It is that time of the year again.....
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Thread: It is that time of the year again.....

  1. #1
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    Exclamation It is that time of the year again.....

    Dear fellow simmers,

    It is the time of the year again, when we ask you to support the forum. Without your donation the Sim-Outhouse can't stay in the air.

    The target is $8000 this year, which should be sufficient to keep the server running and to pay our annual fees.

    Thanks for helping us to keep the site running,

    Huub

  2. #2
    SOH-CM-2024 MrZippy's Avatar
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    Way ahead of you, Huub!
    Charlie Awaiting the new Microsoft Flight Sim and will eventually buy a new computer. Running a Chromebook for now!

  3. #3

    Glad to Huub...come on folks, dig that small (or big) change out and don't forget to look down the back of the sofa! Every little counts..

    Cheers

    Shessi

  4. #4
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    The donation run of this year in approaching its end and we are still stuck at 65%, which is not enough to cover the costs.

    Dave has asked me to post this message:

    Quote Originally Posted by Dangerousdave26
    One of the things that always impressed me with our site is we never had to worry about raising the funds for the year. For a number of years we seemed to break records on how fast the goal could be achieved.

    Those days seemed to have died. We could probably point the finger at Covid or a poor economy, but the bottom line is our donating community is shrinking. A few years ago within a month we would have had over 300 individual donators. This year 2 months into the drive and we only have had 174 donations with a couple of members donating twice.

    Our yearly costs

    Server Lease $6,200

    cPanel account $772

    Domain name renewals $500 estimate
    • Sim-outhouse.com 4 years @ $25 /year
    • Sim-outhouse.net paid until 2028
    • Ronnylarson.com 5 years @ $25 /year
    • Hall18.com 5 years @ $25 / year
    • Hall-18.com 5 years @ $25 / year
    • ford-tri-motor.net (.com, .org) TBD

    Total $7,472

    For those of you who have donated Thank You.

    For those who have not Please Donate
    I don't think I have anything to add.

    Huub

  5. #5
    SOH-CM-2023 Deathwind's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by huub vink View Post
    The donation run of this year in approaching its end and we are still stuck at 65%, which is not enough to cover the costs.

    Dave has asked me to post this message:



    I don't think I have anything to add.

    Huub
    I see the pickle we are in and yes the economy COVID all play a large part. That had some to do with why I couldn't donate because of lost paydays. When times are bad more time is going to be needed to raise the money and we probably didn't start early enough if we are already near the deadline.If we do make it this time we probably should look into making the next go around a little bit smoother. They haven't made a new combat flight sim in years now and naturally the list of people are shrinking rapidly. Average age of members please keep that in mind. This isn't the site teenagers drop their schoolbooks for and come online. Many of us are half a hundred and older with many older. Everything changes for a reason and what was working in the past might not today so with that in mind we should come together with Ideas about the next go around long before that time comes if it does even come. Sorry I couldn't paint a prettier picture but when I look in the mirror every morning everything else i see looks a lot prettier so I'm not as picky perhaps but we can all see the situation looks dire and it will not fix itself.

  6. #6
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    Thanks for your input. All ideas are welcome .

    When I arrived, here after Netwings went down, this was the place where the virtual pilots met the developers. Most of those developers have disappeared over the years. But we still have a very active CFS2 and CFS3 community and also this FS2002/FS2004 community and the FSX community are still very much alive. But when you look at this with common sense, you will realise these are shrinking communities. I don't see a 16 year old kid digging up his father's old CFS2 disks and start to fly in CFS2. There are far more appealing (combat) flight simulators and I think the pace of the average flight simulator is a bit to slow for the pace of life of the today's youngsters.

    With the arrival of MSFS, a lot of people move to the new sim and it definitely cause some new interest in flight simming. But I think most of the visitors of the MSFS forum were already active here, and I don't have the feeling at attracted a lot of new members here.

    This is something which has been going on for some years already and we already took action to reduce the cost by moving everything to one single server and abandon some other things we could not longer afford. However the prices went up and it will be difficult to cut even more costs.

    So this is where we are. Costs will undoubtedly rise in the future, and it is unlikely the community will expand.

    Huub

  7. #7

    Anybody else going to contribute so we don't lose soh?

    If you use this site and haven't contributed, consider this. It needs your support to stay open.
    Cheers,

    Captain Kurt
    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Fly, you fools!" Gandalf the Gray

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Kurt View Post
    If you use this site and haven't contributed, consider this. It needs your support to stay open.
    If it can wait a fortnight, new job means working 2 months until payday

    Cheers

    Pete

  9. #9
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    The contract runs from June to June. So the bills will most probably arrive around the middle of May.

  10. #10
    SOH-CM-2023 Deathwind's Avatar
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    Need Not Fear Help is here.

    You need not Fear help is hear if this doesn't work nothing does.

    https://ibb.co/qxPCsGQ

  11. #11
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    Thanks to all to donated to keep the Sim-Outhouse in the air.

    And for those who didn't or couldn't donate: Please thank those who did as they helped to keep your web-site in the air.....

    Cheers,
    Huub

  12. #12
    SOH-CM-2024 Mick's Avatar
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    WOO-HOOOO!!!!!!!

    I knew we'd make it. Last year started out slowly too, but we made it.

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