But then it was sold, and the moderation/control became rather strange.

And when Shrox was banned, that was kinda all it took for me. I have pretty much quit TRF.

Over the years, I have noticed that there are lots of high-power enthusiasts over there. High power stuff is fine, it's just not my cup of tea. I do take exception to all the over-building that gets highlighted and bragged on with many of those high-power rockets. Seems like that portion of the hobby has been largely taken over by the "hold my beer and WATCH THIS!!" crowd. And no, not all of them fall in that category, but many do.

One of the most important features of our hobby at the beginning of it all was the safety theme of safe design and construction. Rockets were supposed to be crushable in case they struck anyone or anything important. Rockets were deliberately supposed to suffer the damage. The over-building gonzo crowd seemed to be proud that their rocket fell from X-thousand feet (after a recovery deployment failure) without any damage. That is just not right.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to foresee the day when those monster-sized (heavy), over-built, high powered rockets would start coming down on cars. And houses. And people. "The heck with safety, I wanna try a motor with the next bigger letter, and just because I can afford it, it must be a good idea!"

I don't like that attitude. But I am not gonna joust windmills over there on TRF and try to educate the apes that can't understand and don't want to learn.

Myself, I got burned out on trying to explain that swiveling fins on the front of the rocket needed to have static and dynamic stability all by themselves, or a severe case of aero-induced oscillatory flutter would likely ensue. This is pretty well understood throughout the aerospace industry....but I was stuck trying to explain this stuff to a bunch of JoeBobs. The capper for me was when one of those guys pulled out an old SAWE (Society of Allied Weight Engineers, of which I used to be a member) technical report to "prove" his point that the fin C.G. could be anywhere and that the moveable fin would still be safe, when the report that he was citing said the exact opposite. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water....

TRF had just become too misdirected for my tastes. I did regret leaving behind many contacts with some of the really great folks over there.

olDave (a.k.a., powderburner)