JESUS CHRIST! (Apologies to any religious folks in the group) I thought the newsgroups sci.military.navy - sci.aviation.carrier - sci.aviation.hard-to-fly were about the most boring on Earth. That is, until the last two weeks or so here. You folks have raised ennui to an art form.

For two weeks my mailbox has been plugged by 120(!) messages a day from this group alone about hard-to fly aircraft, the terrors (shiver!) of landing on a carrier that is turning, propeller torque and various other
items of flying drivel. But the brownshoes are clever! They also disguise their topics under innocuous headings, thinking they can seduce other readers into perusing their gibberish.

As I learned at the Officer's Club at Breezy Point, aviators are the most boring effing people on this planet. They never let go a topic until every point is repeated twelve times (at least!), and until their knowledge (such
as it is) and their ego (too large to comprehend) is fully satisfied, which is never, apparently. marine(!) hasn't
spoken up about this plethora of claptrap disguised as wisdom. No ego involved, but I posted a message about my experiences I am astonished that no black shoe, no submariner, nobeing at and ashore at the Bay of Pigs and it was totally ignored. Now that was history! Not one hawk here deigned to mention it.

Other than paeans to our last (and great) CMC, or the sincere and heartfelt memoria to the crew of the THRESHER, nobody mentions these two branches of the service.

One stalwart from '57 did speak up to complain about the extremely condescening note to the effect "For those of you not aviators..." and was put down by Jim Kenney who stated, in effect, "you have a delete key." True! Except I am not willing to hit the damn DELETE key 120 times a day. Nor should I have to. I tried using filters for a while, but found I was missing too many interesting messages, because no one here changes the subject line.

I am sad and ashamed that this group, in which so much knowledge and experience resides, has been reduced to a forum for old aviation farts to exercise their egos.

There, I said it and I'm proud.

Now I am using my <Delete key, and leaving this group. I will miss some of you, although the reverse I know is not true. I will stop back in a few months and see if any new topics are under discussion, such as: "Do Helicopters Have Torque?", "Do Only Fixed-Wing Aircraft Have Torque?", "Does Anyone Care? Torque You!"

I expect a plethora of flames about this message, but if you post them here, it will feed only your ego; I will not see them. Send your bile and your vituperations to my mailbox. You could get this from the header, but most of you never read that.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I really don't want messages of support for my position. Why did you force ME to speak up?

Fond regards,

Larry '59

Note to Listowner......

Please insure that Mr. (name withheld) departure request is not fouled up by any
technical difficulties.

Pat Waugh '63
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