Ah Darren, the good old days, way back when…
I’ll try to provide a bit of context and history. And if I missed something, or got it wrong, there are several current members around who where there, who can correct me.
I have been into planes my whole life; from when I can remember airplanes have fascinated me. I was into kit models first, then after visiting my first airshow I was hooked on the sights, smells and sounds of aviation. I started to visit nearby RAFG bases (lived close to the German border) and bought my first camera. This went on till I went to college. There my passion went dormant (missing out on some great stuff, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and consequent opportunities at East German bases).
In the early 00’s I moved to the US where my love for aviation was rekindled since it was really hard to avoid all the warbird shows and military aviation in California. A friend took me to a local show and I was hooked again.
In the mean time I also became a web developer (web master in those days 
) so I thought; why not share my photos through my own website. This was before “social” media became a thing.
Late 2003 I registered the domain name fencecheck.com after I asked people in another forum for a catchy name for an aviation photography forum.
I set up my own simple website and installed an open source forum. By promoting the site through other forums and with the help of some really great photographers, it became quite popular amongst enthusiasts in the US and later around the world.
We organized some get togethers at airshows, some photocalls at bases in the US and published photo reports. All in all it was a group of good people and a shared passion that made it all happen.
Then around 2007/2008 I had some personal things to cope with while the site got hacked and it all became a bit too much to deal with. I decided to leave the site to someone else from our community, who took it over. I can’t comment on that period as I was no longer part of it. FenceCheck.com went on without me.
Fast forward to this year; FenceCheck.com has been offline for a couple of years now and I felt it was time to start things up again, since I just can’t get used to sharing photos through “social” media.
I have no goals for the site, except for sharing my own photography through the forum and photo reports. I hope others want to do the same thing. If not, that’s fine, but it would be fun to have that community feeling again. And who knows meet each other offline at an event here or there. I don’t know what might happen, back in the days there was no plan either, and it was a lot of fun anyway.
So there you have it, a short history of Fence Check. Feel free to invite anyone you think might enjoy sharing their own work and shares our passion for aviation photography. And let me know if you have any other questions or ideas.