Obviously there are a lot of psychos out there, but I never figured that modelers would carry a grudge as far as contacting someone's employer. These are admittedly toy airplanes (though they are pretty darned nice toys), but we don't have act like children to enjoy them.

I have met several R/C Universe and R/C groups posters on a personal basis. One guy was moving to my area, so I invited him to my club and we've become personal friends. We work on planes together and go flying and hobby shopping together. There are other guys I've talked to here that are in Florida and not too far away from me, and I really need to take up their invitations to go flying with them at their clubs, but I am so busy with students the safety team that I can't get away.

Seems to me this is a better use of the internet than contacting the employers of people one may disagree with.


///////////OK, the rest is just a frustrated rant, so read it at your own peril:///////////

I use the same handle I have used for years on the motor sports forums, but I have never hid who I am or where I'm at. I've used the internet as an opportunity to meet a lot of nice folks. The fans of the Grand American Roles Sport scar Series meet up at all the races and they are a great bunch. There is also a rival sport scar series, but there is very little hostility between participants or the fans. Basically we all like sport scar racing and most people like both series. Strangely enough, the one guy I disagree with most often corresponds with me by email and PM. We would probably be friends on a face-to-face basis if he wasn't all the way across the country.

But, if you think these AMA discussions are heated, check out how hostile it gets on the racing forums when the topic is American open wheeled racing. Some of those morons have gone so far as to vandalize cars at people's homes and there has even been a confrontation or two at the races. Even on the most heavily moderated racing forum on the internet, you can't have a civil discussion without open warfare breaking out within a few pages.

Obviously, it was this sort of behavior that helped me lose interest in open wheel racing. There is no one in my area that likes open wheel racing, and the ones on the internet want to do nothing but nitpick, fight and tear everything down. Nice sport, eh? I mean, do you have time for that sort of crap? I like a good debate, but then again I don't get my butt kicked and then go to another forum where they can't respond and start calling my adversaries raunchy names. Some of the intelligent people I have sparred with in civil fashion for years, and some of those have even become real life friends. You know, the stinking fans are tearing their own sport apart and are driving each other away.

I don't think we want this to happen to aeromodelling, do we?