[Hallicrafters] All Subscribers, Please Read!

Sun Apr 6 23:16:12 EDT 2008

I received the message below a few minutes ago from the owner of QTH.NET, 
Alan Waller, K3TKJ. While what he says is absolutely true, as usual, Al has 
understated how important your donation, of 'any' amount is!

I joined the Hallicrafters list in early 1997 and became its list manager in 
1998. I have since been given the responsibility to keep an eye on another 
eleven lists. What I do is totally voluntary, there never has been any 
payment or compensation of any kind. Al has worked very hard to keep his 
original little local Ham Radio project alive and well, despite it having a 
super hormonal growth spurt that rocketed it from a local Delaware Ham thing 
to the largest provider of information for all things Ham on this third rock 
from the Sun!

Now please realize that Al does not do this for profit, to fund his super 
Ham Shack, for fame or glory or for any reason monetary! Because if he did, 
he would pull the plug, trash the 29 servers, disconnect the five T1 lines 
and experience life without a thousand e-mails daily! But Al is crazy, I 
should know, as I have the same problem about being crazy when it comes to 
Ham Radio! The man loves it so much that he continues to fund this growing 
child packed with electronic chips, spam filters, hacker firewalls 
reinforced with NASA grade Titanium, back up emergency generators, air 
conditioning to keep the QTH.NET/QSL.NET electronics from doing a meltdown, 
and on and on. It is one huge amount of work, as Al builds most of the 
computers himself, does the security upgrades himself, fixes what goes 
KAPOW! at 2:01 AM EST/EDT to get your favorite QTH.NET list back up and 
delivering that vintage vacuum tube data or  satellite Com info or space 
weather propagation prognostication probability, Ham computer list help for 
the hard drive crash or RAM that ran away, program schedules for Short-Wave 
listeners appearing on your CRT, radio club announcements arriving in your 
fifty state Ham mailboxes, the latest VHF/UHF facts - fixes - new flavors, 
and about five hundred+ topics!

He knows that if "you" don't get your favorite list traffic, that his poor 
telephone will get so blasted many calls from the 338 ITU countries that it 
will melt into a puddle of chips that you do NOT want to dip, as happened 
last year! They just don't make those good old Western Electric meltdown 
proof phones anymore!

Now Al depends on 'your' donations to keep the computers humming, the hard 
drives spinning, the spam out of your mailbox and those lists that give you 
information that you simply can not get anywhere else, as quickly and 
dependably, operating. Because this equipment runs constantly, every minute, 
every day, every week, every month of the year, it wears out! Al needs to 
have extra parts on hand so that he can replace the failed part immediately. 
Because if he does not, all of us out here who depend on these lists to 
provide us with info, will be dialing his QTH.NET office phone and his ears 
won't stop ringing for the next three months! But it costs money to have the 
emergency repair parts ready and waiting. Not all of them are items you can 
simply pick up at a local computer store!

All in all people, it costs a lot of money to keep the lights lit at QTH.NET 
and those computers processing our e-mails. Think about this. There has been 
only one piece of spam that has escaped the guardians of goodness in the 
past ten years! Now who else has that kind of spam free statistics? Al keeps 
these lists free of spam by not selling Ad space, shares of stock, allowing 
corporate control of any kind, or the sale of our names and address or call 
signs, to corporate entities. He started QTH.NET to be for Hams, monitored 
by volunteer Hams, serving every aspect of Amateur Radio, to help Hams in 
every country that had access to the Internet and to keep spam and hackers 
locked out. He has managed to do so thus far. However, he needs our 
financial support to continue to keep what we have grown to love and depend 
on operating as we have grown accustomed to.

Al has never charged a subscriber fee.

Please contribute whatever you can afford to and help Al keep this fantastic 
and invaluable service operating and secure. You will get whatever you 
donate back many times over during the course of a single year! Be it in 
acquiring parts or equipment you are looking for, technical help you need, 
answers to questions from the tremendous gathering of incredible wisdom and 
skill found on these lists, the sale of used radio gear to other Hams, 
selling items or products 'you' personally make as part of the Ham Radio 
Hobby, getting the latest word on what's new - what's good - where to get 
it - and on and on.

But if we do not donate to help support the service, we have only ourselves 
to blame when one day Al has to pull the plug. It takes money to run QTH.NET 
and we all need to contribute what we can to make sure it is there the next 
time we can't find a part, a manual, an answer or whatever.

Thanks to each of you for sending whatever you can. If all you can afford is 
one dollar, send it! Every dollar matters, every dollar helps. If every one 
of the subscribers sent Al one dollar a year, well ... Al would faint! 
Thanks for you help guys.

All List Users:

You are receiving this e-mail because you are a subscriber to a mailing
list at http://www.qth.net.

In 1996 the lists at QTH.NET were started for the ham radio hobby, over
the years other lists for other hobbies and vocations have appeared.
There are lists for home built airplanes, blacksmiths and even a list
for watching military rocket launches. 99% of the lists are still ham
radio and we continue to grow.

It has been 18 months since I last contacted you and I thought now would
be a good time to share with you what the plans are for the future.

The server we are using at present was built in 2004 (in a panic)
because of a failure. I don't want that to happen again so now is the
time to buy a new one and update all the software at the same time.

There is no income generated by any of the lists here so I depend on
your help to update things as needed. Today I am asking for your support
by contributing to the new server purchase.

For less than lunch costs at a fast food place you can guarantee the
lists will always be there when you want them, and will remain private,
and spam free.

You can contribute via the following methods:

PAYPAL    http://www.paypal.com     account is k3tkj at qsl.net

CREDIT CARD   http://www.qsl.net/donation    ( Visa, MC, Discover, Amex )

MAIL

QSL.NET
34087 Old Hickory Road
Laurel, Delaware 19956

The suggested donation is $25 but we will gratefully accept whatever you
can help with. As always Thank You for your past and continued support.

Regards,

Al Waller K3TKJ

Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net