User:Avsim

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Welcome to the AVSIM User Page

My name is Tom Allensworth, the CEO and Publisher of AVSIM Online. Please feel free to use the AVSIM discussion area here to discuss all things related to Avsim.com or regarding AVSIM.COM [1]. If you have any questions as to the history of AVSIM or our events, please use the discussion area to ask.

Tom Allensworth (talk) 12:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

AVSIM Convention History

AVSIM has held gathering (or Socials) and Conventions since 1999. Here are the events over the years:

Fall 1999 - Social - Washington D.C. - Held in conjunction with our first Board of Director's meeting
Fall 2000 - Social - Washington D.C. - Held in conjunction with BOD meeting
Fall 2001 - September - Convention to be held at the San Diego Museum of Flight - Cancelled as a result of 9/11
Fall 2002 - September - Lake Tahoe - Convention held in conjunction with the Reno Air Races.
Fall 2003 - September - Convention held in Reading PA, at the Mid Atlantic Air Museum (MAAM)
Fall 2004 - September - Convention held at Denver CO, at the UAL Flight Training Center
Fall 2005 - September - Convention held at San Diego Museum of Flight
Fall 2006 - September - Convention held in Washington DC - Smithsonian Museum
Fall 2007 - November - Covention held in Seatlle, WA in conjunction with the Microsoft ACES Studio Developer's Conference (DEVCON)
Fall 2008 - CANCELLED - Convention cancelled due to slowing economy - BOD and Social held in Washington D.C.
Fall 2009 - CANCELLED: Wright Patterson Airforce Base, Dayton Ohio, September 4th, 5th and 6th at the Hope Hotel
October 2009 - Planned: Simmer's Social (No Host) at the O'Hare Hilton, Chicago, October 10th, 2009 1800

Tom Allensworth (talk) 15:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

A History of AVSIM - Part 1

I had operated a Bulletin Board System from 1983 until approximately the fall of 1995. The BBS had started as the CAPENET while I lived on Cape Cod during the early ‘80’s, and was renamed THE VINE (The Virginia Information and Network Exchange), when I moved to central Virginia in 1987. By the middle of 1995, the Internet was taking hold and the BBS concept seemed limited at best, when compared to the then international potential of the Internet.

I had become a flight simulation enthusiast when I purchased my first computer, an Apple IIc in 1983 and had happened to purchase BAO’s Flight Simulator to go with it. I had taken flight lessons in the early ‘70’s for my PPL and had to drop out of active flying for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the lack of funds as a poor former sailor back at college using the G.I. Bill to get through. So, with the discovery of Bruce Artwick’s wonderful Flight Simulator 1, I was back in to aviation no matter the tenuousness of the connection.

Closing the VINE BBS was one of the toughest decisions I had ever had to make. After 12 years of operation in one form or another, it was difficult to shut down. As time past however, I felt the need to get back into the online world in some fashion. In the closing months of 1996, the concept of AVSIM was born.

The initial concept for AVSIM was pretty straight forward. Write articles and capture images of the Flight Simulation genre, put it all into a neat HTML magazine format and a well packaged zip file, and make it available for download among the major library servers on the Internet (notably, the file library system run and maintained at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania – one of the first major file libraries for flight simulation). The first issue was uploaded to IUP and elsewhere on March 1st of 1997. My original intent was for it to be a monthly magazine. That did not last long.

You can see the first online issue on the WayBack Machine [2]. You can download the very first edition here: [3]

It became rapidly apparent that the flight simulation community was growing by leaps and bounds. Add-on releases, Freeware and other important growth enablers were happening at a blinding pace. A monthly magazine was not going to be adequate to report news that was indeed happening multiple times a day. Since the magazine was published in HTML, the answer was obvious. In April of 1997 AVSIM went online with its own, fledgling, web site.

Tom Allensworth (talk) 16:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)