A question for all you long timers out there. Would you say the hobby is increasing or decreasing in popularity? Leveled off maybe? Just curious, thanks.
The average age of combatants isn't going down. Hobby shops are rare. Smart phones are smarter than the operators. Kids play only with their thumbs, and don't go outside. Everything is just fine!
The biggest increase in membership was in the late 90s when stuff got onto the web. The overall membership has been level for years. If this was something you could buy at Wallmart we'd have a 100,000 battlers. But it's a lot of work. Lots of people have no money for it but do have time. Others have money to do it but have no time. We are a select few.
I think what hurt us is 2008 (economy) + other things HOWEVER, in 2015 there were 3 of us in GLAS, we will have 8-9 boats on the water in 2017. The good news is that we do not need a 1,000 Also, having a boat on the water and battling is VERY contagious
Well I think there is so much for people to see what with Netflix and the like so people are spending more time watching shows through these type of channels. Things are definitely more expensive to buy for the Hobby than ever before . It is not that people do not have time they do but they are spending those hours on their phone gaming or watching media and such. I use my phone more for my entertainment and hobby stuff than I use the TV itself. When I joined the hobby back in the late 80s there was a recession and our dollar was low. Everything was going up. It cost me over 800.00 to get my Swampwork Bismarck and the various packages to make it combat ready. BB cannons were 20.00 now they are much more expensive . Big Gun even more so . These days most people want leisure pursuits that require little time involvement and instant gratification. People switch up their interests much more rapidly these days as oppose to staying with an interest in their Hobbies for a long time. However Social Media is great for getting the word out about the Hobby and battling videos , how to tips and the like helps spread awareness.
I think @CURT has hit it perfectly. A lot of people just aren't interested in the amount of effort and money it takes to build a ship that may only get used a couple times a year if lucky. This will always be a niche hobby.
After the turn of the century, our club just faded away so everyone could raise their families. Only a couple of us stuck with it and we had to play out of the area until even the parent club Queen's Own faded away. Then a couple years ago three of us decided to give it a try again locally. We went from 3 to 15 almost overnight. We now have that many show up and participate at almost every event and we don't need to have all members present. In the three years since we re-started our club, we have put together at least 50 new, fully armed warships! Everything from Submarines to Battleships and not in the typical scale of 1/144, but in 1/72. Our most common warships are 2 and 3 gun destroyers. We have a couple armed 8' Cruisers and next year we expect to see armed PT's and a Schnellboot. One member has finally completed arming his 11' DKM Tirpitz and will likely expect to see an armed allied Battleship to fight. We have been surprised by the steady growth we have experienced since reforming our club. It was not expected and especially not as fast as it did happen. Our parent club Queen's Own has also began to hold events again after a several year hiatus. They are also gaining new members and building new ships once again. For us, our club and it's membership is as big and just as successful as we had ever been. It has taken much more work to get us here. Back in the 90's it seamed that members fell in our laps, now you have to work for them. Once we get them into the club, we have to teach them how to build and operate the ships. As long as we continue to do things right, we expect our club will grow even more. In addition, the one thing our re-formed club has prided itself on, is honest and true facts when making reference to the number of ships and captains our club has. So when I say we just attended a local Mini-Maker Fair and picked up four new members, we can back it up. Three of the four are already building (with our help) and the fourth should be starting very soon. I realize this is not the sizeable number of new members that other clubs get after each Maker Fair they attend, but we are happy with the four we did get. So as a long timer who has been doing this steady since 1985; I say the hobby/sport of RC Combat in our area is just as strong as ever. We just have to work harder to get and keep members.
I think also that your finding a lot of retired people out there looking for something to occupy their time and interests and this Hobby fits in nicely for those that can afford it. Me I am not retired but I am not young also. I work shift work and with the Spouse home business we rarely have free time. There is no way I could form a group and run it anymore. There is a lot of interest from the younger market but they generally pull out as they get older or their life situations change which they do quite frequently so it is hard for them to keep going in the hobby. I agree it is Niche hobby and requires a lot of work to keep people motivated and interested . Sometimes they come back when their lives are a little more settled and stable. Most have moved on to other things. Be that as it may I try to promote the hobby as much as possible through facebook as I use that more than anything else. Always promoting the local vendors when people show interest or asking where to get the ships so I do my part to keep the hobby going. For me here on this Rock I live on our summer season is very short and wild weather wise , we have no spring and our winters are very very long. No a great place for battling. I am 52 and I am more busy now than I was when I was in my 30s and 40s .
