DX QSL Cards are Awesome!!!

I once did 100% QSL with paper cards… those days are long gone though. It turned into this huge project to keep up with them to the point that I spent more time working on the QSL cards than I did on the air.

It was at this point that I decided to alter my strategy for QSL management to the one I am using currently. This strategy led to me getting this letter in the mail.

My current (and sustainable as well) process is to cherry pick the QSOs I send cards to. I have some criteria that I use though.

• Ragchews almost always get a card. If the other op doesn’t QSL I wont but usually I send one for this.

• QRP contacts whether from my home or abroad will also usually get a card. To clarify that is they are QRP. I work it so much that I dont use my radio as a factor. Same exclusions as above here too.

• DX if it is a country I have never worked before. Actually this criteria is a mandatory QSL…as long as they do QSL.

• If I just want to is the last one.

So back in July, I did a POTA activation at K-2169 and used my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 transceiver for the activation. On that day the bands were in great shape and so I start On 15 meters and after a while moved down to 17 meters to get a few contacts in the log. I felt pretty confident 17 would be good as I had already worked two DX stations on 15 meters. Albeit fairly close to home, but they were still DX none the less.

Well, I work several US hams and they are coming in sporadically but then I hear this station that is clean but weak. I thought at first I had missed the first letter of his call as I heard a J next, we went through the “on air gymnastics” of asking for the call again and when I got it, I was blown away to realize it was a Japan station!!! I had to send him a card! So I write one out and check his QRZ and he does QSL, so threw in a few green stamps to help offset his costs and off it went into the mail. Today, I got my reply…

In the photo above you will see three cards, one is handwritten, one ís typed and one is a different card altogether. The odd one is an extra card he sent that was his old QSL. That is awesome to me. I love getting these in the mail. If you will notice he has a 4 element beam so that combined with good band conditions allowed my 20 watts to reach him in Japan.

It is interesting to me that I will get so accustomed to hearing the 4 US call letters first that when I hear one from somewhere else, it “breaks my brain” for lack of a better term. I am listening so much for A, N, W & K that I completely miss the other letters most of the time. I actually can catch V calls pretty good now as I have worked many since starting POTA activating regularly but it is the exception. This has prompted me to listen on the bands more to try to hear DX calls and not lose my marbles when I hear one… lol. I copied a Swedish station the other day first try and was kinda stoked so my practice is working. But this is a side effect of being a US amateur working a lot of POTA in the eastern USA, you do get accustomed to hearing certain prefixes a lot (or at least I do). I have a bunch of those stories if you want me to recount them at some point…

Do you have any odd idiosyncrasies that you run into while operating on the air? Let’s hear them! Till next time 72

de WK4DS - David

QSL Mail call !!!

What have we here? Looks like a letter from the Azores!!! I don’t know why, but I have always enjoyed receiving these letters in the mail, and it brings me a little bit of joy to get them. Every time I see one of these, I get excited, no matter how long I have done this. This is why I still have QSL cards that I send out from time to time as well. The clue that it’s a QSL card is the Amateur Radio call signs on the envelope and typically the foreign postage is another clue as I normally do not write letters to people overseas.

Look at that antenna! No wonder he could hear me with my little paltry 5 watts of transmitter power. Normally, the stations that are overseas that actually will respond to my CQs when I do a POTA activation, are using antennas like this, or something similar and very high-quality receivers because I am transmitting into a compromise antenna with just five watts or maybe even less sometimes.

It never fails to amaze me how economically this postcard can be transported from one location on the globe to another for just a buck or two that astounds me due to the economy involved in moving this piece of paper.

Thanks for tagging along this morning while I drink my cup of coffee and read my cool letter from the Azores and until next time get your radio out and go make some contacts with it.

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Long lost friends in amateur radio

I have been doing POTA (Parks on the Air) for a couple of months now and have started to notice a few call signs that show up in my log more often than not. One of thsee calls is K9IS. Steven has “hunted” me at almost all of my activations, to the point that I now know his name when he calls me. His call sign just kind of “jumps” off the page at me for some reason. I dont know why this happens but it does occasionally. Maybe this time there was another reason???

Here is the dejavu part of the story. I was talking to my buddy across town (KG4WBI) on the repeater one night and we got to talking about the contact I made to Alaska from my jeep on a RCI Ranger 2950 10 meter radio using CW and I wanted to know the output power I was using that day, (Trust me this all ties together at the end) So I remember that I had used that particular QSL card in my WAS card set for my Alaska card, so I dig out the box and start going through the stack to find the Alaska card and what do I stumble across? A QSL CARD FROM K9IS FROM WHEN I HAD MY OLD CALLSIGN OF KG4WBH!!! Seems that day I was playing with my Rockmite 40 I had built and he was using a Ten Tec Argonaut 5. I just recently bought an Argonaut 5 and plan on doing some activations with it using a straight key soon. (Like next week if I can get the cable built). Anyway, this blew my mind that we had made contact so long ago and now we are meeting on the air reguarly to make POTA contacts and we didnt even know it.

