At best the things you listed would be sub forums, not forums. It seems to me that there actually are too many sections now.
The search engine is a piece of cake once you figure out one little thing; if you use the basic search, it only searches the exact phrase as the default.
If you go to advanced search there are a plethora of options on how to do a search. After you do a search you can even do another search inside the first search. RV.net definitely has the best search capability of any forum I use.
Here is an excellent tutorial;
http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/15372572/gotomsg/15372587.cfm#15372587I opine that the people who complain about the search engine here simply have never bothered to learn how to use it.