Because this hobby requires that you be a good: electrician plumber woodworker machine tool tech. airgun maker and so on. Those skills are rather hard to come by, and you can't build it on a kitchen table (without issue with your wife) As Bob stated if you had a kit in Walmart you would have 1000. (insurance issue?, $50 bucks ?) Would you want your average Walmart shopper? Is that where we have to go to grow? I have been in the hobby from 1983 and the numbers generally are flat, up and down but not growing. The internet and this site is a YUGE stage that has a vast reach, Kudos Nick. This site could really be the way to growth. More how to? More build date co-ordination? More battle and battle site mapping?
BOY, I did not know I could do all those things I think we should make the fact that someone can buy a used boat more prominent on our web-sites. I know we can find this stuff, but it should be more obvious. This would attract more plug and play people? a guy in Minnesota sold 3 ships and 5 radios for $500 (could be a lot of rookies on the water)
I think its more complicated... If Walmart sold a boat then we would have a lot of battlers for 1 or 2 weekends.. then when they had to patch the boat, wait for help to fix a motor, clean the pump, or re-load bb's.. they will decide it is much easier to do something else... then we have a load of boats for sale on the forum. If we somehow make the hobby easier to do, easier to build, easier to understand we might attract more of the maker crowd. The 'Maker' movement is huge and expanding rapidly. I am not sure any of their projects are any easier than what we are doing but the skills needed, products, and builds are fairly universal. Each robot may look different but that are all mostly mechanically alike. Take R/C cars for instance.. I am sure that there is not a regular racer for every single race quality car that has been sold. I looked into getting back into car racing (I used to do it a lot in the 80's) and wow.. it was a long day.. hot.. a pain in the but.. dusty.. and you get to race a whole 30 mins in 8 hours. However building a car is fairly straight forward, buy a kit, buy an esc, motor, tires, batteries.. and you are at least able to drive around the track. Not so much with these boats we have. The major choices are which motor / esc combo to buy, which tires, springs, shock oil.. not rocket science... fairly easy to understand. Our hobby.. if you ask a question you get 20 different points of view, with radically different methods of how to get the job done... and some of it good, some of it bad. As a new captain how do you choose? The best bet is working with the local group but even in those cases there are too many recipes to arrive at the same result. And even then no guarantee that it will work. What we really need to do is streamline the building process much as they did with r/c cars, trucks, and boats that are commercially offered. Then its a simple matter of buying the hull, choosing hardware, simple motor and esc choices, and so on. We don't really have that right now except in certain areas that I am aware of where all the guys build their boats in a similar matter. I tip my hat to Bob in this respect as he has come up with fairly simple ways of making boats, making rudders, and other things that even I can understand OR demonstrate for a new captain. Modular parts are key.. an ESC is a modular part.. though most may not agree. If it fails you just swap it out.. with consistent connector adoption you could nearly use any brand on most boats assuming they had equal specifications. Ready made connector harnesses for guns and main power (or easy templates), perhaps rudder templates, etc. are great and would have made my first year a dream. These things still don't exist today. I think we should ALL encourage new guys to go mainstream with boat and part selection to ensure that they get on the water as soon as possible. I believe that convincing new guys to 'do whatever you want' or to build obscure boats is not necessarily bad advice but overall seems to present a barrier to getting them on the water as soon as possible. No matter how many folks join the forum and enjoy the experience, the hobby of model warship combat will not survive without Captains and ships on the water.. participating in battles. Once they attend a few battles in a boat that was easy to build and battle.. they can THEN experiment with specialty boats and develop other methods. I know many folks main thing is model building and tinkering but Model Warship Combat is about the 'Battling' and we should be sure to direct new captains to that purpose. We have a lot of potential recruits in our area but for whatever reason.. they spent money on boats but never work on them, attend build sessions, or attend battles when we have them. What could we do to get these guys involved? Why is it so difficult to get these guys that spent money on the hobby.. to participate in it? THAT is the KEY. So I say, emphasize BATTLING first, streamline the building process (not bombard them with hundreds of methods), modularize the parts for easy installation, and encourage local groups to standardize.. and you will most likely see a better retention percentage and a higher percentage of battle participants vs non-battling boat owners. J
