Warbird Information Exchange

Excellent post Tony,

And also great to see you’re back again. I really miss our conversations about recoveries all over the globe.

This is one topic I have been thinking about for some months now, ever since the forum changed. I didn’t want to raise the question as I thought I was the only one thinking that, and found myself more and more involved on the FlyPast forum.

But as everyone seems to have noticed the posts have shifted towards the US-side and the subjects were more like: what’s the registration on that mustang or similar and the recovery/restoration posts have gotten less and less. This is no critisism towards Scott mind you, you are doing a fantastic job providing us with a playground to enjoy ourselves).

This is also the reason why I myself have participated much less than I used to (just have a look at the number of my posts these past months) and that is not because of the registering bit.

The past months I found myself more on the FlyPast forum as a result of the more UK-related topics (just my preference nothing to do about that) and the excellent photo’s posted on that forum. Also the old hands that have left the forum (such as Tony, Christer etc.) have in my opinion had an effect on the forum.

Actually I don’t think the subjects have shifted towards the US-side, but the number of UK/European participants have decreased in number.

One point I made to Scott some time ago is that personally I don’t like the whole Snowball Militia etc.etc. that has been on the forum from the beginning the new sofware was used. This gives me a bad taste in the mouth and also doesn’t help newcomers on the forum getting the idea we are a buch of nitwits or buccaneers who are just shouting nonsense. And I fully support the other points raised by other people. During my meeting up with Mike Henninger and Harm-Jan Strating it was also point of discussion.

WIX was (and should be) all about preservation, recovery, restoration and everything that is related to it. Without any political or neo-political humour. Just keep it as it was and I will be motivated to be more actively involved regarding the recoveries in Holland (and boy, if only you knew what is happening here…….) and others hopefully too.

Just my two eurocents

Cheers

Cees

There have been some really interesting and healthy comments brought up in this discussion, and it has been great to see a lot of the old regulars pop in again. There is nothing like a good debate to get me motivated, so on that account, and considering that it is of international flavour, I thought I would enquire about the Hawker Hind airframes which have recently been discovered in Afghanistan.

Does anyone know if there is a move afoot to recover these priceless relics? Are there any more details on the airframes themsleves, photographs? Who found them in the first place?

Also, in the latest Classic Wings magazine, there was a brief mention that the Li-2 (Russian C-47 clone) which had been restored to flying condition in Eastern Europe recently (and was about to head out to Oshkosh) crashed killing several of those on board. I have seen no mention of this sad tragedy anywhere else. Does anyone know what happened?

What about the rumours that one of the Iraqi Furies is back in the UK... any further news there?

On another note, does anyone have details on the Curtiss Hawk 75 which TFC have had restored. I'd love to see more information (photos?) on its provenance, as well as how it came to be hidden so effectively from the public limelight for the past fifty years, when it had been storage at various places for much of that time, rather than lost in a scrapyard, or jungle somewhere.

Finally, does anyone have any further details on the proposed purchase, and restoration of Dick Melton's Supermarine Walrus by a New Zealand-based syndicate.... is this one for real?

Well, there should be enough here for some interesting replies I hope.... bring 'em on, I'm sure we'd all like to hear more on these topics.

Tally-ho chaps,
Richard

This is a topic I had to post. Has WIX gone America Centric? May be it has, Maybe it didn;t.

For some strange reason I found that I was visiting WIX less frequently than before. Even stranger, i am now hanging out more at Flypast Forum, which earlier I used to think was 'childish' (Ducks to avoid stones and bricks - okay that still applies to the military forum to an extent). But I think Flypast has an RAF centric contnt, which is more my line of interest.

Its Strange because I like the format of the PhpBB (As now) and hated the earlier message board format. Now I find I am using this board less.

One reason I could clearly identify was that in the earlier WIX board, the thread was judged on the basis of the posters who replied to the first message. So if you glanced at the board and noticed 2-3 replies by people who are your favourite posters, you tend to stop by and read the whole thread. Now looking at the thread title, there is no way to tell who had posted what in each thread, and there is a tendency to skip reading the threads.

-Jagan

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Warbirds of India

Still under restoration. They ran into a few snags unfortunately so it was unable to make Flying Legends. It is not far from flying however. There were photos in Air Classics recently of it.

I personally think almost all of the WIX 'General Discussion' forums could be comfortably lumped here within the 'WIX Hangar'. I don't see an overwhelming need to shuttle people off to various corners of the website in order to share ideas on different topics.

