JJ,

I was not going to respond further to this thread, since it has gotten
depressingly long and convoluted for a very minor matter, but since you
have been in on the thread from its beginning you may be interested in
the background you don't know, which is the poster had first sent a
personal email to me asking the same question.

I used to have an "I'll answer all emails sent to me" policy, but over
the past year found I was spending way too much time answering emails
and so was particularly irked by those who seemed to find it easier to
send an email to me as a first response to any question they had, rather
than first looking for the answer in the information I had already taken
considerable time to write and post on the DrJack website. Having now
over 2200 registered users, I have to expect them to first try to find a
answer to their question on my website before emailing me. So my
present policy is to respond only to any questions which require
something unique from me. In the present case I knew the necessary
information was already on the website for anyone who would take the
time/trouble to click on the "MoreInfo" link under the "Wind Direction"
parameter description. (Interestingly, I checked and found that the
correspondent had not taken the time/trouble to become a registered user
- yet he wanted me to take time/trouble on his behalf!)

So I did not respond personally, but he did receive an automated email
response suggesting that any question could be posted to the DrJack
Forum for someone to answer. He chose not to do that but instead to
post to the entire RAS community, and you know the story from there.
For some time I have not been following RAS, but Tues I had my own
posting to make and stumbled upon this thread and could not believe what
it had produced! So I thought that giving a "definitive" answer might
finally end the thread and took the time to post something. From my
point of view it was not the question per se which was inappropriate,
but the fact that I knew that the asker had not made any effort to find
the answer himself, even though it was readly available. I call this
"not doing one's homework" and instead expecting to get the answer from
someone who _has_ done their homework!

Frankly the reason that I stopped following RAS some time ago was that I
often found the tone/level of discourse to be upsetting, particularly
the "anyone who doesn't agree with me is an idiot" type of posting with
insults being considered to be an "argument". I have been on the
Internet since 1985, which I think predates most, so am well aware of
the long "tradition" of "flaming" on newgroups. But it's not a
"tradition" that I personally want to be part of. There can be true
gold available on RAS (hence my recent posting, which produced info I
had been unable to figure out myself and was very helpful to me). But
there is also a lot of noise, and the question is how much dross is one
willing to pan through to get that gold. Different individuals have
different answers and I'm afraid my skin is not thick enough to be a
"RAS kind of guy". I should add, though, that what I have seen in the
most recent posting has generally been on a much higher level than I had
recalled - but perhaps that is because the soaring season has just ended
and people are still mellow. Oops, I can see I'm getting WAY off-topic
(and possibily be viewed by some as "attacking RAS" and so subject to
the usual flaming response, which I am not willing to respond to). But
I did want to let you know why you shouldn't expect to see regular
postings from me.


Jack