[Dx-qsl] K3ZO Replies

[Alfred Laun]

First of all, thanks to all of you who expressed your support for what
I am trying to do.

For those who have complained, kindly have the patience to let me
explain why I have been using this list the way I have in the past few
days:

For those of you who have had no experience working in a QSL Bureau,
it may be news to you that when you open a box from say, Germany,
containing about 3000 QSLs, after you have finished sorting them you
are left with a stack of about 200 or 300 cards that your experience
tells you cannot be delivered the way they are made out.

One of the big problems is that there is mis-information out there on
the Web, and people who want to send cards to some of the DXpeditions
or very active stations in rare or relatively rare entities use this
information to route their cards, having no idea that the information
is incorrect.  Since one assumes that a list of this type is read by
informed people who know where the major sources of information are, I
put the messages here so that someone among you may be able to correct
the bad information at the source, or can tell me the source of the
bad information  so that I can correct it.  Indeed, several of you
have already done this for some of the items I have listed, and I am
taking steps to get that info corrected.

The hope in so doing is that the number of mis-directed cards will
diminish in the future.  If nothing is done to correct the
information, the mis-directed cards will continue to arrive at about
the same rate.

Some of you will say: "If you can't deliver the card just throw it
away."  I have a deep appreciation for this wonderful tradition of
QSLing in this great hobby of ours, or I wouldn't be putting in the
five or six volunteer hours I spend every weekday doing this work.
I'm not complaining -- it truly IS a labor of love.  But before
throwing a card away, I try to put myself in the place of the sender,
remembering the days when as a 14 year old kid some 57 years ago the
arrival of a single QSL could brighten my day for hours.
I realize that people don't mis-route cards on purpose, but because
they are victims of incorrect information.  I had thought that putting
the correct information on a list like this might help more than one
person at a time, whereas if I just e-mail the person in question --
assuming I can find his/her e-mail address -- that info would only
assist that one individual.

At the same time in hindsight I realize that putting so much info up
here all at once has bothered some of you.  I had set aside a couple
of days from my sorting activities to work on this, and you will note
that over a given period of time I post to this list practically not
at all.  However, in the future I will try to spread out the postings
to try to make you happy.

Now let's all get back to sorting or DXing or whatever we do.

73 and DX,

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