Yes I finally finished the QSL job. It took me almost a year (remember?)
Three big shoe boxes of incoming cards, good for 3665 confirmed contacts printed on almost 3000 cards by GlobalQSL, good for 318 US$ / €257. ‘Good’ for their business that is.
Now there’s half a shoe box left for ON5ZO / OO5ZO (2005 only). That’s mostly replies to cards I sent out. Yes I used to solicit QSL by sending first. When you start out, everything is new and DX. More than 170 000 contacts later (since October 2000), it’s a different ballgame.
I kept apart the cards from exotic and rare places, nice cards that have a special meaning or image, and cards from friends I know or have met. There was a P43JB (SK) card in there too. These cards that are special to me make up a stack I can easily hold between thumb and index finger. The rest of the cards are stored in a big plastic container. The sad fate of the QSL card all over the world. Hence my problem with spending so much money.
There still are many people with their clocks off, or logging in local time and not in UTC. Some contacts are a day off. And one QSO was logged on… February 30! A few dozen (!) NIL cards too. I can’t trace the contact in my log. And it seems SWL-QSL business is booming. Do they really listen or do they just write down a copy of the cluster? Don’t laugh: I know a guy who did just that to generate a lot of incoming cards. One day he got a card back that said: “Did not work the station, just spotted it on the cluster”. Busted!
Now if the exclusive club of those 3000 recepients of an OQ5M QSL card come and work me in the next contests, things are looking good!