You brought up some interesting points.  Mainly, I've been hearing from a 
couple of sysops around here that echo traffic has been light so FIDO and 
RCNET echos were considered expendable.  My feeling is that RCers are being 
squeezed by the value of the real estate that they're using.  Theother thing 

noticed is that local hobby shops are slowly closing their doors.  
On the subject of my slow student, he's probably typical of most students in 
that he usually flew six flights perday one day per week.  When he came to me 
he had this beautiful epoxy\silkspan Falcon.  His late father had built it 
or
himself about a year before he passed away.  The OS .30 was a late 60's 
vintage engine.  Needless to say, it had quite a sentimental value to my 
student and he dreaded the day when I would force him to take it up.  His 
first plane was some Goldberg foam job with and old OS .10. Some 3 channel 
thing and right now I forget the name of it.  Anyway when the foamie finally 
bit the dust I pushed to take the FAlcon up.  It came out quite heavy and 
ith
that .30 was about 10 rpm short of stalling.  As he progressed he switched to 
a Royal .40 that well always gave us idling problems and it really wasn't 
ill
he moved further up with the ST .45 that it seems his skills really picked up 
(landing wise).  My theory to Kelly was that I wouldn't overrule the 
udgement
of his instructor and that flying RC is a progessively learned skill that 
you're constantly honing constantly practicing.
--- GEcho 1.00
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