[Dx-qsl] ER4DX

[Peter Dougherty]

>Has anyone had success in obtaining a QSL card from ER4DX?
>QSO was made on 40m LSB on 16th November 2001, sent twice to  the address 
>in QRZ along with addressed envelope and two green stamps, got no reply.
>Sent for the third time on 11th July 2002 by recorded delivery ( same as 
>registered) which must be signed for. The envelope has not bounced back so 
>can only assume it was delivered. Should I mark this one up to experience 
>or is it worthwhile trying again?

My experience is that Moldova is one of the hardest entities to get a card 
out of. After 4 tries and more than a year waiting, I've still not gotten 
anything. And I'm not alone. I wrote a series of posts to the DX News 
reflector a couple of weeks ago, and I got a tremendous response from 
others saying the same thing. ER4DX reportedly does QSL from time to time, 
but I think he's about the only one. I haven't gotten one from him yet for 
contacts on 15 and 20.

And it's not as if Moldova is a rare one to work, either. ER1QQ, for 
example, has a very loud, booming signal all the time. Easy as heck to 
work. He'll always tell you to QSL via QRZ.COM, but I don't think anybody's 
ever gotten a card from him. Not just that, but whenever anybody questions 
him about their card arriving, he just repeats QSL via QRZ.COM. 73 QRZ? I'm 
not normally of a suspicious nature, but....

I gave one last try, this time using mint stamps from Moldova instead of 
Green Stamps or IRCs. We'll see, but I'm not betting the farm on seeing 
anything back at all. I can't think of one other country that's been harder 
to get a card out of, and I'm up to 197 confirmed. Not even Pakistan, 
Turkmenistan, Azerbijain or Kyrgystan were anywhere near that bad. Got all 
of those within a 3 month window, more of less. Kaliningrad was also pretty 
bad (about a year direct, but I finally got one last week--with 5 more 
still waiting).

You know, I'd even volunteer to manage a station from there, but I somehow 
don't think my offer would be acted upon. I suspect a few of those stations 
like the status quo just nicely.

- pjd