Cockpitbuilders 1000 Member Donation Drive

[blueskydriver]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Do you enjoy Cockpitbuilders? Do you come to this site knowing you'll find some type of information, be it to help your simulator project, to contact your friends or just have a good laugh or two? With 1000 members, there is a 1000 yes answers to that question. Thus, what do you think that connection to others like yourself is worth?

Is Cockpit Builders worth $1, $10, $100, $1,000 or even higher to you? You don't have to answer verbally; instead, how about answering by using the Donate Button just to the left of your screen? You can show your support for this site and help keep it operational for many years to come...

Right now Mr Bob Reed, the dedicated owner of the servers, as well as the main benefactor is changing to a new server. He pays for all this himself to keep us together. Albeit, he is like all of us, counting pennies in these strange economic times. Thus, how about we, the members help him a bit with some of our pennies...uh, okay dollars!

Even if you donate $1 dollar that is $1 dollar more Bob has to continue the operations of this site. More money is certainly welcomed, but anything is better than nothing at all. There are simulator builders, software and hardware companies, as well as the curious members who all come here to be together to share their love for this hobby... So, now is the time to keep our community together by donating; hit the donate button today.

Finally, this is a Cockpit Builders Donation Drive that is being started by myself "Blueskydriver" and ask others to join in please. If you donate, you can post how much you donated if you want, but it's no contest. However, you have the right to show your support and be proud of it, so DONATE and BE PROUD OF IT!

Thanks so much and remember it's to help keep Cockpit Builders a mainstay of "our" community.

BSD

[blueskydriver]

Hey Everyone,

Simlady and I donated just now! We're Proud to support Cockpitbuilders website and hope that you are too. So, please donate to show your appreciation for Bob Reed, as well as Trevor Hale...

BSD

[XOrionFE]

I have in the past and more than happy to help out again.  Donation sent.

A big thank you to Bob, Trevor, Jack and all other contributors for helping make this such a great site.  Can't wait until the get together.

All the best,
Scott

[Maurice]

I have in the past and more than happy to help out again.  Donation sent.

A big thank you to Bob, Trevor, Jack and all other contributors for helping make this such a great site.  Can't wait until the get together.

All the best,
Scott

Ditto with all that. Donation sent.

Maurice

[fordgt40]

Ditto ditto

David

[Trevor Hale]

Good Morning Everyone,
What an amazing surprise I had this morning when I checked my email and found all the generous donations in my in box.  I can't tell you all enough how much this is appreciated!  I really don't know where to go with this or what to say other then Thank You!

BSD Is correct, and I just found out about this yesterday myself but Bob has purchased some new server hardware.  Within a few weeks Bob will switch out the server with a new Quad Core 36GIG Ram Xeon server with 2 mirrored 1.7TB Drives.  This will in turn benefit us, as cockpitbuilders is hosted on one of his servers.

Additionally I will be preforming some software upgrades to the SMF forum base, and soon may need to upgrade the forum base to something like Vbulletin! SMF has its limitations and we are beginning to feel them now.
In either case, I want to make it clear that Cockpitbuilders is Free for everyone to use, donations are not ever required to use the site.  Cockpitbuilders is like WestJet...  We are all owners.  This site is here for everyone  and I get as much enjoyment from it as all of you.

When I started this in 2009, the objective was to bring the builders back to building.  Creating a forum just for builders.  a Non commercial approach where we all can talk about builds.  I have succeeded!  With Bobs help with the server we have brought operating costs down, and can keep things running cheap. We intend to keep that going for as long as we can, and for years to come.

I never wanted to or intended to ever have to ask for donations.  Please do not donate or feel pressure to donate if you are doing so because you feel pressured to do it then don't this site is FREE, and will always be FREE.

When I placed the donation bar on the left of the page it sat there until people wanted to use it.  We have had many donations and normally I deal with those on a private case by case basis.  Because this post was public I thought it best to respond in public.  Thank you all so very much for the donation, I will see to it that it goes to the right places to keep the site going.

I look forward to meeting many if not all of you at the June Get together at FlightDeck Solutions, thank you again for all your support.

Trev

[Flying_Fox]

Just did.

[Bob Reed]

Well imagine my surprise when Trevor called me this morning and asked, "What's going on"?  I had no idea about this post. First off let me thank everyone who has donated. Without all the users, there is no need for the site! Yes the new server has been purchased and will go into place in the next couple of weeks. It is bigger, faster, stronger... lol It will help secure the site and I hope, make it faster.
     Now for this post, let me start by saying thank you to BSD for his concern for the site. But let me say this site has never been in danger of going anyplace! When Trevor approached me about helping him with this endeavor one of the things we came up with was this site will always be free to the users. We would never publicly ask for donations! PLEASE do not donate because you feel pressured to. This is a free site for the users to use and enjoy! 

[blueskydriver]

Hey Guys,

Thanks to everyone who has donated and to others who plan too. As I mentioned in my first post, this is something I started myself. Bob, Trevor or Jack knew nothing of me starting this...it is/was just a thought that I ran with...

I love Cockpit Builders that much!

BSD