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Editorial

January 9th, 2004

A Wild Ride
It was 6 months ago that Small Flying Arts first went on the air, and my life hasn’t been the same since. The original intent was to publish useful, entertaining articles, and to get our readers involved in the process. Well that idea has worked out really well, and many of you have made marvelous contributions over a wide range of topics. As great as that is, I can't ignore the fact that SFA has grown into something larger than a magazine. Besides all the great articles here we’ve also added an image gallery, an ad management system, and a discussion forum that has become immensely popular. Talk about a crash course in webmastering!

Most unexpected of all was the explosive growth in the number of visitors to the site - In December alone we had 3,784 unique visitors, and over 880,000 page views were served to them!

That 's incredible to me!

On the Grill…
The Chinese chronicle the passage of time with the Year of the Dog, the Year of the Rat, and so on. I haven’t kept track, but I think this must be the Year of the Cookup. As far as I can tell, the cookup phenomenon got its start in a plastic modeling website where people did group builds of WWI aircraft. Soon afterwards, John Ernst brought the concept to the Free Flight community with his ever-popular FFCookup group (on Yahoo Groups). When the cookup idea was introduced in the SFA Forum it took hold like wildfire, and as I write this we now have six cookups running simultaneously. In case you haven’t tried one yet I highly recommend it as a way to inject more fun and learning into your hobby. There’s no doubt in my mind that these group builds have helped many beginners off to a great start, and I believe they are creating a real sense of community among modelers on the Internet. At least in the FF realm. Do you think the idea will ever take hold with R/C or C/L modelers? It’ll be interesting to see.

Access to Talent
I must be pretty excited about the SFA Forum, because I can’t stop writing about it. One of the best things is the amazing talent I find there. For most of us, the only time we ever heard from the experts was in books or magazines. Well you can now find some of the best modelers in the world hanging out in our forum! Come take a peek at the photos they post and ask them a few questions – they’ll love it as much as you will. We were all awed recently by one expert who was converting a WWI scale free-flight kit for micro R/C, and who posted progress photos for every major step. He included descriptions, sources for materials, and patiently answered a lot of questions. It was like a professional seminar on micro R/C conversion! All kinds of amazing projects like that are being laid out before our eyes in the SFA Forum – you won’t want to miss it.

Looking Ahead
What will the next six months bring? Well that really depends on you. Think about adding your enthusiasm to the activities in our forum. Or writing that article you’ve been thinking about. Maybe you have a great tip you’d like to see published, or a model that deserves some attention. There are several ways for you to shape SFA into what you want it to be. Our mission (in a nutshell) is to bring you more of what you want, and we do this by getting you involved in the process. Think about that for a while.

Kudos
This is where we give special recognition to individuals who have generously contributed their time and effort for the sake of the SFA community. A huge Thank You to all of the following…

Dave Cowell Chris Parent Derek Buckmaster Bruce Matthews Jeff Runnels David Walters Martin Hepperle John Koptonak Benjamin Nead	Jim Moseley Mike Taylor Todd McFarland Bill Carney Bob Chiang Denny Maize Dave Collins Paul Bradley Ludo de Jager	John Ernst Tim Goldstein Mike Stuart Andy Mitas Jim Millisky Bill Brown Al (simpleflyer) Neville Mines

And another big thank you goes to you, our reader, for helping to create a great community at Small Flying Arts!

Bhagat Dhillon
Editor
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