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This morning I read through an enormous backlog of
mails: technical difficulties and lack of time prevented me from emptying my
mailbox before. I read all the opinions on how and why to QSL and since I have
often thought about the subject myself I would like to give some opinions and
experiences myself.
I gave up sending reports many years ago. I spent
much time trying to send good, accurate and personal reports, but the return
rate was so low I did not find it worth the time, trouble and money to send out
reports. I seldom sent one nowadays, only for very special stations.
I support the idea from Mauno Ritola and others to
use other DX'ers as a help.
There are two methods.
1-Local DX'ers visiting their local stations to get
reports verified.
2-appointing DX'ers as QSL-managers.
1-A local DX'er can visit the stations in his
neigbourhood and try to persuade them to verify reports. Nothing wrong about
that. It a local guy, speaking the native tongue, maybe knowing people at the
station, knows the structure and organisation at a local station. For instance I
once helped a Finnish DX'er obtaining a QSL from a Regional FM-broadcaster in
the Netherlands. He sent out a good and complete report but no reply. I knew
that all letters to such stations came in at the PR-department, normally
handling request records, stickers etc. One phone-call to the friendly girl in
the department learned she still had the report on her desk, she hardly spoke
english and did not know the report was about. My phone-call resulted in the
report being transferred to the CE and a fine QSL was posted to Finland the same
day!!
2- QSL-managers is more complex. There should be
some sort of official appointment from the station concerned, I
think.
Here in Holland Ruud Vos issues QSl's for 1584AM
and Koos Wijnants does for Haagstad radio on 1485. They have contacts with the
station and have been officially appointed. I think that really is a condition.
The station must know about their existence and for instance the
QSL-manager should be able to visit the station regularly to collect reports
there and check their files if he doubts about certain programme-details(for
instance to check which records the station played on a given sunday at 0623
UTC).
With these conditions fulfilled a DX'er can easily
fill the gap left by station who do not have time, money, interest, staff etc
etc. to handle reports. But, the QSL-manager should have a sort of offical
status.
I know an example where a chief engineer of a
radiostation(I will not give out the name) contacted me and asked me if
reception conditions of his station had worsened since the station hardly
received any reception reports. This was quite a few years back. I answered him
that reception of the station was still fine and that I did not know why their
new QSL-manager would receive less reports. In this case a person from that
country had advertised himself widely in the DX-press an QSL-manager for that
station. The chief engineer called me back and it turned out that he -or anybody
at the station- did not knew about his existence!! It was a person
who collected U.S. dollars and knew DX'ers would eagerly send him some in
return for a postcard with QSL written on
it!!!
I do not think embassies are a good method to
obtain QSL's . Collecting QSL's is a hobby and people work at radiostations for
a living. Don't forget that!! If I look at my own work I would have something to
explain if my boss says" well, I received a phone-call from the British
embassy and they complain you did not answer letter X from a British citizen".
Embassies are political institutions and many countries are no democracies. Any
kind of involvement could be dangerous for local people. This foreign interest
could possibly harm people and No QSL is worth this (maybe slight possibility!)
that a local radio-employee has to answer questions from his local
government-officials why the Dutch or Britissh embassy has an interest in him or
his station.
When I did sent out reports I always
enclosed one or two dollars. I stopped this straight away after hearing the
following story: I once met a guy who had worked at a radiostation in one of the
former Soviet republics in central Asia. The stations received an average of 30
reports a month, 20 had dollar-bills enclosed, 10 reports had IRC's or no return
postage. The poor guy had an official investigation on him as his boss suspected
him of nicking the dollars out of these 10 IRC-reports!!!!
Well, just a few thoughts from my
side.
Julius Hermans
Netherlands
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