Hi Scubyfan

Whilst I empathise with your frustration, no offence intended but your employment of the verb transitive lose in the present participle "losing" begs the question, where have you been for the past 30 years?

The answer in two words is "it's 2004". If that doesn't make the answer abundantly clear, amplification is pointless.

I flew/fly C/L and fly R/C, I am not into absurd superiority arguments. Although today I fly predominently R/C, both are fun. But the reasons C/L is an anachronism in today's society are so obvious they shouldn't require any elaboration. Whether C/L deserves to be in this position or not is completely moot and unworthy of debate. Like Free Flight, except for it's own generation and a very few of their introduced progeny accompanied by the odd fanatical afficionado, C/L is virtually dead and is doomed to inevitible extinction for all practical purposes upon the demise of its own generation. They, just like R/C is now, were both of and came of age in their own era. If it gives you any satisfaction, R/C will invariably go a similar way. You can witness this already in the age demographic representation at R/C clubs. The PC and other 'cooler' techno-titillation has replaced it with the emergent generation.

Is C/L fun. Heck yer! So stop living in the past, get over it, get on with it, and enjoy it while you still can in the company of like minded others.

If it helps you understand and accept why, perhaps you've observed that cars aren't hand started by crank handle any more and people travel intercontinentally airliner rather than steamship?