[Today’s run: rest day]
I have spoken about QSL cards before.
A couple of weeks ago I received a packet of QSL cards from the Zero-land QSL bureau. The bureau collects cards coming to me and sends me a batch every once in a while. I send them some money periodically to keep that going. I use zeroland because my callsign has a zero in it wøep.
Today I pulled out the old IBM Wheelwriter spell-checking typewriter (just like Ernest Hemmingway used!!) and I went through the pile of cards that I had received and created a reply card for each one.
I actually look in my paper logs and at my uploaded LoTW online log to see if I talked to these people at the time and frequency they claim I did. All were ok. A couple I had even talked to on prior occasions not noted on their card.
These are all DX cards (foreign countries), so no, I am not going to stick a stamp on these cards and send them in the regular mail.
The ARRL has an Outgoing QSL Bureau. I send my cards in one package to them. They sort and ship them to the various foreign countries where volunteer QSL bureau’s like the zeroland guys operate.
It is traditional, particularly when conversing by morse code, to refer to the the QSL bureau system as “the burro” or even “the buro”. A guy will say, “pse QSL via buro” (morse code conversations are full of shorthands and abbreviations). As you might imagine, and as the name implies, the burro method can take awhile. I was looking at cards in this batch from 2010 and 2011 and a few early 2012.
Hams are generally cheapskates. If someone is really desperate to have my QSL card he will send his via first class US Mail and enclose an SASE. Some people, wanting to get a certain DX card will send “green stamps” (dollar bills) and an SASE and whatever other incentives they consider useful. But I’m a cheapskate and I use the burro.
In the batch of cards I also received something called an SWL card. SWL stands for shortwave listener. This is a card which shows that the guy was listening in to the conversation I had with someone else (SP3003LG overheard me talking to OL1911VP in this case). I replied to that one as well. I hope the burro can find the SWL.
