What an interesting week. We've all witnessed the largest release ever of an FS addon, which, btw, is as good as the hype surrounding it. Nobody can or should build an infrastructure to support the peak traffic required (witness MS, EA, et al) so we should all acknowledge PMDG and Avsim and the incredible amount of work they must have had to do, under pressure, to manage and troubleshoot and bring back the online services that we all enjoy and that we overwhelmed with our enthusiasm. Avsim is back and I have a fresh appreciation of how much I enjoy it. I'm flying my new 747-400 with loads of Avsim hosted scenery and other goodies. And PMDG has even credited my card already after I had a lag induced double order, which, I understand, someone worked overnight to address. Life is good! So, again, thank you to all involved!billg

They say that, you don't miss a thing until it's not there anymore.Well, this week made that a reality.I really enjoy eating my breakfast while reading all the latest post's on the forum and these last few days have changed all that.Now that it's back, thank you very much Avsim. You never fail to astound me with such an entertaining medium.Last Friday morning I also managed to download and register the new 747 by PMDG following 'Avsim's post to me with the forum latest. So, thanks again.Dave T. .........On the lovely warm Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/

I have to agree. My first stop on the web everyday is usually Avsim to check the news and check the forums. Last week I felt lost. Glad everything's back to normal.Dave FisherCYYZP4 Prescott 3.2e 478p 800mhz 1mg CPUP4P800S Asus Motherboard1.0 gig PC3200 DDR RAM 400MHZGeforce Ti 4200/128Maxtor 40 Gig ATA 133 HD x2WDC WD800 80 Gig HDhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/ng_driver.jpghttp://fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpg

I used PayPal to say thank you. It was pretty quick and painless.Regards

I would also like to say a heart felt thank you to everyone involved also. First to Avsim, I don't know where we would be without this fantastic service, you guys are the greatest! Sometimes I don't understand how you can keep going with all of the problems and problem people that you have to deal with day in and day out, I for one am extremely happy that you do. I always feel lost and my day incomplete when I can not come here to Avsim each day, and once again that proved true when you all were down. I really do appreciate your file download area as well as the forums that you provide for others, like PMDG, it makes this a one stop resource and it can not be beaten. Next I would like to thank PMDG for the best 747 ever! Well all of their planes are great, the 747 is just the best right now. It has always been a pleasure doing business with a company such as yours, you do try to be the best at what you do, even when times get tough. I think that both PMDG and Avsim handled the problems this past week very well and I sincerely hope that no lasting damage was done and that everyone understands that no one could see that this was going to happen, I know that both PMDG and Avsim would have done everything in the power to prevent it if they had any idea this might happen. On a side note I would like to ask everyone to donate at least a small amount to Avsim in appreciation for all that they do for us. I will be making another donation later this week. I don't think that anyone here can honestly tell me that they find no value in this site and all they provide, I think that we should at least thank them a little bit for all that they do. Besides, you will be the ones to benefit from your donations as that money will just go into better equipment and software for the site that we all love so much. If you want to help Avsim serve you better just click on the link just under the Avsim logo on the right side of the main page. Please help them to serve all of us even better than they have been. Finally I want to say again THANK YOU so much to Avsim and PMDG for all of the enjoyment that you have brought to my life.Kindest regards, Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

Thx for the reminder. Funny how you can see something a 1000 times but not notice it. So I just "found" and used the donation button. :-)billg

Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement. It is EXTREMELY appreciated and refreshing. I was on business travel when all of the forum problems broke loose, but I can tell you that our guys, and Matt Johnson in particular, did a great job in bringing things back online, while at the same time, putting together our new "hog" of a server to move this system over to. I wished everyone here had just an inkling of what it takes to keep a system like AVSIM running and managed. I think most would be surprised, if not shocked. As someone pointed out, you don't appreciate what you have until you don't have it for a while. Given the history of reliability of the AVSIM Forums (up time has been 99.9999% since the latest version was brought online in early 2003 I believe), a few days of downtime gave everyone a chance to see the value of the system. To me, that is good! :)

I have to admit I was coming to Avsim several times a day just to check if the forums were back online and left disappointed when they weren't! :-) Well, I suppose we can all treat this as practice for next summer - perhaps! ;)

I just used The Button too, to drop a few simoleans into the well. I have to admit that I'd never noticed it either, until this thread.---I'm trying to figure out if it's pathetic that I check the Avsim site so much. I visit it more than probably any other site on the Web. Hmmmm... I wonder if this is treatable - and will my health care plan cover it?---But anyway, I'm glad the forums are back! Thanks for the hard work to Tom and the rest of the team!Dave Blevins

Me too! I didn't know what I would do without my Avsim forums. I'm so glad they are back online. A big thank you to all at Avsim for bringing her back.-JeremyThe Ozark DogfighterHappy Flying!