[Milsurplus] Urgent

[Ralph Hogan]

Hello fellow military radio collectors:

The server that host this MILSURPLUS remailer, hundreds of other ham related
list and ham websites is in urgent need of donations to keep us going. Al
Waller K3TKJ the ham that runs the servers sent out the below attached
message recently.

I urge all of you to make a small $1-$10 donation to keep us afloat.

"If every user gave us a dime we could operate for 18 months or so, If every
user sent us $1.00 we could
operate for the next 20 years."

If you are like me, I am on a number of Al's remailers and also have a
website hosted there. I greatly appreciate his tireless efforts and the
services he offers to the ham community. I normally send in a yearly
contribution, however this year, I will dig deeper.

---------------------
To help out, please use one of the following methods:

http://www.qsl.net/donations.html

Donations accepted by Credit Card  https://proxy.qsl.net/donation
PayPal          http://www.paypal.com   (account k3tkj@qsl.net)
BidPay          http://www.bidpay.com   (account k3tkj@qsl.net)

Cash/Check Donations by mail:

QSL.NET, Inc
34087 Old Hickory Road
Laurel, Delaware 19956

Can I reach QSL.NET by phone?   302-875-7979 voice   302-875-1358 fax

--------------------


I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this email and act upon it.

Best 73's
Ralph Hogan  W4XE / AAT4UU
Milsurplus Administrator



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===
"Today has not been a good day for me. I am totally bummed out.

Other than the technical things with the servers, much of my time is spent
trying to find creative ways to finance what we do and not make it
commercial. I usually remind our users in the late Fall of donations and
during this time of the year I have 2 "Platinum" sponsors that I contact.
These 2 account for about a third of our yearly expenses. Today I made the
calls and both are not able to help us any longer, I can understand this.
the economy is flat and who knows when it will get rolling again.

We are in trouble....

This means we are $10K short for the year at the start, but it gets worse.
I can't put any more money into this than I already do, to do so would not
be fair to my family. The only place I see this being made up is from the
users with a great deal of effort on our part. If every user gave us a dime
we could operate for 18 months or so, If every user sent us $1.00 we could
operate for the next 20 years. What actually happens is about 600
users/clubs donate an average of $10 each and we never hear from the rest.
I'm not ungrateful for the donations don't get me wrong but it is the same
users year after year and that will cease too, I'm afraid. With no help we
will be in deep dodo by Fall.

I don't want to sound like a TV evangelist always begging but I guess maybe
that's what it takes.

I need you to be aware of the financial needs of the system and to remind
your users as frequent as you see fit that we depend on them to do their
part so that you and I can do our part. Please don't go off yelling the sky
is falling and/or posting this mail to your lists, but sometime in the near
future state our case and ask for user help.

The majority of the expenses monthly are for Internet access, this access
is only affordable in 2-3 year contracts. We have one now that is $12K a
year for 3 years. That T1 is at about 105% and is getting so slow it is
unusable at times. We have another broadband circuit due to be installed
Friday morning, this one will be $6K a year for 3 years. This will solve
the bandwidth congestion but adding the $600 a month to the $833 a month we
won't be getting from above and suddenly we are $18K in the red this year.

To give you an idea of how much bandwidth it takes to run all this, imagine
the next time you download a program or something from the net and the
little box says your speed was 194KB (a 56K modem would be about 5K) Our
output is 194KB 24/7 it drops off the peg for just a few hours after the US
goes to bed...Our incoming is a paltry 50KB 24/7....

If you have any other ideas how to support us I am listening.

As always thanks for your help,
Al  "