THE Cub Report, Version- Happy Birthday America

Well hello there ‘Merica, happy birthday to you. If you are an American, you’ll enjoy a day of drinking, shooting off fireworks, grilling outside, and if you get lucky enough, even some trigger time (either gun or rc). If you are outside the states, yes, us wacky Americans really kick the party up a notch on Independence Day, celebrating the day we declared were were a vapor trail from the British Empire.

There was a time when the rc hobby was all about American companies, just as there was a time when it was all about the Japanese. Now days the hobby is much more global, much more than a lot of people think (even some in the industry). For example, we have posted certain products from American companies that were never going to become available here in the states, only overseas, and have been asked to pull the posts down because we (BigSquidRC) are an “American Website”. Those companies saw it like we would be talking about a product that would never be released in the states, therefore we shouldn’t be running up American’s hopes. However, in this day and age, every site on the internet isn’t just American, or German, or Canadian, every website that gets crawled by Google reaches every single corner of the globe. Therefore when a new product is announced, even if it won’t be released worldwide, we want to get that news out there. People overseas that can get the product will learn about it, and those that can’t can drool over it and send out emails asking that it does get released in their home country.

I was reminded a bit of how global the rc industry has become last week when writing up “ASK Cubby”. I spend less than a week a year in Germany, and when I am there it isn’t for rc reasons. So I asked a few questions of a German reader of ours to help me learn more about how the hobby is doing over there. His answers were awesome and I paid close attention to them, hopefully they were interesting for you all to read as well. Anyways, a surprising number of our readers are from overseas. I don’t have the numbers laying in front of me, but if memory serves correct, roughly it is roughly one third. That is thousands of readers per day that most likely don’t speak English very well, but read (or Google translate) our site because they love the rc hobby enough to seek out as much info as they can.

Also… I know there has been a bunch of times that we’ve posted about a product by an American company that was primarily only going to be in the American market, and then we get flooded with email from overseas asking the best place to buy it from the States. Thanks to places like Amazon, eBay, etc, it is easier than ever to buy products from half way across the globe and have them in your hand a few days later. As much as some people might not think that the rc industry has gone from localized to a global market, it has, all thanks to this wonderful lil’ thing we call the internet.

So while you are sitting around the BBQ pit today killing a burger and a slice of apple pie, remember how good it is to be American, but also know that slowly but surely our world is getting a whole lot smaller than it used to be back in 1776, even as it relates to rc.

There ya have it, yet another Cub Report. Have a GREAT Independence Day and support your local bash spots and hobby shops when ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter