... You're very welcome, but I should be thanking you, not you thanking me
for all the help your articles were ( and still are ). I was pretty disappointed when your articles quit appearing in R/C Car, and I look forward to seeing them again, in
any magazine out there
I'm glad to hear you're back in action. Home life can get quite hectic ( I'm also married with a pre-teen, and we own a restaurant, life get nuts somedays ), and I'm glad you have it under control once again.
What attracted me to XRC was there no-bull approach, and Derek's writing style, and the X-Dyno. I like reading Derek's editorials, and I find myself agreeing with his point of view quite often. This is not to say that I don't agree with other editors' ideas, I just think Derek writing style stands out, and to me, I see his style being duplicated by other writers ( I'm not sure how 'true' that is, it just feels like that sometimes when I read other articles )
I like reading them all though, I like hearing different views, and reviews on the same vehicle or product, the more information I can get on a product I'm interested, the better for me. It's kind of like reading a newspaper that only prints RC news for me. Any new person getting into the hobby will more than likely rely on magazines until they've established some sort of an idea on how to enjoy this hobby, wether they race or bash. The more experienced/serious racer will seek out where he/she sees fit, likely relying a little less on magazines than the new person, but this doesn't mean that magazines provide
bad information because afterall, they have a reputation to worry about.
Now many will say they need to make their advertisers happy, this is true, but in order to get advertisers to buy ad space, they need to have satisfied readers ( meaning magazine sales ), or they won't sell ads. To keep their readers happy, they have to be as honest as possible in their approach. Everything always looks good from the other side of the fence.