Is pass fire worth it?

[roketman21]

Is pass fire worth paying 50$ to join? I'm pretty new to all of this, but I know a few of you here are members thats why I am asking. I just want your opinion of course.

[Peret]

Yes and no. In my opinion it's worth it to join once, to get access to the archives and many years of past posts, but not much useful stuff goes on there nowadays compared to (for example) here, though if you ask a sensible question you (usually) get an informative answer. In general you could have looked it up yourself if you had the books, but Passfire is cheaper than a pyro library. On the plus side, one payment tends to last a long time, as Kyle spends way more time raging about politics than producing the magazine that you paid for, and your membership is for a certain number of issues.

[Mumbles]

The group buys and occasional special sales also are nice.

 

I enjoy it there personally. As Peret said, there is a lot of excellent information there. The search function is no longer nearly as useful as it once was, which can make getting to this information challenging sometimes. There are occasionally some conflicts and arguments there. If you can keep a cool head generally you'll be fine. It certainly is a valuable resource if you can ignore the BS.

[MikeB]

The previous replies summed it up pretty well. In my opinion PF has seen it's hayday. You can get just as much feedback from questions asked on this board. There is a formula DB but it is not copyrighted and they are all available with some searching elsewhere. What you mainly have is a a conglomeration of ego's trying to one up each other. $50 is still cheap entertainment and there is some knowledge to be gained. Plus you may save more than that developing contacts for chem buys.

 

Let me add that some of the political discussions and BS are ethnically sensitive. If you are a minority you probably would not be welcome.

Edited July 6, 2012 by MikeB

[Bangkokpyro]

Worth 50 USD?

For the articles in the Archives alone yes I would say worth it.

If you ignore the bitching that goes on between some of the members, though this has decreased a lot of late, Passfire has many highly experienced fireworkers who do not post on other forums much and most are willing to help answer questions from newbies and less experienced folk.

On the downside the search function realy needs sorting out as it's useless in it's present state.

Though the forum is not what it used to be I would still say it is the best pyrotechnic forum on the web

Edited July 6, 2012 by Bangkokpyro

[Peret]

Let me add that some of the political discussions and BS are ethnically sensitive. If you are a minority you probably would not be welcome.

Yeah, I was going to mention that. Passfire is completely unmoderated and all kinds of prejudice can be - and is - expressed freely. I think you can have a week's access free to check it out and see if it offends you, but don't react, or they'll tear you to pieces.

[Potassiumchlorate]

Prejudice is bad, but political correctness isn't any better. "I'm a white heterosexual male. Forgive me for existing."

[optimus]

You should be able to see the article archives with a guest membership, and get a feel for how the sample ones are presented. I would base your decision on those and not put any value on other parts of the site, particularly after the recent 'redesign'. I don't even bother checking the forums anymore, and don't plan on re-subscribing.

 

Obviously YMMV, but in the past I've cross-posted questions here and over at passfire, and consistently received a friendlier, more helpful response here, and all without the politics and overt prejudice.

[roketman21]

Thanks for the replies I am not one to partake in the arguing and stuff in anyway. Im more interested in the information they have available. I have really liked this forum so my questions will probably be asked here not there. This site and its members are very knowledgeable and level headed I'm glad i found this place.

[marks265]

I would recommend at least getting in on one subscription and see for yourself. There are lots of things hidden within. As said early, everyone knows the search feature needs a major repair job. The articles can be used as good reference material and "how to's". The major points have all been made here already, but I do think you will get your money's worth on the first go around and have plenty of time to decide for yourself. It's another resource where you never know what will pop up.

 

Mark

[a_bab]

Here is my input: the forum is mostly made up by a group of old, grumpy guys. While they are very knowledgeable most of the (interesting) discussions will eventually fade into fights and arguments over life, family, women, politics (not so correctly I may add) and so on. They usually fight over ridiculous things for entire pages. There are known rivalities between the members and if one answers in a certain thread some noob question the other will jump in and turn the the thread into a fight. If you can filter out the clutter, the information is first hand (yes, it's better then here IMO). I find this rather amusing, but most of the time is annoying.

 

The search function never worked properly, meaning that before if many results were supposed to be returned it simply timed out and now it just doesn't work anymore. This is due to an unhappy coincidence, meaning that the forum member (Kyle) is a programmer and he seems to be very keen for ASP/MS SQL combination. The forum is commercial but as crappy as most of MS based products can get (being a programmer myself I know this is not necessarily because of the platform/technology restrictions but rather due to the clumsy programming, and I mean the forum here. The rest works just fine - meaning Kyle's work I guess).

 

The articles are really well written but I feel like most of the info is actually hidden in the forum. There are numerous gems there, some very old, but one must dig hard to find it.

 

 

Would I pay the 50 dollars again? Well, I certainly would. The reason you can actually ask your heroes (known pyro books authors, grand PGI masters and so on) and get an answer is enough for me. Llyod, La Duke, "Ngorsky", E. Yurek and many others are well worth the measly 50 bucks IMO.

Edited July 7, 2012 by a_bab