benrussellpa said:
Alan,
Any thought ever given to moving the milair thread from the MD forum to the military forum?
Yes, but it wasn't seriously considered. The thinking was that we needed a regional forum. It would aid all of us in that region by gathering details of flights that extend beyond the listening area of most of us since unit flight areas are larger than a single person's listening area. It has worked extremely well in that regard.
If we brought it over to the Military Forum, it would become a nationwide flight log and regional flight details would be lost or very difficult to find in the clutter. You see how large the Maryland thread has become with thousands of replies and page views. Imagine a single thread with 30 or 40 such groups posting from all over the country. Area continuity would be lost.
There is, in my opinion, some benefit to reading nationwide logs such as those at the Milcom forum on qth.net to gain an understanding of such things as callsign and airframe usage along with flight tactics which constantly develop and change. Those things might be used in a different part of the country before being used in my area. I also find it helpful when a flight from my area flies out of range heading south, for instance, and someone from Florida jumps in and says they were heard at the Avon Park Range down that way. Good stuff.
However, I think we've probably developed an understanding of all the details of military flying units in our region much more completely as a result of the regional coverage that just happens to be within the Maryland forums simply because it started there and spread out as the need arose. New frequencies and callsigns are recovered immediately as a result. I believe that ability would suffer if the thread covered a much larger area. I do think other regions around the country where there is sufficient interest should probably do the same thing whether it's in a generic thread or in state threads. It would help everyone in an area to have the same amount of interest and contributions we have in our region.
