Suppose that a few years ago somebody said, "It'd be neat to have a plane you could throw 150 feet high, one that weighed only 9 ounces but would withstand launch speeds of 100 mph, one that would thermal, roll, do an outside loop, and stop dead in the air -- well, I guess that's pretty far-fetched." So now we've got 'em. They contain slick IC-based digital electronics, maybe NiMH or Lithium batteries, carbon fiber, fiberglass, aramid, teflon, nylon, machine-shaped balsa, and a lot of computer hours that probably got charged to some project that was not identified as model-airplane related. Not surprisingly, they are expensive. Today's HLG is quite a sophisticated little system, but this doesn't mean that something bad has happened to us or our hobby. Whenever you confront a competitive task, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to find a solution that simultaneously produces better results and is also requires less effort or resources. The same thing has happened in just about every kind of man/machine competition; it has gone to something of an extreme in bicycling, Wakefield, drag-racing, and ocean sailing. There's a perception that the participant who doesn't want to go to the limit to be a world-class competitor loses something in this. But all that has happened is that the competitive gap between him and the guys who really are world-class competitors is now bigger and more obvious. This is not really a loss, since the gap was always there. And it's offset by the real gain in knowledge of how he too can have a better-flying machine. Put another way, why should I be bent outa shape if my X-Bird, once apparently so competitive, now seems to be obsoleted by the latest TyrannoRaptor? The X-Bird still flies as well as it ever did. And now if I want to, I could have something that flies even better. So I have to consider myself better off, because I have all the choices and opportunities I had before, plus more. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
