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March 5, 2013, 8:38 p.m.
It what has been a very odd public launch of a new racing organization, many people have been curious as to whom was behind the formation of this group. The people involved: Robert Smith, Buddy Hodge, Lance Forhon and Dave Vance, are all unknown names in the industry. While it is odd that nobody has ever heard of these people and a Google search comes up with nothing for these names in the R/C industry, it is entirely plausible that some fresh blood has decided to enter into our beloved industry.
With this in mind, we thought it would only be fair to put our investigative hats on and dig deeper into the formation of this group. While we are not going to point fingers or directly state any names of who started the organization, there are a few things that are fair and open record on the Internet that we found interesting enough to point out. We will give precise details on how we came to these findings. If RCRAA is truly a legit new organization, we wish them the best. You may make your own conclusions based on our findings below.
First, a brief lesson on the Internet. There is a thing called a WHOIS lookup. This lets you look up the registered owner of a domain name (a web address). In the case of RCRAA.com, the info on the owner of the domain was blocked. Next, all domains that have a website have DNS records, and these are public record. It is essentially the name or IP address of the server that hosts the website. By using this info, we can deductively see who all is involved in the ownership of RCRAA.com.
So without further adieu, here are our findings:
- RCRAA.com: We don't know who owns this domain since it is blocked. But we do know that it is hosted on a server using the domain name CENTIXSYS.COM.
- CENTIXSYS.com: If we look up the WHOIS record for CENTIXSYS.COM, it is not blocked, and the owner of the domain name is Aaron Mortensen, the alleged person behind ProGrade Racing and Punch-It Racing.
- ProGradeRacing.com/PunchItRacing.com: Both of these websites are also hosted by CENTIXSYS.COM.
In conclusion, it seems very clear that Aaron Mortensen has something to do with RCRAA. Let us be clear... we are not accusing, nor are we saying anything bad about this person. We are merely pointing out near indisputable evidence that he is involved. He could be hosting the site and that's all, or he could potentially be the founder and using a different name.
To be fair, we did contact Mr. Robert Smith with this information before posting this article. We leveled with him on the info posted above, but he denied knowing Aaron Mortensen at all. He said they hired a web company to make their current website of 1 page, but that was about all the details we got in a very long conversation. This very well could be a coincidence, so please keep that in mind. We are not accusing anyone of anything here, just simply pointing out what is open record on the Internet.
Photos are attached below this article with a screen shot of all of the domain name records in case they should become blocked by the time this article is posted.
UPDATE [Wednesday, March 6, 2013 9:45 am]:
Mr. Smith has pointed out that they have now changed web hosts so they are no longer affiliated with centixsys.com. I would like to point something out...we are not idiots. Here is a basic lesson on web servers: When you lease a dedicated server, or if you are a web host, you get blocks of IP's in ranges of 8, 16, 24, etc etc. That means multiple IP's are associated with the same server. 99.999999% of the time, the IP's are incremental, such as xxx.xxx.xxx.123, xxx.xxx.xxx.124, xxx.xxx.xxx.125, etc. What RCRAA.com has done, instead of switching web hosts, is simply create new name servers on the exact same web server. Here is proof of that:
IP's for centixsys.com:
website IP: 64.149.123.37
Name Server #1: ns0.centixsys.com is 64.149.123.33
Name Server #2: ns1.centixsys.com is 64.149.123.34
IP's for rcraa.com [supposed new web host]:
website IP: 64.149.123.37
Name Server #1: ns0.centixsys.com is 64.149.123.34
Name Server #2: ns1.centixsys.com is unresolved
As you can see, the IP of the actual website is still identical to centixsys.com, and the name servers share the same IP. ALL that was done in this "web server switch" was simply giving a new name to the name server IP's.
You can look at the latest photo posted below for a screen shot of the pings.
UPDATE [Wednesday, March 6, 2013 4:59 pm]:
Here are a few more details, although not anything incriminating itself on RCRAA. But if we run a reverse IP looking of all the websites hosted on centixsys.com, we can clearly see they are all R/C related sites. This is not a web host...it is a private server.
Domains hosted:
arxracing.com
centixsys.com
fullthrottlefuel.com
fullthrottlefuels.com
insidelinercmagazine.com
pgrmm.com
punchitrc.com
rcracecenters.com
speedrcr.com
www.hirevhobbies.com
www.rcraa.com
www.rcxrace.com
We can prove that it is a private server by doing a traceroute on the server IP. First off, the ping rate is VERY slow...800+ milliseconds. The traceroute leads to an AT&T DSL or U-Verse home connection in Escondido, CA, the location of the person we suspect was hosting these sites. Both of these facts prove that this is a private web host, NOT a legitimate web hosting company as claimed. Screen shots are included in the photos below of both the traceroute and other domains hosted on that server.
To see previous articles we have posted relating to RCRAA, see the links below:
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