Faithful Luscombe supporters and WIN ME drawing participants,
If you have been watching the ticket count down you have seen that as of today we still have more than 500 tickets left on the WIN ME airplane drawing. Because of that, our projections for a December drawing have faded, and there will be a delay of a few more weeks or months while these tickets sell out to pay for the prizes and advertising bills.
The rate of ticket sales increased dramatically after we showed the airplane this summer at AirVenture Oshkosh, reaching more than 350 tickets per month in August and early September.
Unfortunately the Secure website where most of our sales occur, was taken over and damaged by hackers in a nationwide attack by foreign anarchists who erased many of our back-up files, and inserted their own links with political messages.
Fortunately, no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was compromised and no credit card or financial information was divulged. This was what is referred to as a "Denial Of Service" or DOS attack.
About two weeks later these same folks got to our main advertiser, Barnstormers.com, reducing their site to a crawl. To repair the damage, we had to take the store site down, and completely re-build it on another server, a job still not complete, but making good progress. It is now safe, secure, and allows us to continue on-line sales during the rebuild and posting.
As a result of this attack, the ticket sales momentum was lost, and we were unable to conduct on-line sales for nearly 6 weeks. This was a major setback, followed almost immediately by the economic logger head and showdowns in US Congress and the European debt issues, both of which have put a bit of a scare into the general economy. During November and December 2011, we have procured more advertising and ticket sales numbers are again on the rise.
We do however request your indulgence and patience during a short delay while we sell these remaining tickets. If you wish to help us reach our goals, feel free to download a raffle flyer and post it at your airport, or give it to a friend to enter the drawing.
Most sincerely yours,
Doug Combs – for the Luscombe Endowment