I have the GREATEST hobby in the world!

Sorry stamp collectors. Too bad for the soccer guys. I have sympathy for amateur photographers. But none of those hobbies come even close to ham radio! Let me explain. I got home around noon. WX today: blue skies, sun upon us, Spring is here. I stroll to the mailbox and find an envelope with the typical colorful AIR MAIL border. So yet another QSL I think to myself. Hey, what’s this? Someone wrote a note on the envelope. “Almost PJ2” it says, pointing to the stamp. The sender’s name doesn’t ring a bell and there’s no callsign. So I guess the sender reads my blog and refers to last year’s “I might have gone to PJ2” entry (read it here). Yeah man, rub it in…

Inside I take the scissors to open up the envelope and oh my: it’s the QSL for my PJ2/N4QQ QSO on 160m a few weeks ago. I didn’t even send a QSL card because I knew N4QQ uses LotW and I quit collecting cards. Apparently N4QQ read my blog entry about that QSO (read it here). John was so nice to write a long note on the back of the card, telling me he “is sending the card because it is a new one on 160” and that he “enjoyed the description on your blog of our contact”. That really made my day. Not only do I remember the QSO so lively because I never worked a new DX so swiftly on Top Band, but now I have a memorable QSL card to treasure. This is one of the few cards that won’t end up in a shoe box in a drawer. Oh no, it will become part of the stack with special QSL cards for those special contacts!