I was using a Rockmite 40 that day and it only uses about 500milliwatts of output power, hence the QRPp note.

I reached out to Steven and shared my little discovery with him and we both had a good laugh out of it. Neither one of us had remembered the QSO back in 2003 on April Fool’s day…till I found that card. This is one of the many reasons I like using paper QSL cards. It is fun to me to wax nostalgic and read back through these cards at times. Especially the ones with additional inserts sent with them that had background info about the operator or some cool little tidbit about the local area where they lived. It is a treasure trove of information. You should look into using paper QSL cards if you have not done it before. It isnt for everyone, but at least take a look. If you want to send just select cards on occasion, you can even make simple cards in photoshop for a specific event and just print photos of them, that has worked for me in the past more than once. I even used the discount version of Photoshop… GIMP. Anyway, let’s climb out of that rabbit hole and get back to the original story. HAHA

This is why I like paper QSL cards.

PS: By the way, the output power to Alaska that day from a modified 102” stainless steel whip mounted on the back corner of my jeep was just 8 watts. The bands were good to me that day.

PSS: If you noticed, my old callsign and my buddies call sign are sequential. We did this on purpose as we wanted to try to have sequential calls when we decided to get our licenses. I have since acquired a vanity call after getting my Amateur Extra ticket, but Roger still has his original call even though he now has his General.

ARRL Amateur Radio Field Day 2022 After Action Report from a CW op.

Well that fateful day has come and went, fun was had, radios were used and new skills were learned.

I want to thank Ms. Dana K4GCA, for hosting us on her property so graciously, this made the whole event feel so much better. You see, this is our first field day without her late husband Brian (K4GC) who passed away unexpectedly last year. We miss Brian dearly and it made this field day even more special to be allowed to operate the site from his back yard.

This was the first year I have been to a field day event in many years. A lot of new faces have came onto the scene since the last time I did field day with the K4SOD amateur radio club. It was good to see old faces as well as the new ones and to put faces to call signs is always a good thing.

Roger KG4WBI brought several radios and antennas and proceeded to build a huge antenna array on a push-up pole to connect his Ten Tec Argonaut to via hamstick dipoles. I had to leave before the system was built completely and go to church for the evening but when I came back I went back over to the site to operate some CW on the air..

Once things got underway, they setup the SSB station in the back workshop and got to work. Ricky W4EMA getting on the air here on Roger’s KG4WBI Alinco DX77T HF rig while Steve KI4WJG waits his turn at the controls. Thanks to KK4IJR Kevin for many of the photos in this article, but somehow we didnt get a single image of him!!! LOL

It is strange how CW will draw a crowd I did not think most people enjoyed it but it was a huge conversation topic the whole time I was trying to work contacts. The guys were truly interested and it surprised me. I was looking around trying to find contacts with the Argonaut but since it only has 5W of output power it was very difficult to get through the band QRM and make a contact. I spent the better part of almost an hour trying to make five contacts, it was very different from the parks on the air style of operating.

I finally gave in and we used Josh’s KN4RTY Yeasu 891 to up the power output and to get through and make some contacts. At this point my confidence was boosted somewhat and I was able to get back on the Argonaut and it’s five watts of output power and make a few more contacts with it before I called it quits at 2:48 in the morning local time(5:48 UTC).

Getting to use the Argonaut was a special treat as those radios have been out of production for many years maybe even decades at this point. Roger had went to the trouble of having this radio professionally tuned, aligned and cleaned so that it would be in pristine operating condition for the night. Ten Tec transceivers are amazing radios especially for the CW operators. They seem to specialize in that type of radio communications with their transceivers. If you really enjoy using CW in my opinion, you really should look at Ten Tec and Elecraft radios, these radios excel at that mode. Now don’t get me wrong, all amateur radios, pretty much, work really well with CW. It is just a subset of all the amateur radio operating modes so don’t think you have to have a certain brand of radio to use CW, I just prefer Ten Tec radios.

I decided to take two different CW keys with me to the field a side. One was my straight key I made some 20 years ago but since we were using it on the Argonaut 2 I had to change the cable to an RCA cable to be able to connect it to the radio. The other key was my serial number 1 “prototype” WK4DS paddle and I love this key greatly so I put it in a waterproof hard shell storage box with some closed cell phone to protect it during travel. These two CW keys are my primary keys that I use when I work outdoors or sometimes indoor operations. I have others as well, but these are my favorites.

My logbook is a mess! I would get the call first then get their exchange info before even calling them, this way i could listen to the exchange and just confirm what I had written down already. This made code copy at such high speeds much easier for me. You see, I am kinda slow at copy right now… lol…

It was a really good time and I really enjoyed meeting with people that I had not seen in a long time it makes me realize how great this community really is. If you have not gotten out and interacted with the local hams in your area I highly recommend it. Until next time get your radio out and go make a contact with it will see you later 73 WK4DS

Got something magical in the mail today from my POTA radio time!

