I’ve seen a few messages from AR over the years saying “can’t see the point of that LoTW or eQSL.cc” so I was going to put the other side of the debate…
I’ve only been licensed since 2003, but in the last few years I have completed some 5,000 home-based QSO and around 3,000 portable / mobile. If I add in the RTTY contests, then we work around 2,000 over the 48Hrs..
So, just working on my own QSO, its around 8,000. Let’s assume I only QSL by receipt, so thats around 50% of the Q…so I need to provide 4,000 cards.
Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem sending people cards if they send me one via the bureau …but I see no need to send one for every QSO. This is for a number of reasons…
- Why send a card to everyone, when a large percentage will never make it (not in bureau, no envelops, not interested in collecting) and many other reasons.
- Cost, do I really need to send a card to a G station to “confirm” the QSO ?
- Cost, not only of the cards themselves, but the time it takes to complete them, postage, qsl managers’ time, bureau time, post operative time (very PC) and the fact that many will sit in the draw gathering dust…
So if it is not the time, money, natural waste, the space they take up or the fact many just never get to their locations what could it be…
[fx..drum roll] LoTW (log book of the World). Yes an electronic based QSL system. It takes up no space, is reasonably easy to set-up and ….well best of all FREE. Oh that’s right it doesn’t take up any time, or require you to send bits of paper in the post….or indeed use any natural resources and its instant.
Remember the day when you used to take pictures on a film camera, sure it was fun waiting to see what you got back in the post… It usually took a week or so, cost a fortune and more times than not you just had pictures with stickers saying “Note blur / motion shake”. Oh yes, the joy of paying lots of money and waiting ages only to find out 4 out of 24 of your pictures are any good…
The old paper bureau is a bit like that, and then exactly what do you do with the 800 cards from DL stations ?
Thankfully eQSL (for the not serious contester) or LoTW have come to the rescue. They are free, quick, reliable and best of all back up your log for free.
Now, what did I do with that pile of cards from DL…sorry must dash need to write out more cards 🙂
73 Dave M0TAZ (email: m0taz@lefars.org.uk)
