Today the nice people at Blackbushe Flying Club decided to register the ICAO airfield designator for Popham Airfield in Hampshire (eghp.co.uk) and redirect it to their flying school at Blackbushe. Nominet claims to have validated Blackbushe Flying Club Ltd as the rightful owners, which is interesting.
I used to be a member of the flying club at Popham for many years, but I’m not now. Still friendly though. I’m also a member of Nominet. If anyone from Popham would like to get in touch for backup in getting these juvenile scallywags at Blackbushe dealt with appropriately, I should be flying in some time tomorrow morning.
FWIW, here’s chapter and verse:
Domain name: eghp.co.uk
Registrant: Blackbushe Flying Club
Registrant type: UK Limited Company, (Company number: 00000)
Registrant's address: 11 The Close College Town Sandhurst Berkshire GU47 0RE United Kingdom
Data validation: Registrant contact details validated by Nominet on 08-Apr-2015
Registrar: Mesh Digital Limited t/a Domainmonster.com [Tag = MONSTER] URL: http://www.domainmonster.com
Relevant dates: Registered on: 08-Apr-2015 Expiry date: 08-Apr-2017 Last updated: 08-Apr-2015
Update 13-Apr-2015
I did some investigating and I know exactly who is behind this, and it was nothing to do with Popham or a joke. It looks like something that seemed like a good idea at the time to someone. It’s not actually Blackbushe airfield that’s behind it, it’s an outfit calling itself Blackbushe Flying Group (and I won’t get personal by naming the individual).
Judging from the hit-count on this page, and a the result of a few phone calls, “someone” has realised the error of his ways and changed it to a redirect sending all traffic to Popham’s real web site. If that someone wishes to get in touch I can help make it right permanently, at least as far as Popham is concerned. His landlord, Blackbushe Airport Ltd, may be less forgiving as, in addition to associating the Blackbushe name in some skulduggery, he’s only gone and registered eglk.co.uk too. Ouch.
If the idea behind the wheeze was there’s no such thing as bad publicity, I’d say that was only partly true.