It started innocently enough when I asked a friend for Akira tape and instead he gave me a badly but sufficiently subbed copy of Kimagure Orange Road from infamous quantity fansubbers Arctic Animation.
That lead to a local chapter of Cal-Animage (University of California anime club), where I eventually became an officer in charge of acquisitions and fansubbing.
At first I traded 3rd or 4th generation VHS tapes, but that was not to last.
I scoured obscure Japanese family stores in greater LA for new finds. I bought a LD player, a number of S-VHS recorders not to mention regular VHS and Beta decks.
I shelled out $500 for a Genlock for PC. I secretly envied those with Amigas whose equipment was better suited than PC.
I suppose the highlight was subbing of Evangelion episode 1. a week after a release in Japan and showing it at the club.
Reportedly I was responsible for kickstarting Fushigi Yuugi when my raw copies made it to Tomodachi Anime who were the big time fansubbers back then.
There was no money in it, most reputable fansubbers wouldn't charge more than a buck over reproduction costs and offered an option of sending in your own tapes.
Fansubbing was a team effort as it was rare for a single person to know enough Japanese and also possess the technical chops for editing/timing, producing.
Fansubbing seemed to start to die when pretty much everything seemed to be picked up by commercial companies but apparently it has never gone away.
These days I seldom watch anime, but when I do it usually is a dubbed version with my kids. And I realize that all those sub/dub wars were a bit silly.