It was almost 25 years ago that our aviation magazine CHECKSIX went online for the very first time. At that time, the internet was still in its infancy and while many aviation websites had been operating for a while, their design and more importantly their content, were far from the quality one would expect to see today. Even prior to our launch, there were sites where individual operators would put up a few photos, while more established magazines and journals maintained a very limited web presence, primarily in the form a kind of online marker used in order to secure a particular domain name. Thus, CHECKSIX can proudly proclaim to be the world’s first true online military aviation magazine .As a small birthday gift to commemorate our 25^th anniversary we have begun to publish reports from our founding year of 1997. The first supersonic flight took place some 50 years earlier, the USAF also celebrated its 50th anniversary. However most importantly, the world was a relatively more peaceful place then, particularly when compared to today. For those of you who remember these exciting times we want to bring back some wonderful memories, and for those of you who didn’t have the chance to experience these times we would like to take you back to an era when almost anything was possible. This was a time when over 400 aircraft would participate at a single airshow and while many of the types were fully operational at the time, today they can only be admired in a museum. It was a time when Russian, Ukrainian and Western airplanes would all be peacefully present at the one airshow. It was also a time when analogue (film) photography was used exclusively.
So please join us on this wonderful journey through time and in celebration our silver anniversary!

Rob Kysela / managing editor