Aircar has been a friend of mine for thirty years. He does ramble on but that's just how his brain works, in my opinion his knowledge and retention of it is not only encyclopedic, but his powers of reasoning are frequently genius. He isn't always easy to follow because he thrives on keeping back part of the story. He doesn't do that out of any intended meanness, he does it to stimulate others' thinking in the hope of generating further discussion and outcomes, rather than people just accepting his ideas as being definitive.
I asked a lot of questions of the mods and also of Aircar directly, regarding the reasons for his banning. As you might expect it was not as simple as his constant threadjacking toward discussion of his pet subject - that of aircars of course.
Aircar (Ross) was probably as surprised as anyone, he had previously received a week's ban for diverting discussions toward roadables having been previously asked to refrain from doing that, and, as one mod put it, when he returned a week later he came back swinging just as if nothing had been said.
Ross's version was that he understood he was to be careful to not bring all discussions around to the subject of roadable aircraft so he refrained from doing so. However, he had been in the middle of an occasionally heated discussion with Mark Moore, whose assertions didn't always line up with Ross's thinking, and because Mark felt that Ross's comments on his thread were off-topic the mods, or one mod, deemed that Ross was once again derailing discussions in his own favour.
It didn't help Ross's position that Mark Moore has worked at NASA for 30yrs, (but then so have some completely loopy people that I know - though I'm not suggesting that Mark is one of them, just that NASA is a huge organisation that employs all sorts) and some felt that gave Mark some form of credibility that Ross wasn't accorded perhaps, and that Mark should be treated with more respect.
Well - I've never known Ross to treat anyone with anything other than complete and absolute respect though his forthright honesty is occasionally too blunt for some.
It's notable that having received such cossetting and protection from the more 'delinquent' elements in HBA, Mark hasn't since found anyone of sufficient mental perspicacity to spar with, and so hasn't had anything to contribute to HBA since last July. Hence we lost two fine minds in a single blow. Actually we lost quite a few others, some who left in protest at Ross's permanent ban, and others who, like Mark, found Ross's posts both contentious and irresistible, and his absence left them with little or nothing of interest to discuss.
We are all the poorer, and I would like to think that the mods might give some thought to reversing the decision, I know that Ross never intended to cause any upset and we certainly need the benefit of minds and experience like his. The list of his personal friends and former employers reads like a Who's Who of the upper echelons of the aviation world. For those who aren't aware it was his friendship with Molt Taylor that first stirred his thoughts about roadable aircraft, and his time with Dick Schreder, and Burt Rutan at Scaled, that gave him his comprehensive knowledge of composites.
Also - Ross virtually lived for the discussions he had with so many of us on HBA, and is a lonelier soul these days for lack of them. He's not very computer literate and suffers constant problems when trying to play with email but he loves to chat on the phone. Given that Skype costs next to nothing, if anyone here would like to get in contact I'm sure Ross would be delighted, just be sure to have a couple of hours free when you give him a call, and a few more hours to come to terms with the concepts his conversations always provoke in your thinking afterwards. PM me if you like and I'll check with Ross that I can pass on his phone number, his time zone is UTC+11 this time of year, UTC+10 in southern hemi winter.
