Air Show Buzz, Gone?

[eagle21]

I was surprised today to see that the web page "Air Show Buzz" has apparently closed down. Am I just the one that didn't get the email? Or just far behind the power curve (as usual). It seemed rather abrupt.

Just curious, I liked to check in with them on occasion.

John

[RyanShort1]

Looks like it.

From: http://www.airshowbuzz.com/go/intro/asb

Airshowbuzz has flown west

When we launched ASB 5 years ago it quickly became the premier online community for the air show industry. During that time, we have met countless friends from around the world who share our passion for aviation.

While it has been an amazing experience, we ultimately realize our true passion lies in our involvement with the live air show community and doing what we love most, flying. Because of this, we will be closing ASB effective immediately. Moving forward, we will put all our energy towards being part of the wonderful group of family and friends at the live events across the country.

We want to thank all of you for being a part of this great experience and we look forward to seeing you at an air show very soon.

Interesting.

Ryan

[Cherrybomber13]

Guess they didn't have enough rousing conversations about paint schemes to keep it going.

[eagle21]

I was just a little surprised at the abrupt ending. I was checking forums on it yesterday, and there didn't seem to be any indication of it shutting down.

However, after they changed their forum format a year or so ago, I didn't visit as often as I did before the change, so I probably just missed something.

WIX moderators, I like the format these forums are in-please don't change them for something more "modern"

Of course, that is just my opinion.

John

[RandolphB]

I have followed the Airshow Buzz site/ forums for a number of years. Today I logged on to find only a posting that the site is closed for good as of now....

....since I use the site to search out shows to see Warbirds at, I am shocked. Have I been out of the loop a long time, or did this just happen? There is a link to "The Hosremen" website, which lists only 6 shows this year....

Anybody got links to other sites that have good lists of scheduled airhsows?

[Jerry O'Neill]

Just happened today. I did the same thing. Just looked at it yesterday.
Too bad. It was a good place to keep up on things.
I guess they'er moving on.
Jerry

[Anthony Svihlik]

Airshowbuzz has flown west

When we launched ASB 5 years ago it quickly became the premier online community for the air show industry. During that time, we have met countless friends from around the world who share our passion for aviation.

While it has been an amazing experience, we ultimately realize our true passion lies in our involvement with the live air show community and doing what we love most, flying. Because of this, we will be closing ASB effective immediately. Moving forward, we will put all our energy towards being part of the wonderful group of family and friends at the live events across the country.

We want to thank all of you for being a part of this great experience and we look forward to seeing you at an air show very soon.

The message is loud and clear. The Horsemen Flight Team really wanted to get back to flying, first and foremost.

I wish them all the best and certainly hope I get to see them in the air in 2012.

Anthony

[CH2Tdriver]

I have followed the Airshow Buzz site/ forums for a number of years. Today I logged on to find only a posting that the site is closed for good as of now....

....since I use the site to search out shows to see Warbirds at, I am shocked. Have I been out of the loop a long time, or did this just happen? There is a link to "The Hosremen" website, which lists only 6 shows this year....

Anybody got links to other sites that have good lists of scheduled airhsows?

Try the forum at fencecheck.com.

It's photog centered but you will still be able to get plenty of info you'll need and most likely find some of the same posters there. I haven't been on ASB in ages, not just because I mainly go to warbird centered shows and get my info on WIX, but that forum got very clique'ish. I got tired of reading page after page from posters who obviously were friends with each other and would waste pages with idle chit chat. I would post a question on a show I planned to attend and would never get a response. Once I got a "we already talked about that, read the thread." Huh? "It's 42 pages!" Another time I reviewed a show, said the good things and then the not so good. One of the things was that they confiscated my sealed water at the gate. I went back and forth with this guy who must've felt I upset the airshow gods as his parting shot was "If you can't afford to buy water at the show....stay home! Ohkay...... bye.

You can also try the ICAS website www.airshows.aero. No forum but plenty of up to date info.

