My begennings on a web forum

[Nathan]

I would like to tell you all how I got into the web forum passion. It's a trip down memory lane for me and a bit sad at times when I think about it. It's been a passion I guess and it was an accidental stumble when I discovered a thing called "message board". Back in August 2001 I was oh about age 15-16. Still not up on my internet but I loved planes. I found a site called us-aircraft.com. On it was a message board. Something I had never been on or was familiar with. Us-aircraft.com had a message board and that is where I started out in the forum world. My first couple of weeks I spent almost all day on it so excited and having fun reading all these posts made by people I did not know and people that had a great passion for military aviation history just like I did.

Alittle about us-aircraft.com:

It was started by Dave Pluth. But then Dave created a sister site called j-aircraft.com. There he handed over us-aircraft.com to Mike Gawell so that he could consentrate his efforts on j-aircraft.com. (J-aircraft.com would become bigger then us-aircraft.com and is still gong strong today. I must add if you need info about Japanese aircraft, paint, colors, etc....j-aircraft.com is the place to go).

Alittle about the board:

It was a webbbs type forum with string threads which I have come to love and miss dearly since us-aircaft.com switched over to Proboards two years ago. This is a newer version but is simular to what us-aircraft.com used to have:

But in its day we had some amazing discussions on those old webbbs boards....many subjects to do with Pearl Harbor which is I think a reason it has become my main interested. Thanks to David Aiken(my tutor) one of the original us-aircraft.com posters! Oh man, we had some great posters on us-aircraft.com such as Barrett Tillman, Daivid Aiken, and John Lundstrom just to name a few!! But as time went by the boards suffered heavily in SPAM. Losing posters and a board becoming inactive Mike switched to Proboards which is what we have now. I miss the old formate of webbbs but I plan someday if I ever get a website up that I would have the latest version of webbbs up.

Here on WIX we have a few old us-aircraft.com posters that came from the original message board: Ryan Short, Steve Nelson, and David Aiken. I remember Ryan from his Doolittle Raid passion. A man of faith and a man that loved those Doolittle raiders and attended the reunions every year. Steve Nelson I remember him posting pics on us-aircraft of his flight on Fuddy Duddy. And, well, David Aiken is self explanitory.

I now am the head moderator over on us-aircraft.com but I am not on much anymore. I have tried all I could to gain posting activity but after awhile it just dies back down. So its pretty much a dead site. Maybe someday if I can get hold of Mike he will let me have the site so I can get updates on it again and get those old boards back up running with new posts.

So thats how I came to be with message boards. I have a passion for us-aircraft.com it was my home and will always be my home on the internet. A place where I found many people to become friends with and we still keep in touch every so often. I miss the old days. Us-aircraft.com will never be the same but I will always remember the times I had on it and the people I met.

Thanks for your time guys. I just felt like reminiscing.

Cheers,
Nathan

[Steve Nelson]

Thanks for your efforts, Nathan. I first discovered message boards when I stumbled on j-aircraft.com when I got online back in '97. I wasn't sure about this "internet" thing, but I needed e-mail to keep up with a relative who was going overseas on a research trip.

I asked a question about the interior colors of a Japanese bomber (P1Y Frances) and within hours Tim Hortman sent me some pictures he took of the sole surviving example in storage at Silver Hill. I decided that this internet thing might be useful after all..

The rest, as they say, is history!

SN

[Nathan]

Thank you Steve. I am sorry us-aircraft.com isn't what it used to be. I have tried to get ahold of Mike but he is gone, dead or something. So I don't know what to do. I hope he can give me the site. I would take care it. I am up on some basic HTML but as to running a website? I might need help. That is if I can get ahold of Mike.

So thanks for posting Steve....glad you remembered. Keep in touch and keep em' flying!

Tally ho,
Nathan

[RyanShort1]

Hey Nathan,

Don't get too down about the us-aircraft board. I enjoyed it back then, and probably still would if I had time. My problem over the years came to the point that I couldn't visit too many boards and keep up with them all, so WIX eventually became the board of choice as it was already fairly well established and had a lot of good members. A LOT of the old members aren't here either, but there is still a good collection of posters and folks actively involved.
Oh, and I MUCH prefer this style of forum over the old string threads. Used to drive me NUTS.

Ryan

[Nathan]

Thanks Ryan!