Is the QSL Card or the Confirmation More Important?
With the end of the TX5C DXpedition, QSL cards will be flying through the air to confirm the contact.
But do you really want the card? Or do you really want the confirmation to be part of your DXCC total?
It’s an important question. There is a tremendous amount of post DXpedition operator time spent on the QSL function. The QSLing, in fact, goes on for years after the event (I still get VP9 cards from my DXpedition there in 2005).
To be perfectly honest, QSLing is not what I came into the hobby to do. I came into operate. But, if you operate, especially in DXpeditions and contests, you will get QSL cards — thousands of them.
It’s not so much the cost of the cards, but the TIME. Finding time to go through the log, write out the card (almost as fast as creating a label), getting the card into the envelope, putting on the right number of stamps, and getting them into the mailbox or bureau pile (in country order…) is just a real pain.
On the other hand, confirming contacts via Log of The World is a piece of cake. After uploading the LoTW file for VP9, some 89 countries were confirmed and a total of some 300 contacts were confirmed for DXCC credit — two days after I came home from the DXpedition.
With the advent of Global QSL, bureau cards became just as easy to do. Take the bureau card, tag the file, export the file and upload it to Global QSL and the rest is done by them. I can’t tell you how much time has been saved using these two methods of confirming the contact.
Now, some people really want a card they can hang on the wall. Mine are all in files by country — and I haven’t looked at them for years and am seriously considering throwing them all out.
The saying goes that the final courtesy of a QSO is a QSL. But is the final courtesy the card? Or the confirmation of the contact?
Scot, K9JY
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4 comments
I’d agree that the confirmation is more important than the card. LoTW is the future.
30 years ago when I was first licensed, my logs show that typical years included about 300 total contacts. Postage was cheap then and I could QSL 100% for $35 or $40 for an entire year. Fast-forward 25 years and I was putting 5,000 Qs in the log a year while postage had quadrupled.
Having said that, I still send QSL cards — but only if asked.
Times … they change.
73 de Jeff
Jeff…that’s an important point about the number of contacts. If I remember correctly, some of the earlier contests had rules that really limited the number of contacts you could make. Now, a multi-two station here in the States could garner 7,000 contacts in a weekend. With all the associated QSL costs.
Nice addition. Thanks.
For me it is the confirmation and I am 100% for LoTW. If only more of the contest stations that operates from “rare” locations also could use LoTW I would be really happy. Good article!
In my case, the card is most important to me when I work a “NEW ONE”. I always liked having the QSL card to look at and to put in my collection (one card per country). After that, LoTW confirmation will do.
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