Is Bear in Hibernation

[Guest]

Does anyone know what happened to Bear? I enjoy his reviews so much, but he has been missing for the last month. His review are my highlight of the AVSIM forum. Jack.

[Bearracing 3]

Jack,No, I haven't gone into hibernation quite yet, but there are some dramatic changes going into effect concerning my weekly Bear picks. Over the last couple of months I was very busy with the Bush Flying in FS2002 feature and then my review of the RealAir Simulation SF.260! Since those were published, I've been working at getting my Bear Picks caught up. My picks covering the last 6 weeks should be up sometime next week, as I've already submitted them to my editor.I will be explaining the changes in detail on how my new Bear Picks will be implemented when the next edition is published, but to give you a brief idea of what is happening, I've had several changes in my personal life that have basically reduced my time available for flight simming by about 80% or so. Between a promotion at work and other items envolving my family, I simply do not have the time available to download, test, and review each and every file that gets uploaded each week and if you've noticed, the number of files (quality) that get uploaded each week are approaching 100s of files. In some cases the files have been as big as 100MB in size as well and considering I am stuck with a dial up modem (56K), it just isn't possible for me to check all the files that get uploaded.Based on the number of hits and from reader comments, I know that my weekly listing of Bear Picks is quite popular among AVSIM readers, so neither I nor the editoral staff at AVSIM wanted to eliminate the column, but for me to continue I did have to make some radical changes. I do believe that the changes we are incorporating will improve the benefit of the column to those looking for that missed file and will be a vehicle more attuned to highlighting those lesser known authors.Steve (Bear) CartwrightSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM Online