Air Warriors 2 Year Anniversary

[webmaster]

No, this is not an April Fools joke! In fact the website has been up and running since April of 1999, when Steve first created it. I realized this when I had to send Network Solutions a check to reregister the domain name for another two years, and thought to myself, "Wow, time really has flown by!" (non pun intended!) At least you know that we are now going to be up for another 2 years at least!

Definitely want to thank everyone who has taken the time to make this site what it is, from sending in gouge, jokes and humor, or keeping us up to date and involved on the Forum. I think I can safely say that this site has evolved a little more than what Steve and I expected it to become. But the site is still achieving its main goal of informing people about Naval Aviation, specifically those about to enter the U.S. Navy and start on the road to earn their "Wings of Gold", of what lies ahead.

A couple interesting statistics for you, that I have pulled from the site's log files for the last two years:

Website unique sessions: ~400k
Monthly sessions: 8-16k (the highest was 30k in one Month!)
Gouge downloads: ~5,000

All this is basically from word of mouth, or people just interested in Naval Aviation, and coming to the site from one of the search engines (yahoo, excite or google...). Due to the increased traffic, that was one of the main reasons I had to switch hosting providers back a few months ago, and also why the site is loading alot faster (forum).

Special thanks go out to Matt Stevenson, Dave Shutter, "Frumby", Vicki and the many others who have contributed to the site to make it better.

All the best,

John Wickham
www.Airwarriors.com

 

[aviatorshade]

It is you and Steve that deserve the thank you. This is a great site and will undoubtably continue to help aspiring aviators for years to come.

Semper Fidelis

 

[Dawgfan]

Yeah, thanks so much for running this! I was thinking of sending in a couple of bucks to support the website... Do you have a mailing address we could use?

John

 

[vicki]

Hats off to John and Steve for going to the effort to maintain such a great site. There's a lot of good stuff here, but the forum is a gem. I have gotten a ton of great gouge and more than a few laughs from all the people who've posted here. I hope Air Warriors' next two years are even better. Thanks everyone!

 

[Falcaner]

John your deservie it because this is defintly the best place i have found for info on Naval aviation. The main reason for that is because of the formam. Thanks for giveing us this place were we can talk about just about anything.

 

[Tahoe]

Great job with the site...it's always a pleasure to view..

-Dave

 

[webmaster]

Thanks for the kind comments. This has turned into a fun hobby, and also a way of keeping my computer skills up to date!

Dawgfan -- Thanks for the offer, but when we eventually run across each other in the fleet at an O'Club or something one day, just buy Steve or I a cold frosty one (or in Steve's case a cold frosty pitcher!).

I think one of the best by products of this site is getting to know (through the forum) other people who are going to be in your training. As others have mentioned, it is pretty amazing that alot of you already "know" each other prior to even getting to OCS!

Oh well, time to get to work, I have my first tactics sim brief today, 4 hours, most likely spend the whole time listening to the NFO's talk about how great they are...