Each new topic is somewhat of a forum in itself since all of the replies are grouped under a single heading. Using the old format, a 'Nav-Ops' topic might dominate an entire page unless a seperate forum was created for it. With the current format, the same topic could go on for three pages, while taking up no more room on the main page than any other topic.

The titles of the various forums here go a long way in displaying the diversity and mindset of the WIX group members to new visitors, but in the long run I think the annexation of our cummulative thought process and idea sharing might hurt more than it helps. Though I'm interesting in most of the other forum topics, I still find that I rarely go anywhere other than the 'WIX Hangar' forum.

Judging from the relatively limited amount of posts in the other General Discussion forums, I vote that most of the other forums be lumped within the WIX Hangar. Those subjects would be posted here anyway if the titles of those forums weren't there to direct people in the other direction.

Any thoughts?

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com

I tend to agree with you Rob. There are three I would keep separate.

#1: Off Topic - For obvious reasons.

#2: Aviation Flea Market - A place to look when you are looking to buy something (look at the posts firsts), or a place to advertise when you have something to sell. Keeping this separate helps the browsing.

#3: WIX Gatherings - Lets you know when an event with a WIX presance is coming up. Like #2, keeping this separate helps find the info you are looking for.

Everyting else I would suggest belongs in the hanger.

Regards,

Mike

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Mike R. Henniger
Aviation Enthusiast & Photographer
http://www.AerialVisuals.ca
http://www.facebook.com/AerialVisuals

Do you want to find locations of displayed, stored or active aircraft? Then start with the The Locator.
Do you want to find or contribute to the documented history of an aircraft? If so then start with the Airframes Database.

All,

I class myself as one of the original WIX'ers and a regular of the Warbirds Worldwide forum before that (as well as the short lived one in between, can't remember the name of it though) and I have found myself drifting away from the WIX and frequenting the Flypast forum more often nowadays.
I'm not really sure why this is, but I don't accept it has anything to do with a Pro-American or Pro-UK bias. The non-North American contingent has just drifted away from the board.

I still check in on the WIX but the frequency has gone down from once or twice an hour at work (don't tell the boss ) to around once or twice a day. It used to be that if you didn't check the board for a couple of days there where literally hundreds of posts to catch up on, but now if you don' check the board for a week then it will take you an hour to catch up.

I really used to enjoy the buzz of the WIX but it seems to have changed, which is a shame.

I will however try to make an effort to post here more often that I have been.

It is great by the way to see some of the old lads back on the board again

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John

I have consolidated several of the section into other sections. The Reenactors section and NAV-OPs sections were requested. The modeller forum was created to try and get people to display thier hard worked on projects. While image inclusion has not been implemented so far the work around using photobucket.com works well in my opinion.

I think with any group of people it gets to a point where we have already posted alot of the "juicy" tid bits and such so there is less new things being posted. While the average posts per day is roughly equivelant to the old forum, the number of new topics are less. From my observations alot of the older WIXers do not post as often as they used to and thier are alot of lurkers frequenting the forum.

One of the things I love about the WIX forum is not the number of registered users, or number of topics, or number of messages. It's the sense of community that the forum creates. I have met so many new friends in the last two months. Friends I would'nt have met any other way except the WIX forum. I don't get that feel from the Flypast forum. Not to degrade the Flypast forum in any way. But they are much bigger, have financial backing and quite a bit of advertising through the magazine. I think this can lead to an impersonal feeling.

Finally as for the forum being American centric, I have made an effort to use non-american aircraft in the WIX logos, we've gone through spits and hurricanes and now a Kiwi P-40. If your not from the U.S.... speak up, let us know whats going on in your area. We really want to know whats going on near you

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Scott Rose
Editor-In-Chief/Webmaster
Warbirds Resource Group - Warbird Information Exchange - Warbird Registry

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Richard

What about posting your questions re the Afgan Hinds, Iraqi Furies and Kiwi Walrus etc. as a new thread, it won't get seen to well here. I see 'Shagbat' is a new member and he is involved with the Walrus I believe.

Dave

As we have discussed before in person, I agree with you on this point. Light hearted humour from time-to-time is a good thing, but variants on the same old joke over and over and over.... well it just doesn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if new comers, after reading that stuff, don't bother to stick around, and long-time contributors/lurkers just "turn the channel" (quoting Steve Tournay).



