{"id":1040,"date":"2010-12-18T11:26:51","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T17:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2010-12-18T11:26:51","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T17:26:51","slug":"qsl-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=1040","title":{"rendered":"QSL Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post I try to explain another aspect of Amateur Radio for my non-ham readers.\u00a0 One interesting part of Amateur Radio is the practice of exchanging QSL<\/a> cards to verify an over the air communication.\u00a0 QSL cards are postcards containing the details of the contact such as date, time (UTC), signal strength (RST) and call letters.\u00a0 Some cards are extremely ornate while other hams (like me) opt for plainer and less expensive cards.\u00a0 Here is what my personal card looks like.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the reasons the practice of sending QSL cards thrives is that many radio awards<\/a> require proof that the applicant has actually contacted the station they claim to have communicated with. \u00a0 There are numerous ways to exchange QSL cards.\u00a0 The most common ways are by direct mail to the address of the station worked or to a QSL manager<\/strong><\/em> for that station.\u00a0 Clearly this could get rather expensive in terms of outgoing and return postage.\u00a0\u00a0 To help with this cost there are QSL Bureaus<\/em><\/strong> where a ham can send cards in bulk to a central outgoing bureau<\/strong> in their home country.\u00a0 That bureau then collects and sends them on to the corresponding incoming <\/strong><\/em>bureau <\/em><\/strong>in the destination country.\u00a0 There they are then distributed to the individual ham operators.\u00a0 This process can save considerably on postage costs but the downside is that the whole process can take a year or more before receiving the desired card back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here is an example of some of the QSL cards I have received from various places. (Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version).\u00a0 Over the years I have collected thousands of cards from all over the world.\u00a0 In fact filing and storage gets to be a bit of a problem.\u00a0\u00a0 I often enter radio contests<\/a> and I can get a large number of incoming cards a few months after the contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post I try to explain another aspect of Amateur Radio for my non-ham readers.\u00a0 One interesting part of Amateur Radio is the practice of exchanging QSL cards to verify an over the air communication.\u00a0 QSL cards are postcards containing the details of the contact such as date, time (UTC), signal strength (RST) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}