In an earlier post I’ve talked about QSL-cards. My conclusion is that the good old QSL-card still is a fun thing to exchange and I don’t want to get rid off yet.
The problem is, I still never had one printed. When I got my novice license back in 2003 I never made any QSO’s because I was living in an apartment at the time without any antenna-possibilities.
Since 2007 I was able to put up an antenna and made my first DX-QSO’s. But then I was already studying for my full license. So it would be a little weird to print out QSL-cards with my novice call. I felt that would be like bad luck…
So when I finally got my full license last year, it was time to let print some!
I’d asked around a bit what is a good company to let print QSL-cards.
Seems to be ON5UR is a radio amateur in Belgium who is a printer and a specialist in printing QSL-cards! So I send him some pictures and idea’s and he send back this very cool design! I did let him print 1000 of these. If you want one, catch me on the bands!

About two weeks ago someone from the club approached me. If I wanted to join the morse training. Since I don’t know morse yet (it isn’t a requirement for a full license in here), I thought it is a pretty nice experience!

After two lessons I can decode the characters A – J. So I still have a long way to go, but it is fun! Every day I practice for half an hour. Hopefully I be able to make a QSO in morse soon 😉

Funny and interesting article from K9JY about letting go of some things in our hobby. Scot states that he thinks QSL cards are not of today anymore. Maybe he is right. Some years ago when I made my first hcjb1963 DX QSO, I had not yet made QSL-cards. I found in my logging program an option to send out a digital QSL-card. I send to all my contacts an digital QSL-card. I was thinking at the time: “this is actually a very nice and fast way to confirm a QSL!” Unfortionally I got back some very rude reactions from my fellow HAM’s. They did not accept digital QSL-cards. I was a little disappointed. I can imagine you still want to receive good old QSL-cards, them just (nicely) say so. But there seems to be a real hate against digital QSL-cards.
Funny thing is I did read about LotW a few minutes before I read Scot’s article. Still have to figure out how it works and what is it exactly. But wouldn’t it be cool to be able to confirm QSL’s digitally via internet? And maybe hams who appreciate an analog QSL-card can indicate that on there qrz.com page. I don’t know, just mindfarting here. Let me know what you think!