Absolutely. Besides if there is something you feel you must say that just isn't on the subject, then put it in the off topic.


Thanks again Cees, and Harm-Jan as well, for being such excellant hosts last month. Please keep us up-to-date on your recovery activities, they are simply fascinating. If I had the time and $$$ I would jump on a plane to go mucking around a river someplace with you trying to located, or recover pieces from, some long-lost wreck. That would be a blast!

Regards,

Mike

_________________
Mike R. Henniger
Aviation Enthusiast & Photographer
http://www.AerialVisuals.ca
http://www.facebook.com/AerialVisuals

Do you want to find locations of displayed, stored or active aircraft? Then start with the The Locator.
Do you want to find or contribute to the documented history of an aircraft? If so then start with the Airframes Database.

As an early contributor to the WIX site after the WW and VAF sites, I too do not seem to post as much as I used to. And yes I too was a bit sniffy about being one of the early WIX posters

I too noted that the site had become americocentric but dared not say it. I suppose that any website is a community of sorts, and the people i shared and exchanged views with had a common interest and background. As many of these people came from the UK, it was inevitable that the focus would shift to the majority interest - ie American vintage aviation rather than a more balanced focus.As UK based posting tailed off, so those of us that tried to keep the old world flag flying had less in common with the majority and so our posting too diminished to the current levels. It was all a bit of a vicious circle.

The other thing for me was that this new board is really slow if you only have dial up (OK I'm a cheapskate - I haven't plunged into Broadband yet!)

I do post on the FP Forum - those of you who know my other interest will know who I am....

And yes I still toss the odd Mills Bomb in.....

my spies tell me the Syrian 22s are still there.

sk


ps. Cees - mate - cheers for the post

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Simon King

Simon, Cees, Mike and all--

"Mucking around a river"...and "the Syrian 22s are still out there"...

THAT is what I miss! Not that there isn't room for "what's the new reg'n on that P-51" or "how are you getting to Geneseo"...there most certainly is. But there sure is room, too, for those stories of The Hunt...

Cheers

S.

First Quest if you are going to call me out please leave a name or call sign. As for the NAV-OP board I was the one who ask that this be put up so it would'nt take up the whole Bloody Hanger section.

As for being embarassing well, I can say that because of mine and others rants that the US Navy came to us let me repeat that "THE US NAVY CAME TO US" to have the first ever seat down meeting to try to work out a new policy. And since I'm one of only three people who has been talking with NMNA about the meeting who are register members of this board then I have everyright to rant about things that the US Navy has done in the past.

The main reason the Nav-Op board was created is to log items for the up-coming Nov, meeting. As for my so-call threats Mr.Guest the next time an NIS agent shows up at your house please let me know how you feel about it or better yet when Federal Marshals arrest you in front of your pregnant wife or trump up a false piracy charge then give me a call.

Or better yet why don't you allow us who are trying to change this STUPID Navy policy do what we are doing.

Heres a chanllage for anyone out their who thinks I'm NUTs or crazy, does anyone know The National Historical Preservation Act section 106 and US Code 16 sub-section 470 by heart if so then you can give me a hard time but until then back off.

Cheers A Slightly Dis-Hearted Col.

Back on topic here for a moment...

I have found myself noting recently aircraft destined for the UK being restored here in the US, and aircraft destined for the US being restored in New Zealand. The warbird industry seems to be becoming more international, yet the WIX is becomeing less international. Very curious!

I generally avoided the Flypast forum because it was too UK-centric and too full of airplane spotting. My interest has always been recoveries and restoration ever since I saw "The Battle of Britain" and dreamed of recovering 109's out of the channel. Pulling an intact 109 out of a lake is the things that dreams are made of!

And Indiana Tony should be really happy about the present state of emoticons!!!!

Rob

I don't think anyone is doubting your efforts or passion about the Navy thing, and if something good comes out of it, well kudos to you.
I think it is the way your posts come across that cause a lot of people to distance themselves from the whole thing, and even the WIX site in general. Posts that are full of abuse, threats and ranting are not what the majority of us want to read. One of the reasons being, is most of us are not privy to the reasons, seemingly personal, that are behind it all, and really that is something that should be pursued between you and the 'powers that be ' off the forum by private email.

Anyway thats my thoughts for what it is worth at a very late hour of a Saturday evening

regards
Dave