Got my full license early 2008 and still not worked 100 countries (confirmed). You could say I had a lot of off-air time. But since 2013 I participate in more then a few contests and my first DXCC-award (mixed) is appearing on the horizon. I do have a shoe box full of QSL-cards and mixed with my Logbook of The World confirms I do have 100 countries confirmed. I did look in to the process of having my cards checked and apply them for the award but I decided that’s too much hassle. In LoTW I have 96 confirmed countries, so four more and I can apply for DXCC mixed without even opening my QSL shoe box.
Sounds nice to me! Don get me wrong, I do like to receive paper QSL’s, especially from special stations or very remote locations. But for award checking it is far more convenient to have digitally confirmations.
Tag: qsl-cards
New QSL-card!
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!
Throw out your QSL-cards!
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 
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!