When you embark down the road of ham radio you learn a lot of history as part of the journey.. A little piece of that history is QSL cards. QSL cards are super interesting to me as I am pretty sure it is one of the only times that a person involved in an activity will go to the trouble of documenting and sharing that documentation with the other involved party to confirm it happened. A QSL card is usually nothing more then a post card with the contact data on it, sometimes mailed like a post card sometimes in an envelope. Then there are “nicer” cards that will have photos on them, but the ones I REALLY like have personal hand written notes on them. Those are the best to me. If you are active in radio very much on HF at all, you will end up with at least a few of these in your mailbox. The usual courtesy for me is to reply to all cards I get in the mail, I once actively sent cards to all my contacts that I made, but I no longer do that due to the costs involved, but I will always reply to one sent to me…always.

I find it charming to keep this tradition alive, but it can get complicated too, before you throw your card in the mail, be sure to check to see how the other op handles their QSL cards, there are several ways to do it , just so your aware. Most of these are done to help either save time or money and sometimes the DX station will have rules as well as sending a “green-stamp” to offset return postage or an SASE to help them with the expense of sending those exotic cards over seas.

Since I have been out of radio for sometime, I am honestly needing new cards. I think I will go with photo cards this time and not add any special logos so they will translate to all types of radio like voice modes and even digital.

Customizing your QSL cards doesn’t have to be a once and done thing either, I have routinely made custom QSL cards in the past by just doing some photo editing and then printing photos and writing the QSL info on the back. I would always mail these in envelopes as I didn’t want the post office sorting machines abrading the photos. But this is just one way to make the card, you can literally write a letter if you wanted to… The rules are not set in stone here.

I always enjoyed getting these kind of “shack” info letters, it was always interesting for me to see what the other op was using when we made contact. Sometimes it would be a 10,000$ power house machine and sometimes it would be a homebuilt rockbound radio that cost 25$.

Yes, we had a QSO and he was transmitting with 250 milliwatts! The note about the contact is below.

So I hope if your new to amateur radio that you will consider sending some cards out and going the extra mile and personalizing them as well. Have some fun with it! That is what it is all about anyway!

Tough conditions, dead batteries and a lot of amateur radio fun.

This is a tale of a guy who thinks he is going to get a “quick” POTA activation and then go grab some photos as well… It didn’t go like that…at all.

You see I thought I had this whole Parks On The Air thing dialed in and have even built a little “kit” to activate parks with that I can just grab and go. I am repurposing an old camera bag (a story for another day) and it organizes the QRP rig perfectly for activations. Soooooo, this is how it goes on that fateful day. I have a few hours in the afternoon on June 8th 2022 and tell the wife I am gonna “run” over to Cloudland Canyon state park and get a quick activation and then be back in time for supper with the kids later. I grab said POTA bag, hop in the truck and head over to my spot to activate K-2169.

Well, I should have heeded the warning when I got there I guess as my favorite location on top of the hill was occupied with a group of teens on a day trip from a local school. I circle through the parking lot really slowly surveying the area and decided to park for a bit and see if I could figure something else out when I catch a break! They start packing up to leave!!! So I wait patiently for them to vacate the location I want to use and once clear, I move the truck and grab my gear.

Setup was frustrating this time as I had to throw my line 7 times to get a good location like I wanted (turned out later that really didnt seem to matter, haha). I FINALLY get the line up in the tree and then hook up the radio and we are off to the races! Well, I was off to the races, seems nobody could hear me. It took several minutes of calling CQ to get my first contact. Normally once I get one, then I will end up with at least an activation (10 contacts) within about the next ten minutes. Not this time, it took a full ten minutes to get the next QSO in the log! So then I figure I would go hunting some other parks and I did get one then another! NO! It was a SOTA op that is didnt hear well… lol. Well after that I got my hopes up again as I got a run of 5 in about 25 minutes. As I would be just about to give up and try something else, I would get another one and it would keep me in place a little longer. So I am an hour in and only have 8 contacts at this point, I need 10 for a technical activation, so I REALLY want to get two more before having to shut down the operation. It was at this point that I realized why I was getting the 339 reports…THE REMOTE BATTERY WAS DEAD!!! I’m thinking at this point. Really doofus, your brought a dead battery to an activation??? Well, yeah, I did… So I am now running on the battery that comes with the 705 which will only produce 5 watts output. I can hear stations but they cant hear me… I head over to 30 meters and bag N3VO for the 9th QSO in the log, it is basically time to break down the rig, but I need one more contact to have an activation, so I go back to 20 meters and switch to SSB, after trying to get through 4 pile ups without no success, I score a park to park on my last QSO of the day and get my 10th contact securing an official activation. This one was close, but I made it, I quickly broke the rig down and headed home…

So if you think you cant make it work, there is almost always a way to do it, even if you have a dead battery and the bands are terrible for QRP and you have to switch modes, you just might get it done.

73

WK4DS