November 23rd 2001

Dear visitor! 

After one year of www.FabulousFulcrums.de I would like to add some thoughts and in depth information to our website.

First of all I would like to thank YOU for your interest in our Squadron and our airplane, the MiG-29 FULCRUM! This interest and your praise (however also your criticism) that you write down in the visitor's book are the rewards for my efforts.

This site is a completely private initiative in order to show the public more about military jet aviation. My Profession as a military jet pilot has lost quite a bit of attractiveness in recent years due to deteriorating circumstances, however, the great fascination associated with it has remained! Even after 15 years of routine and many hundred flight hours I can still catch the few great moments in a mission! In a time where German soldiers are being sent into combat for the first time again, it seems hard to advertise for the job of a soldier and officer. This wasn't my intention either, however, I can tell from many letters that this site makes a small contribution to just that.

The technical aspects of our airplane are the main priority and can be presented visually best. With approximately 1000 picture elements you can get a fairly good impression. Like one of the many visitors of our air-base you see MiGs in shelters, taxiing, taking off and landing . Here you can find the best pictures of the German MiG-29, taken over the past years by professional journalists/photographers, by soldiers and also by fans/spotters. What is shown is not classified in any way and written text comes from public sources.  

Now to the promised background information:

A daily hit count averaging 200 a day for such a specialized site is great and the fact that the visitors come from 129 countries is almost unbelievable!  If you would like to know more exactly where our visitors come from, then click this button on the opening page! There you also learn about hourly/daily statistics, .......... (basically a lot of further information!) By the way, you should always bookmark the black start screen, in order to make the statistics work properly. In addition, you can check on the latest update by clicking on   Upd 02.06.02 18:33 . (Have you ever clicked on the cockpit before?)  With every click on one of the banners on the lower part, "Fabulous Fulcrums" rises in the corresponding listing. These top listings are not for us to compete with other sites, but to promote the site. More important to me however, is your word of mouth to friends and relatives! If you have a homepage of your own, please link us (already 628 sites have a link to www.fabulousfulcrums.de.). A sincere Thank-you to the webmasters of our partner sites!

What do our visitors want? Two out of three visitors first click . There were even visitors who downloaded more than 12 MB of pictures in a single session! This shows me that putting the main emphasis on the picture gallery was right. The most popular clicks that follow are MiG-29 and News.

For all the spotters out there check out the new button !!

As already mentioned above the is an important component of the site. For me it's always the first "click" going online. I am happy about every entry, whether of a 6-year old boy or a Peruvian MiG-29 pilot. I pick up suggestions and I take criticism seriously. Almost all entries are answered by me and I am very pleased about your kind mails (rarely visitors write criticism, usually with a wrong E-mail address)  

Thanks to the friends of this site for sending me pictures, Thanks to my squadron mates who helped me and Thanks to our military leadership for their open mind and constructive support.  

I look at this site as a hobby and I enjoy it, hoping it will stay that way!

Peter Steiniger