> No one has mentioned the German model magazines, such as Aufind. My
> German is poor but these magazines are a real incentive to improve it.
My favorite model mag is RCM, out of England. Beautiful pictures,
instructive articles, and plans. Not enough sailplanes, but I'm learning
to accept that.
The first RC glider I built, the Bug, came from its pages.
> They always have lots of data and informative photos and figures which
> are language-independent. There are reviews of state-of-the-art
> commercial products as well as stories about the projects of some very
> inventive modellers, in a place where RC Modelling is a highly
> respected
> pursuit. I also enjoy reading the many small ads for unique aircraft
> and other products which are made by craftsmen, in cottage
> industries, and which are not widely marketed outside of magazine ads
> and
> word-of-mouth.
That sounds fantastic. I wish it was in English. Babelfish makes it into
some sort of Schwartzneggerian joke. It's like having Conan out at the
slope.
> This thread may have more to do with the frustration of
> some (most?) old-timers with the sad fact that the
> hobby of the designer/builder and the sport of piloting
> seem to be getting farther and farther apart.
I agree. I like to build things and then stand, agog, as they fly. ("It
FLIES?") I'm not a sportsman. I don't like to compete very much, but boy,
do I like to make things as beautiful as I can.
But I know that's not for everyone. I consider the sportsman flyers to
be a separate species from me, and I can enjoy their speed and elegant
flight while sharing the slope.
> Until
> very recently if you wanted to fly model airplanes you
> *had* to build your own. All sports have their roots
> in some other more basic activity that involved making
> the equipment. It's the nature of industrial society
> that any demand for material things will eventually be
> met by producers and sportsmen (consumers) will make
> some of them rich.
Geez, people are getting rich making model planes? Who? No, I think that
there are builders who are sharing with their friends and trying to
cover the costs of being crafstmen.
I can't build that good a plane yet, but if I were to charge what I
charge as a designer for one of my planes, no one could afford one. I'm
not even sure *I* can. So my hats off to those of you who can do it and
not lose money out the nose, and more hats off to those of you who lose
money out the nose and still love it.
> Archery started simply as a way to put food on the
> table. The stone age hunters spent evenings flaking
> arrowheads and fleching shafts. Now it's a sport
> that's catered to by a huge industry and the sportsman
> may not even see a wild animal more than once a year,
> if even then.
And I would argue that knapped flint and fire-hardened wood make a
stunningly beautiful arrow. Elegant, refined, and deadly effective. It
would sure be a different experience to hunt that way.
> Model aviation started with Sir George Cayley's first
> crude glider in 1804. About 60 years later Alphonse
> Penaud started using rubber bands to power his models
> and in 1871 his "planophore" flew 131 feet. These, and
> many more, were scientific instruments *not* toys yet
> you can walk into any hobby shop and buy a mass
> produced *toy* that's not much more sophisticated than
> the original planophore. <http://www.flyingmachines.org/pend.html>
There are planophores you can get as birthday cards, shaped like
butterflies. They cost pennies.
> Is this pandering to an illiterate bourgeoisie? No,
> it's just the inevitable result of industrialization.
Well, in less provocative terms, you're selling to a market, rather than
sharing knowledge with friends. There's a difference between quantum
mechanics and buying a microwave, after all.
> A once vital activity gets sorted out into a hobby
> (production) and a sport (consumption).
I'm not sure that sport is mere consumption. I *would* say that the
outcome of the craft of building is consumed as the medium for the craft
of the sportsman.
> Most of the model aviation magazines have chosen to
> service the sportsmen and that's okay but it leaves
> guys like me out in the cold. There's probably just
> not as much money in catering to hobbyists because it
> requires a more technically sophisticated editorial
> staff and there's more time involved in writing a
> technical article than a product review with some
> glossy pictures.
Those glossy pictures cost a lot, but they sell a lot, too. RCSD is so
those of us who are engineers or artists can share our stuff, too.
> I for one would rather see one good
> isometric and an orthographic projection than five full
> color photos but that's just me.
Ah, here we get to the crux of the issue: information density. A
three-view or isometric is designed to present the maximum amount of
information with minimum noise. Personally, I'd like to see plans
alongside every photo in a mag. That is, of course, an absurd request, but
it would increase the value of the images hugely.
> This trend toward
> moving all the "real information" to the web is a
> double edged sward. On the one hand people have always
> freely shared technical information (often not until
> after enjoying a lead for some time but eventually new
> knowledge always gets out) and the web is a very easy
> way to share. On the other hand information can become
> hopelessly muddled if it's not collected and organized
> by someone. Personal web pages tend to stop growing
> after a time and many will eventually disappear. A
> magazine like RCSD is a permanent and easily searchable
> record of knowledge that can be browsed any time or
> place without electricity (well maybe a light bulb
> would be desirable sometimes). And it's still a lot
> easier to read a mag on a plane than a laptop.
True enough. Part of the issue, though, is the quality of images. Take a
look at a given how-to page on the net. If you read all the way through
it, it's probably because the pictures helped explain what was going on.
For instance, would you understand RDS without clear pictures? It's a
pretty weird system, but diagrams make it clear. When you think of a
separation bubble on an airfoil, do you think in terms of %chord, or do
you imagine a diagram?
Those aren't rhetorical questions, by the way. I'm curious how folks think
about this stuff.
-J
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