[Dx-qsl] K3ZO Replies

Wed May 6 23:55:32 EDT 2009

I would like to ditto Fred remarks as I volunteer at the W8 bureau. As one
approximately 6 sorters, I try to put the cards in the right direction. The
others who sort cards are members of WC8VOA and the bureau is located in
the decommissioned VOA Bethany Station.
Most of the others who do sorting and are not interested in DX so they just
put the cards in the slots for the letter managers A - Z.  The cards are
rarely alphabetized and many times the writing is small or poorly written.
We do not check for the correct managers. Currently there is no Internet
access as the building is under renovation. It takes about 2 hours per week
per sorter to process all the cards. It is an unforgiving task, especially
when the area manager has to take cards to the post office to be mailed.
Imagine 25 or so boxes of 5 to 10 pounds each, waiting in line at the post
office to have them mailed every 2 - 4 months!

 We were getting a lot of cards for N8S. I put them in the YU outgoing slot
as I knew they were via YT1AD, the others tossed them in the trash. We also
receive a lot of cards for KL8 which should go to the KL7 bureau. These are
forwarded to the ARRL outgoing bureau. Also AN8 which goes to EA.
The W3 area is very lucky to have Fred as the manager as he  is going
several steps beyond what is done at the other call area bureaus.

Also we continue to receive envelopes that are padded, over sized, and
without sufficient postage. I strongly suggest you read the guidelines at
your areas web site. The W8 bureau can be found at
http://www.greatlakes.arrl.org/gldburo.html . It is very simple if you take
time and read what is suggested.

The boxes that we receive from the foreign bureaus are generally in poor
shape by the time they reach us. If there are any foreign outgoing managers
who might read this, I suggest that you run a couple layers of tape
around the three directions of the box. Almost all the larger boxes we
receive have split on one edge and its a miracle that the cards are still in
the box.

73   Jack N8DX

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Alfred Laun <hs0zar at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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