . Say for instance every other AMA sig had strictly required AMA membership and this one didn't , well that would be a mitigating factor in the increased numbers , right ? But no , all AMA sigs appear to be open to non AMA members so that can't be a reason for the unusually high participation in this AMA sig VS all the others . So now we look further into things , like for instance we look at the cost to join . I am assuming that you paid nothing to join the MR sig ? Just to see if cost may be a factor I randomly looked at a couple of the other sigs and found that there is indeed a cost to join most all of the other sigs , in fact the LSF being the only one I looked at that had no annual membership dues . Some of the others were ;

IMAC = $40

IRCHA = $25

JPO = $25

MACA = $30

MECA = $20 for "internet membership" and $40 for "print membership"

So it could easily be asserted that maybe something more than just the rising popularity of MRs could be behind the astronomical numbers , a free membership VS a paid one being one really good reason for the numbers to be so high . I will well imagine that folks who belong to IMAC for $40 a year most certainly do have one IMAC membership and one only . But a free "no strings attached" membership could possibly have a single person signing up multiple times because that's what some folks will do , in the same way that the "sock puppet" account exists on free chat boards . Once there is even a tiny amount of "skin in the game" in the form of a membership fee , that's where you'll see the the separation of the actual hobbyists of that flying type (MR , fixed wing , whatever) VS those who sign up "just because it's free" . The buried question of course being of those 11K members , how many paying members would that translate to if this sig had a membership fee on par with an average of all the other sig's membership fees ?

Again , none of this is a shot at the MR sig in the least , merely a look at possible reasons for the high numbers VS the other sigs to see if other than the popularity of the MRs alone may play a role .