I just tried a search on TWL, "cell phone antenna" via IRBS search engine as recommended, by Alex I think, and in addition to individual posts, got numerous monthly lists, some by date, some by author,etc.... Presumably buried in the hundreds and hundreds of posts is at least one on "cell phone antenna".... What is the most efficient way to deal with this?? thanks, Rob Brueckner 1972 Hatteras Yachtfish

----- Original Message ----- From: <GYMKIDD319@aol.com> [snip] > I just tried a search on TWL, "cell phone antenna" via IRBS search engine as > recommended, by Alex I think, and in addition to individual posts, got > numerous monthly lists, some by date, some by author,etc.... > > Presumably buried in the hundreds and hundreds of posts is at least one on > "cell phone antenna".... > > What is the most efficient way to deal with this?? [snip] Hi Rob, First a bit of background for those who don't know what we're talking about: The most effective engine that I'm aware of for searching the TWL Archive is found at the I.R.B.S. (I'd Rather Be Sailing) website at this address: http://www.irbs.com/ In the middle of the page you'll see two boxes. The box on the right contains a drop down menu showing the various lists that I.R.B.S. archives - Select Trawler World List The box on the left is for your search term(s). Type in your search term(s) and hit enter: Voila! Their search engine supports single words, multiple words, and quoted (short) phrases. A couple of caveats: 1. The I.R.B.S. site is not in any way related to Trawler World or the Trawler World List. 2. Some of the hits that you get will turn up empty messages. I have no idea why this happens. Back to the question at hand. The results that you're getting are typical when the search term corresponds to a "Subject" line used in a post or thread. The longer the thread the more 'extra' hits you get. Since the topic of cell phone antennas seems to come up quite often around here you're going to see a LOT of these extras. BTW: This same thing used to happen when we were recommending Google as the search engine of choice. As to solutions; sorry, but there really isn't one tried & true, guaranteed, whiz bang answer. Basically, you just have to fiddle around with your search term(s) until you find something that works. One way is to guess at the sort of terms that might be used in the body of a post but not in the subject line. That sort of guessing game is more effective though if you are looking for a specific but vaguely remembered single post. Another thing that might work better is to add another term outside the quotes - If your search term is ["cell phone antenna"] try something like ["cell phone antenna" amplifier] or ["cell phone antenna" data]. Doing that won't eliminate the extra hits but it should move the most relevant hits to the top of your search. Experimentally yours, Alex