Pete

[pjpahs]

I have found ,warbirdalley.com and warbirdsandairshows.com ,have a lot of links to airshow webpages, plus other neat stuff. WIX is still the leader though.

[kalamazookid]

I used to enjoy the ICAS Forums, but unfortunately those shut down. ASB was hands-down the best if you wanted to find out about who is performing at a show. It did get kind of clique-ish at times.

I've never liked Fence Check, but as far as forums go it's pretty much the only game in town. If you don't have a big, fancy camera don't bother posting photos. I've found a lot of the photogs who post there to be really rude and egocentric, which is why I only lurk there. If you want to find out about lighting and layout, or hear "how dare so-and-so violate my eight foot bubble, don't they know I have a website?" stories, then I guess it's a fun forum. As you can tell, I haven't had good experiences when posting there.

Warbirds and Airshows has a great collection of links to the major warbird shows and covers a lot of them as well. That site will give you a good review and photo coverage after an event as well.

Other than that, WIX is probably the best game in town for warbird shows.

[LadyO2Pilot]

As a long time lurker, I only posted there once or twice. Those posts were to correct misconceptions about a warbird show or more specifically about the portion in which I had a part. I was basically told I didn't know "S....%&&(*...T" about it even though I was a performer in that portion of the show. I was also told in a PM by a self-professed big time airshow photographer that warbirds or the warbird portion of an airshow were certainly not worth discussing much less photographing.

If you were not flying a military jet, part of a military demo team or a photographer with a big long lens...you weren't squat. "Clique - ish" is an understatement. IMHO....it's no great loss....unless you were part of the "fraternity" or had the proper "attitude."

One can get plenty of info on airshows and warbirds or even aviation photography on WIX (the best warbird site around!!!) and many other websites!!!!!

<flame suit on for being a flaming Biotch>

[TimAPNY]

Maybe we can use WIX to fill in the "Gap" that has been created in the airshow world by the shutting down of ASB. It seems that we on WIX have slipped on posting up coming airshows and events in the last few years... We have a section for airshows so lets start posting the airshows / event in it and setting up gathering to build up our community again. Maybe we can figure out how we can improve it and help Scott capitalize on the death of ASB. There really is not many warbird centered sites and I think this is a gap that can help WIX stay in the game.

Tim

[Scott Rose]

I merged a couple of posts on this subject.

It's always sad to see a site go away, especially when they do so abruptly and without preserving the site. I can understand the time commitments and whatnot and if you don't want to run the site anymore then shut it off to new posts. Leave the existing posts there. WIX is in it's 3rd generation of software, Gen 2 was able to be brought into Gen 3, but we weren't able to do the same with the original Gen 1 forums, but they still exist (http://archive.warbirdinformationexchan ... ndex1.html)

They really should have left the 5 years of ASB up as an archive. But that's just my opinion.

Sorry to see them go.

[dred]

Agreed, it was an odd move to take the site down completely, as was the massive site overhaul a while back. My user ID never worked after that, and I when I tried to re-register I kept getting error messages, so I gave up. It seemed the volume of people posting dropped off dramatically, so I'd guess I wasn't alone with the problem.

I don't think there was ever anything about ASB that kept the Horsemen from flying, although they're all busy guys with lots going on. My understanding was that Ed Shipley was the idea guy and driving force behind the site, but that others did the day to day administration. It also seemed as though Ed wanted to move beyond just being a web site; there was a lot of video posted, and if I recall there was talk of "ASB.TV" with regular programming, etc. Perhaps he finally concluded that time for that idea had come and gone. I'm guessing he'll still be up to some interesting stuff, and I hope he keeps us posted.

[CAPFlyer]

There were only 2 or 3 people running the site to keep costs down. The biggest issue I think is that the cost of server space and bandwidth probably got to the point it was becoming a burden. I wouldn't be surprised if the site itself comes back in the future as just a forum or at least the archived stuff comes back, but the problem you run into is that with the amount of time it takes to produce even one episode of "Horsemen Cometh", that was probably a big enough drain in itself to cause problems, especially with the time Ed needs to devote to flying since doing what they do is more than a full time job.