I think this horn (and glow plugs, and balsa) discussion is a great example of why our hobby is in decline. I find this sad.
I am sure some see this as evolution or maybe just requiring more craftsmanship or something. And that may very well be true. I think of the lack of easy access to supply of hobby products as a barrier to growth.
CL hasn't been a major fraction of the hobby industry since the early 70's, as soon as you could get a digital proportional RC (vice a finicky reed system) for $200-300, all the people flying casual CL immediately switched. Most of what we recall as a "golden age" were just the consumers waiting to - and forgive me - "move up" to RC. That was 2 full generations ago, 50ish years, or *half a century*.
The notion that we can do something to "grow the hobby" into a major market activity is, frankly, ludicrous, and most of the efforts along those lines have been highly counter-productive. We have some thing that *we* like, it's staying about even or sinking slowly as far as participation goes, let's move on from nostalgia.
I think CL Stunt has been almost miraculously successful in retaining activity on something so far out of the mainstream, FAR better than almost any other "niche" of modeling hobbies. I think we have a much better chance of having a enjoyable event for those who want to do it by trying to figure out how we have managed to stave it off so long, rather than trying to make wholesale changes to try to make it a mass appeal activity, because as far as I can tell, that is patently impossible.
Brett
p.s. I take as an example of how hobbies have collapsed into niches - plastic modeling. Yes, people still do it, there are plenty of very high-quality plastic modeling products and absolutely stellar information available for how to do it. But first wood, then plastic, static scale modeling was an absolutely huge and ubiquitous activity. Damn near every boy build at least some of them, the market penetration was nearly 100%, every department store, drug store, even convenience stores had a toy section and most of the boys side of toy section was dedicated to plastic models, usually with a testors paint rack, too. It was a huge, universal, hobby.
Try finding one now, even at what they refer to as a "hobby shop" (Hobby Lobby, Michael's, etc). That market collapsed for all the usual reasons we have gone on about for years, but the point is, it did collapse, and it was *far, far bigger* and required far less knowledge/effort/dedication/space than CL ever did.
Topic: Control horns (Read 2764 times)