TriStar500.net Site - 20 years online

Internet has become such a different place when compared to what it was in the late nineties. Today, business took most of the place of the free knowledge sharing that existed by that time. The first version of the TriStar500.net Site - although not yet with that name - was written in the last days of 1999 and it went online in January 2000.

Lockheed TriStar L1011, index, year 2000

The childish appearence of the website was compatible with the tender age of the young boy who wrote it. A handful of other L-1011 websites existed with lots of complete information about the whole worldwide fleet. So I didn't pretend to make one more site of that kind, nor did I have access to those sources of information or contacts in the aviation world to keep me updated. I just wanted to tell the world that I loved the L-1011, my favorite aircraft.

In 2004, a big leap was made with a professional hosting and a new own domain that also gave a new name to the website. That year, TriStar500.net truly became an L-1011 information center, not only with news about the L-1011's that belonged to TAP Air Portugal or that were still flying in my country, but also keeping attention to the worldwide fleet.

In 2007, I became the luckiest guy in the world when I started working as a crew member flying the good old L-1011 TriStar.

These days, 20 years after the first version of the website went online, I'm still committed to keep it alive as it became a solid part of my own life story.

• TriStar500.net Site: About this Site

Season's Greetings 2016

I hope everyone is enjoying a great Christmas Season and would like to wish all our readers a happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

The first pages of the very first version of what became the TriStar500.net were written 17 years ago between Christmas and the last days of 1999. I was only 17 by that time. It has been a long run but we renew the promise to keep our mission of tracking any L-1011 activity around the world during the next year.

For 2017 we are expecting another Stargazer/Pegasus launch (ICON) and the ferry flight of the ex-Flying Hospital to Kansas City.

Season's Greetings

We would like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

CS-TMP © original photo by José Jorge

And hopefully more L-1011s to track in 2016 :)

Site update - new photo galleries

CS-TMP © Luís Machado

Thanks to visitor and contributor Luís Machado, TriStar500.net has now available four new galleries with amazing photos of CS-TEB (Photos 2), CS-TMP and CS-TMR (Photos 3) from unusual perspectives, and finally the end of line of CS-TMX (Photos 4 and 5) just before being scrapped in Lisbon:

• Photos 2
• Photos 3
• Photos 4
• Photos 5

To accommodate the new galleries, the website's structure was slightly altered. The global overview of the website can be seen in our Sitemap.

Moving to a new hangar

TriStar500.net is moving to a new home so the site should be off for a little while.

I'd like to thank Jorge Diogo (Airsim.net), Paulo Correia and Miguel Blaufuks (SimFlight) for providing the free hosting these last four years.

Farewell L-1011

Ten years ago when I launched this website I was far from knowing how much an airplane would change my life:

the plane that gave me new friends;
the plane that gave me wings;
the plane that gave me a job.

Today, the last portuguese L-1011 made its way to final retirement. I was lucky enough to see it for the last time getting ready for its take-off to Amman where it is now stored, while I was arriving from Munich.

Goodbye CS-TEB...

Thank you L-1011!

Some minor updates to the site

TriStar500.net, the official site of this blog, was recently updated on the following sections:

• Fleet: update of the 'Actual status' of some aircraft listed;

• Airlines: it was added the new safety card of Luzair (2008 module) to which I am proud to have given some kind of contribution;

• Articles: new 'Flight reports' sub-section with links to some of my L-1011 flight descriptions as a cabin crew member which you can also find via my other blog. Although written in portuguese, if you're not able to understand this language, you can always appreciate the photos and some short videos you can find there;

• Links: also added a new 'L-1011 operators' sub-section with links to the sites of the current L-1011 operators all over the world (unfortunately, not many these days...)

Despite these new updates, if you're looking for TriStar500.net's updates, news, photos, etc, you should either bookmark or visit this blog, since it's intended to be the dynamic part of the site.

TriStar500.net: the return!

As some of you might have noticed, TriStar500.net was put offline last Summer. Lack of motivation and spare time were the main reasons. Also, I was not willing to spend again such a large amount that I was paying for a hosting of 500MB with unlimited traffic. After some reflection I decided to end the story of this site which started in December 1999. However, some friends of mine were startled with such a decision and tried to help me bringing back TriStar500.net. So, a special thanks must be given to Jorge Diogo and Paulo Correia (AirSim) and to Miguel Blaufuks (simFlight) for providing a new and free hosting to the site.

But motivation was still lacking. And I didn't want to keep the same layout of the site because it was difficult to update. It was only in February of this year that I started working on a new layout and structure of the site. Also a decision was made about changing the site's language from Portuguese to English.

After a long "C-check", TriStar500.net is now back with a very, very simple design and a light structure. Just like I wanted it to be. Off-topic sections from the old site were definitely removed and this site is now only about the L-1011 TriStar.

In this associated blog I will post news about TriStars, site's updates and new photos. So, if you are curious about TriStars, keep an eye on it.

Please feel free to post any comments in this blog. It's always nice to hear from you. If you want to contact me via email, please refer to the Webmaster page.