Have rookie attend a battle Have a loaner DO NOT sink him Suggest a good starter boat or used boat Have build sessions - show videos I like to be available by phone so if someone is hung-up on a problem I can give him an immediate solution
I would wait a little while before the slaughter but some guys are ready to jump in.. and the name of the game is sink the ship. I haven't seen too many used boats that were ready to go.. most are in very bad shape.. I would rather have my guys build their own in a quick way and use a loaner until then. Suppose I need to get a loaner working.. I sold off all the others
I like nick's warships in detail (or whatever he called it) idea where you get captains with a well working ship to detail out exact placement, parts, etc. so that a new person could replicate a well working ship by duplicating the setup for their initial build. A lot of the problems come from the details, and even good captains go through a rebuild/shakedown period where parts are swapped and layouts are changed. Starting with a known decent layout gets the new person way along towards a good functioning ship. this also helps with the often overlooked details related to ballast and checking ballast not only when floating but when partly sunk as well. I have been meaning to also point out that new captains should avoid any boat that won't fit in their bathtub/water trough if they have one, as a whole lot of problems can be found and fixed simply by floating and sinking in the tub as a part of the build process.
A lot of great point have been raised by many of you in this thread. I wanted to add an additional aspect to this. The single most surprising thing that occurred during our first Maker Fair venture was the number of mothers walking their High School sons around, wanting them to pick a hobby to get involved with. The common comment from them was they wanted their boys to start working with more than their thumbs. We were honest about having to work with wood, electrical, pneumatics, etc. That it was many hours of solo work building your ship and preparing it for only a few battles each year. That your masterpiece would get torn up and you had to fix it. Even with all the honest negatives we brought up, we had many saying that it was exactly what they were looking for. We had many that appeared to be very interested and wanted to come out and watch the next battle! It was easy for us to spot the ones looking for some entertainment, versus those that were serious. We discouraged the look-e-loo's. We still got 4 serious new members out of it. I have heard other clubs have gone this route and have come away with 20, 30 or more new members. So our numbers are quite low by comparison, but we feel that the ones we did hook, will stay hooked. All I am saying is market your hobby/sport honestly, put some time into selling it in your local area by attending shows, Hobby Shop swap meets, etc. You cannot expect to gain to many serious members from the internet alone. This site is fantastic once someone is hooked, it doesn't provide enough bait to draw people away from their video games.
I re-read my post and I wanted to make it clear to everyone, that I was not suggesting every club run out and join in the Maker Fair revolution. It has it's advantages and disadvantages; you need to be careful how you approach it. Our club was very negative towards Maker Fair until we tried it, but when we did it we made sure we were not just "cheap" entertainment. Our local Maker Fair has even offered us use of an existing pond at the venue and wants us to hold events, but we declined. We made sure that everyone was aware that we were there for a purpose and that purpose was to share the construction and building aspects. If they wanted to join in the fighting, that would come with time. John "Z-Boat" Kort with one of his crowd's of admirers. John had an audience like this the entire day! He never took a break or sat down like the rest of us did. We had both the DKM Tirpitz and the USS Missouri at the event. I hate to say it, but the crowds flocked to the damn Axis ships way more than they did to our Allied ones. Good shot of the bow of the HMS Superb, French destroyer Mogador and the skeleton of the submarine Surcouf. To the right is a pair of American PT's, the USS Shannon, the USS Salt Lake City and of course the USS Missouri. As I said, my crowds for the Allied ships was never as big as for the Axis.
