I think it is a leveraged MBO of some sort.
It is a real issue for a small business proprietor, who has been running his firm for 200 years, and is getting bored / getting old, and wants an exit, with a bundle of cash. In some countries in particular this is tough; my father had a business association with a German firm whose owner could not afford to make anybody redundant because they (about 50 of them) were all working there for 30-40 years and the redundancy payments for such long time employees would have killed the business, so when the owner retired he just shut the whole thing and walked away, destroying 50 jobs and a lot of value in the process. With these newer deals he can get a bundle of cash out and the financiers destroy it 5-10 years later so nobody blames him 
Fortunately EuroGA is not making any money 
so the only way to make an exit from it would be by selling the site to one of these cowboys.
What I would like right now is for more people to leave leaflets around. So few want to help in that way. And thank you to those who responded to the recent mailing; I hope you have all received them.
As a small business owner, I do find the idea of these takeovers upsetting. A salutary tale, and a reminder of what Peter does.
There is a lot of this going on. This guy, Faith Lopez, keeps contacting me. They buy up loads (hundreds) of forums, stick adverts on them, and in the process trash them.
Actually there are plenty of people in finance who do the same with small family businesses. The proprietors have no easy exit; the company is too small to be floated on the stock market. The business is generally destroyed in the process.
I’ve just got an email from one UK GA “echo chamber” (from where I was banned for posting about the CAA infringements policy; they don’t like it because of the heavy loading of NATS/CAA staff under pseudonyms) that they are going behind a £52/year paywall.
How many will pay that, I have no idea, but I would expect the place to implode. Most of their participants are already in the “one-liner echo chamber” known as Facebook. It’s a tricky game to play, and the only way is downhill. All other subscription sites are struggling, losing a big chunk of their membership every year and having to do quite a lot of promotion to regain a similar number.
I am sure we have the right formula here.
Apart from donations, the only thing I ask is that people make the fairly minimal effort to distribute our leaflets. I’ve just sent out a mailing about this, so if you didn’t get it, please check your signup email (not the public email which should be left blank) is valid and your email preferences are enabled.
I am not very active her but value the site. I contribute with a modest monthly payment that mirrors my appreciation of keeping advertising out.
I like it without adds. 2022 dues sent.
Just considering how smoothly the website loads on poor connections via phone. The lower bandwidth due to lack of GIF and spangly adverts really makes a difference to me.
I have always liked Peter’s approach to it all.
Thank you all for the positive comments.
I regard the small prices for Marketplace adverts to be a donation to EuroGA
Most type specific websites are in the US. The European GA scene is too diffuse, too fragmented, by culture, language, a certain amount of nationalism, and actually most of Europe has almost no GA activity. The US scene is about 5x to 10x bigger, depending on how measured; various numbers can be found here.
I agree with the current policy of ‘forcing’ advertising to be paid for by forum participation, rather than money. The classifieds format of the marketplace is good, e.g. ErlendV’s IR books there, which is a permanent advert rather than a one-off for a particular item.
In the past I’ve found aircraft type-specific websites with a directory of recommended suppliers to be useful, especially the more niche companies with poor or nonexistent websites. Hopefully members will post if they find something or someone worth recommending.
Peter wrote:
less than 10% have expressed their view on something so important. Nobody turned up on Zoom either. This is exactly how we get the highly intelligent, capable, and absolutely honest and trustworthy politicians who run our countries
It could be apathy, but on EuroGA it could also be trust
Peter gave a veeery good explanation why it is better not to have any ads here. Thanks – I’m sure we all agree that we let you to decide because nobody else understands so well the needs and musts of maintaining this forum. In my opinion this ga is a wonderful place to read good ideas, ask help for problems and give advice to others – and thinking how widely this is read (the whole Europe and even in America and who knows where) it is actually an incredible achievement. Great work!
