I know there is an incredible wealth of information on the RC Universe site. The problem for me is finding what I'm looking for.

For example, today at the field, someone was talking about the "flying hydro" airplane that someone has built that looks like a boat, but flies like a plane. I remember seeing posts on the RCU forums about it in the past.

When I got home from the field, I searched for a video and articles about the unusual aircraft.

First, I tried an "advanced" search for "flying AND hydro AND video". I got an error message; no matches. I tried again checkmarking the "less precise" search box. The search returned 500 (!) matches, with the first "match" being "Extreme Flight 87" Yak 54 - Build & Fly," which has nothing at all to do with the flying hydro video. So I tried the advanced search again, this time with just "flying AND hydro". Error message: no matches.

This is the most incredible RC website I know of. It deserves a more functional search engine!

Good flying,
desmobob

I agree!

I think we all can agree, that computer searches are pretty .. lax.

They search for the word, and every instanse that 'word' shows up. You never get what you intend..

And, even if the posts that mention it once, just in passing, will get called up.

Go by the 'ranking system' as it does help weed out the partails & passings posts.

this is better than some Iv'e seen & dealt with. Also, limiting the search to a specific forum helps a lot..

I don't think so. I think they're getting better all the time. Look at Google, for example....

I didn't notice any ranking system. I did click on the very first result, which I assumed was the best ranked. Not even close....

I was thinking just the opposite. Despite the rest of the site being outstanding, the search engine seems to be one of the worst I've used.

I will try limiting the search to specific forums, which sounds like it might help a lot. I should have tried that earlier.

Thanks,
desmobob

Sorry but I have to agree. I will sometimes type in 2 words, go to the bottom and select "subject" "topic" "exact match" and get things that have nothing to do with what I am looking for.

try hydrofoam....

but while we are on the search thing...and since you were all waiting for my beef

Try searching for YS, OS, os .61, QQ, EF.......should I continue??

I took a more careful look at the search page and now see what you are refering to. This might be one of the problems I had with searching; the default selection is to sort results by post date, not ranking.

Maybe the search engine isn't as bad as I first thought... maybe I need to be a little more careful selecting my options on the search page.

Good flying,
desmobob

Go try that same search in Google flying hydro video took me right to it.

I have the defaults set to provide a WIDER results set to ensure obscure things are in fact found. If your results are too wide then start toying w/the parameters at will to narrow the field. We are not google by any means (at 100 billion market cap they have and 4000 or so employees we just can't compete and be as good) but if you tweak the parameters on that page you should be able to get a hang of how to tweak it in those cases where your results set is too wide and at least significantly improve the results.

it supports boolean (and/or searches), results by date or rank, less precise/more precise options and more. Just feel free to flip some switches to make it work for your particular search. you won't break anything I promise and a few tweaks can turn a shotgun result set into a precision rifle shot

Is there a way to search individual threads? I haven't been able to figure it out if there is a way. Thas search engine is the worst I have used. Check out the one on www.rctech.net or www.ford-trucks.com . They are a lot easier to use and I get the result I am looking for most of the time. Let me know if I am missing something. It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult.

Thanks if you can help. If not maybe you should revise the format.

Bottom right of every thread is a search this thread box. scroll to the end of the thread and it is right under the quick reply box.

for better results on general searches tweak the paramaters to and checkboxes to provide a more narrow set of results. the default is to give a wider set to ensure a probability of hits

Thanks. This forum format is not what I am used to. I'll see if I can get used to the way things work here.

Also some of the things you may have been searching for were not found because the index had not updated in over 10 days! there was a permission error on the server that I discovered after your note when I decided to further investigate to ensure all was working properly (and it wasn't). try again now as it is updating 2x/day correctly now.

marc