[TCARC-NTx] Fw: [Qsl-Net] Laurel, Delaware man hamming it up with Internet site

Sun, 6 Jan 2002 18:30:19 -0600

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Henney" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 12:07 AM
Subject: [Qsl-Net] Laurel, Delaware man hamming it up with Internet site

I wish to submit this article for inclusion with the "Al Waller Nomination"
packet.  Please let me know if I can mail anything to Cathi.

http://www.newszap.com/display/inn_delaware/news04.txt
Laurel, Delaware man hamming it up with Internet site

By Justin Cord Hayes, Staff writer

LAUREL - Al Waller's hobby involves 400,000 or so of his closest friends
from around the world.

Mr. Waller, 55, a contract engineer with NASA by day, is the "Web guru" for
QSL.net once he arrives home from the office. QSL offers free e-mail and
homepage accounts for amateur, or "ham," radio enthusiasts. He currently
hosts 54,000 Web pages and more than 400,000 e-mail accounts.

On an average day, he gets 300 requests from ham operators around the world
who would like to have e-mail accounts on QSL. Mr. Waller estimates that
there are approximately 600,000 ham radio operators in the United States and
about 2.5 million worldwide. That means about 20 percent of the world's ham
operators have accounts with QSL.

QSL, by the way, is "hamspeak" for "Are you receiving this transmission?"
There are, in fact, an entire series of "Q" messages. They're useful for
allowing people who speak two different languages to communicate over their
radios. QTH, for example, means "What is your present location?" QSY means
"Can you change frequencies?"

The attraction of QSL.net, Mr. Waller explained, is that it standardizes
e-mail addresses for ham enthusiasts worldwide. All 2.5 million operators
have unique ham "call letters" by which they are identified, and their
e-mail accounts on QSL are: call [email protected]. Consequently, ham
operators can communicate via radio or the Internet using their call
letters. Likewise, Web sites that are hosted by QSL have standardized
addresses as well: www.qsl.net/"call letters."

One local organization that is just starting to use a Web site courtesy of
QSL is the Sussex County Amateur Radio Association.

"Al gave a presentation about QSL at our club meeting last month," said Bill
Hammond, president of the organization, "and soon we'll have a page that
will contain club information and information about our newsletter."

Mr. Hammond called QSL "very handy" and thinks it will allow his club to get
more exposure since the page will be readily available for other ham
enthusiasts.

"It's amazing that you can have, right from little old Sussex Delaware, an
idea spring up that's gone global," he said.

QSL began four years ago when Mr. Waller became interested in the newest
form of worldwide communication, the Internet.

"With my insatiable curiosity of how things work, I got rather deeply
immersed into figuring out how the Internet worked," he said. "I contracted
with a company to host a little Internet server and became my own Internet
provider, just as a hobby. Some of my friends asked if they could have a Web
page or e-mail address, and it just kind of grew."

For Mr. Waller, QSL.net has become "a hobby gone out of control." It's now
become all but a second full-time career.

For NASA, Mr. Waller has traveled to the North Pole to study the polar ice
cap, to Iceland to research volcanoes and map them out with radar and lasers
and to California to study the effects of storm-causers El Nino and La Nina.
For QSL, the world comes to him. Users of QSL span the globe.

With so much Web activity comes considerable costs. Hardware, including
high-speed connections, will lead to expenses of approximately $50,000 for
Mr. Waller this year. Much of the cost is offset by donations from those who
use his services, but they do not cover the entire cost of the operation.
Donations can be mailed to Al Waller, K3TKJ, Rt. 3, Box 31 4B, Road 497,
Laurel DE 19956.

"I started (QSL.net) because of how much ham radio has meant to me in my
life," said Mr. Waller.  "I wanted to give something back."

Justin Cord Hayes can be reached at 644-6320 or [email protected].

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