[Dx-qsl] Several IRCs

[Alfred Laun]

On 8/5/06, Alan Zack <k7acz at cox.net> wrote:
> I know it is true, but it is so stupid for people to get on the air and
> work DX and not have envelopes or money on hand with their QSL Buro.  I
> know it happens as I used to be a card sorter helper and for many cards
> we got from the buro there was no envelope on file for the receiptant.

Now that I have been managing the ARRL Third Call Area QSL Bureau for
seven months,
kindly allow me to elaborate on this point based on my experience to date:

1) Most of us assume everyone knows all about the Bureau system but in
fact many casual DXers do not.  When notifying people that they have
cards on hand, I have had answers such as: "I never asked anyone to
send me a QSL card.  Why would they do something like that?"

2) With junk mail, identity theft and SPAM it has become more
difficult for the Bureau to contact people who have cards on hand in
order to ask them to provide envelopes.  The standard ARRL
notification card for this purpose is discarded with the junk mail.
Bureau e-mails are assigned to the SPAM file by the client's anti-SPAM
program.  For this reason I have asked our sorters to return cards for
non-responsive stations to me rather than trashing them, and I am
creative in trying to find out what the destinee station really wants
us to do with them.

3) Some QSL managers or high-QSO-volume DXers/contesters assume that
if they put the word out there that they don't accept bureau cards,
the DXing world will get the message.  They don't stop to think that
people who send a card through the bureau have quite probably not
checked QRZ.com or other lookups for the station in question.  Why
would they have to do that if they are going to use the bureau anyway,
after all?  So regardless of these operators' policies, the Bureau
continues to be inundated with cards for them.

A corrollary of this is that many European bureaus make it so easy for
members of their national radio societies to use the bureau that it
becomes almost automatic.  In Germany  you pay  more to be a member of
DARC than we pay to belong to ARRL,  but included in the price is the
automatic forwarding of your QSLs both domestically and
internationally.  Your local club is a branch of the DARC, so you get
your QSLs at club meetings and you take to the club meeting the cards
you want to send out.

4) Busted calls are a real problem for Bureaus if, like myself, you
don't want to pass on to your sorters cards which will never be
claimed because the calls don't exist.  We have a few high-volume
contest stations (myself included) in the third call area who get
oodles of cards.   W3BGM, W3DGN and W3BNG all get cards even though
the calls aren't assigned, W3BGN being a very active station.  W3RPR,
W3RPL and W3LRP also get cards even though the calls aren't assigned,
with W3LPL being a very active contest station.   At least these are
pretty easy to spot when  they come through.  But almost all 1x2 calls
are assigned so even though a call was busted  there is somebody who
owns the erroneous
call.  People are understandably upset when they pay to get their
cards and then almost none of the QSOs turn out to be contacts that
they have made.  I recently had a series of e-mails with KT4W, the QSL
Manager for N4RV, and sure enough, about half the cards that have come
in for N3RV are in N4RV's logs.

5) People who copy QSL Managers' calls wrong, or get DXpedition calls
wrong are another problem.  On days when I have picked up 6000+
incoming cards at the Bureau's P. O. box I can sit here at the
computer for hours going back and forth from DX Summit to IK3QAR to
QRZ.com to Buckmaster to RAC playing detective.

Having said all of the foregoing, about 90% of the cards coming into
this bureau are delivered to the destinees without problems.  And I
love doing the job.  Apparently DXing is alive and well.   In May the
W3 bureau received 22,775 cards from DX stations; in June 16,050 cards
and in July 18,555 cards.

73, Fred Laun, K3ZO
Manager
NCDXA/ARRL Third Call Area Incoming QSL Bureau