The membership on the AK side consists of quite a few older guys who've been collecting AKs for several years and have experienced the difficulties of aquiring rare parts and historical information.
We established a home base on the AK side of AR15.com and have been doing our best to promote the hobby to everyone. It seems that while we're out there providing technical support and promoting the hobby, there's always been an underlying fact that the board is a business enterprise.
Recent restrictions on imported parts have caused higher prices and rare parts are becoming harder and harder to acquire. The EE forums are our main source of acquiring these items and some of the best vendors are nothing more that guys in strategic locations who find these parts and offer them to us. Unfortunatly, the business aspect of the board requires a basic fee which is priced beyond the means of these smaller vendors. We've requested changes with the board but nothing happened.
Some of us just want to do this because we enjoy doing it, and don't want to be part of a business enterprise. AR15.COM is a great board, but we feel we're going to continue our efforts of promoting AKs and information where we are not constrained with dealer fees, BTT violations, etc.
Hope this clears up the muddy water, JOHNO