The Cafe, continues to have a steady stream of regular visitors, as well as many new visitors each day.  Rand and I regularly get very nice emails telling us how much people are enjoying the Cafe and find it to be their daily stop to catch up on what is going in soaring while enjoying their latte.   We want to thank everyone for these very nice comments and words of encouragement — we are truly appreciate it.

Over the past few weeks we have started to also receive unsolicited submissions for articles, news items, classifieds ads, great photos and very impressive videos.  Please keep sending them.  We will do the posting for you or you can create the posts yourself — it’s easy and fun to do.  We view the Cafe as a place for the worldwide soaring community to use to come together and share information and stories about our wonderful sport.

It is our hope that each of you will come here, find your “favorite booth” in the Cafe, and share with everyone what is of interest to you in your part of the soaring community.  We find that people are thirsty for good stories, news and information.  Everyone loves to see great photos and videos.  Is that true for you?  Probably.  So, take some time and share your stories by submitting an article.  Who would have ever thought that a story about How to Pull a Camper and a Glider to a Contest, by Garret Willat, would have become our number one most viewed story!

Of course, the series of articles on Dick Butler’s Concordia Project, CONCORDIA – SUPERSEGLER, generate the most overall interest as everyone is eager to find out how the project is proceeding.  The background information related to the design is fascinating and seeing the actual construction process through photos is amazing.  How can one person, with a little occasional help, do so much?  It certainly takes an incredible amount of determination to see the project through.  Many of us have built model sailplanes.  Some even understand the complexity and time it takes to build a model from scratch with just plans.  Multiply that by 10, no more like 100, and you might get an idea of what DB is doing.

We also find that visitors to the Cafe enjoy the articles that we simple excerpt and link to.  The article by Ritz Deluy, Ritz Interviews Bruce Cooper, has been very popular.  When you find something that interests you, shoot us a note with a link to it and we will create a short excerpted post so others will enjoy it too.

February, our second month, has come and gone.  The Cafe continue to exceed all our expectations.  I wanted to share some of our stats with you just to let you know how well we are doing.   As of today, the Cafe has experienced more than 31,000 visits by nearly 14,000 visitors from 100 countries and territories.  These visitors have generated nearly 110,000 page views of the content at the Cafe! And, as the chart shows, all these numbers are steadily rising.

Visitor Stats for January through February 2011 (click to enlarge)

Thank you again for your continued visits and support.

We look forward to seeing you at the Cafe.

— Bill Elliott, Publishing Editor