I have been following the F16 subject over this forum for some time,

I have to say that you guys are doing a hell of a job promoting your class,

Especially Wouter!
Your enthusiasm, persistency and determination are admirable.

You convinced me! I want a Blade F16

Believe me, it was very hard to give up my dream >>> A-cat

Any way I decided that I want to build a blade for my self, knowing that I'm doing it mostly for the fun and the experience. (And not only to save $$$)

I have all the information I need right here on this forum, I went threw most of the stuff.
Except for pictures of the building process which I understand are available from sailors that already built a blade.

Any help on this subject would be appreciated.
I want to learn all I can before I start.

I read on the F16HP website that you are working on a new Web platform, if I may, I recommend the PHP.Nuke platform, it's easy to set up and its free, we are using it for the "Israeli catamaran sailors web site" and it proved to be excellent.
You can find all the info you need here: http://phpnuke.org/
(also the TheBeachcats.com are using it)

Pleas excuse me, it is very hard for me to write in English.

Thank you,

Erez

Thank you, we do our best !






Building you own hulls is the largest part of the excersize but finishing the boat with fittings and such is a huge effort as well. In this light I will give you the valuable suggestion that was given to me before I began.

Seriously consider just buying the hulls and finishing the rest boat yourself. There'll be enough work left to keep you occupied for about a year. Building the hulls yourself is a significant effort. Be sure to mark what you are getting yourself into. Homebuilding hulls is something for the persistant (home) builder.

So, now you can never say that you didn't get into it with both your eyes open.

On average the homebuilder took 2 years to complete their boats; meaning that it could be sailed. Often it takes another year to get everything just right in the way of sheets and rigging. So from start to finish it will take you probably 2 to 3 years.

If you haven't talked to Phill Brander then do so now.

Be sure to get the superwing mast for your boat (or a comparable carbon mast) and not a more conventional Nacra of Hobie mast section. Half the feel and performance of the blade comes from these wing mast sections. You can really upset the balance of the design if you just slap a different mast profile on it.

Now having said all this I would like to say :

Welcome to the club of homebuilders, we offer you free F16 class membership and invite you to put yourself on our world map at :

http://www.frappr.com/formula16classgroup


Thanks for the suggestion of the nuke.php

And your english is just fine.

Regards,

Wouter

Thank you,

I will take your advice,
already contacted phill, and waiting for his replay.
I will purchase the plans, learn them, and only then make dicesions.

The Israeli and BeachCats sites look good. I poked around a little on phpnuke and they have a ton of templates to choose from.

I admire anyone who can build a boat. It not only takes talent, but persistance. Any boat I built would have a very short life span before it is resting comfortably on the bottom of the lake.

I would vote AGAINST php nuke. As far as a CMS goes, it is a open source CMS and it is extremely prone for problems. It is also very prone to hacker attacks.

I have used php nuke in various sites and it is nothing but problems. I have also suffered two hacker attacks.

As far as a web goes, I would prefer to go with a wordpress or blog type and keep this forum running.

Dear friends

Life is not that simple,

The fact that Robi was burnt with PHP.Nuke only say that Robi had that experience, this is not statistics.

I have a very good experience with PHP.Nuke, I witness hackers atteks almost evry day and the platform can handel it,
That dose not say that PHP.Nuke is perfact, it just say that my experience with it is good.

What i'm trying to say is that evry platform have pepole who like it or dislike it, you dont have to be excited nor vote out a platform.

Just do a good research, and remember that The Webmaster is the one that need to be comfortable with the platform, maintain it, backup the database evry day......

What ever platform you chose, remember these 4 letters

R.T.D.M

Well that is just it. We need someone to do this research, put out a new website out and document it (Manual) so that any replacement can continue maintaining the website. I used to be webmaster for the last 5 years but I'm in for replacement.

It is very difficult to find a volunteer to be webmaster. But guys somebody has to do it and I've already put in my time.

Wouter

More platforms to chose from:

http://drupal.org

http://www.joomla.com

http://www.mamboserver.com

I can help you set up a platform.

How ever you are going to need a web hosting service, 100MB of free space (if you want pictures and video), server runing PHP and MYSQL(database)

I had this setup up and running, but its user interface was so clicky (you had to click so many times to get somewhere) that I totally lost the groove, then I forgot the admin password and the project was scrapped.

SADLY, I had a good ammount of information on there as well. But I did like this CMS a lot.

Another thing is webhosting cost money. We are going to ask for donations in order to make it work.

I propose to start a new thread about the Formula 16 website.

See my other post on this forum.

Wouter