Re: [IRCA] QSLing

[<JohnCallarman@xxxxxxx>]

I just had a thought, as I read all these comments about QSL'ing, and that is that my original thoughts about QSL cards from BCB stations, dating back to about 1950 when I first learned of the QSL aspect of the hobby after DX'ing for three years on my own, now seem to be generally accepted by the industry.

It wasn't until I found Ken Boord's International Shortwave Column in Radio & Television News and learned that shortwave broadcast stations were courting listeners by sending out QSL cards that I realized that the ham radio practice of QSLing (which I'd learned from W7DE, Grant Feikert, the legendary chief engineer at KOAC-550, in my home town of Corvallis, Oregon) was mirrored by broadcast stations ... on shortwave.

As I began a collection of SWBC QSLs in 1950, there were a couple of unusual receptions on BCB that prompted me to send a reception report to those BCB stations from Corvallis ... one was a five-minute break in the somewhat sparse all-night action on 1340 that enabled WHHM in Memphis, Tennessee, to slip through ... and the other was sunrise reception of WLDS-1180 in Jacksonville, Illinois. I was surprised ... amazed, in fact .. that I received printed QSL cards from both stations.

My skepticism about BCB QSLs came from applying what I thought was common sense to the differences between hams and SWBC broadcasters on the one hand and medium wave stations on the other. Hams and SWBC stations were more likely to be interested in random reception in distant parts of the nation or the world, while broadcast stations would only be interested in listeners that would be of value to their advertisers. It wasn't until I was 15 years old (in 1950) that I learned something of the history of the DX'ing hobby, and the traditional compatibility of DX'ers and broadcasters. It amazed me, for example, that broadcast station personnel would get up early in the morning (when all the other stations on their frequency were silent) to put on special tests just for DX'ers.

But even in 1950, I didn't really jump back into BCB. My primary sources of information on radio remained Ken Boord's shortwave column and Broadcasting Magazine. I bought my first subscription to Broadcasting in 1950, when a check for $7 would bring the magazine every week PLUS the Broadcasting Yearbook. No longer did I have to go to the studio of KRUL-1340 in Corvallis, borrow their electric typewriter, and type the station list from the Yearbook. (That somewhat silly endeavor is what led to my typing the first NRC log in 1968, by the way.) I didn't join a club until 1955, when I joined the Universal Radio DX Club and the Newark News Radio Club, for their shortwave sections. I didn't join NRC until Spring 1956, after receiving a tape recorded reception report from Roy Millar in Issaquah, Washington, at KCOV-1240, Corvallis ... my first radio job. Roy, who become a long-time friend prior to his death a couple of years ago, talked me into 1) joining NRC and 2) doing a DX test. With the closest AN station on 1240 somewhere in the Midwest, I got solid reception reports from Oklahoma west, all the way to New Zealand, for our little 250-watt signal. 

I jumped into BCB QSL-collecting in 1956, but I did not get quite so enthusiastic as the fellow who was the SWBC editor of the URDXC when I first joined in '55. That was Marv Robbins, in Omaha, Nebraska, and when Marv began to concentrate on BCB, he QSL'd 1,500-plus stations in three years. That was intensity ... but that also exemplified the cooperative attitude of broadcast station personnel. 

It took awhile before the consultants took over broadcasting and the predominant attitude became the practicality of the bottom line rather than the romance of unusual long-distance reception. "I heard KZZZ when it briefly squeezed through the babble on 1230 with a station ID and a commercial for Joe's Fish Market prior to AP Radio News at 2 a.m.," we'd write; and personnel at KZZZ who might have said "Wow!" in 1950 would say, "So what?" today.

I admire the diehard QSL collectors like Patrick Martin and Martin Foltz, among others active in this aspect of the hobby, who are able to work around the "so what" attitude with the understanding that today, a request for a QSL is asking someone to volunteer a few minutes time on an quirky, esoteric old hobby. A verification today is a favor, and those station personnel who are hit with the attitude expressed by some DX'ers that QSL'ing their report is an obligation make some broadcasting personnel think we're ALL nuisances.

I guess I was just ahead of my time when I was 12 to 15 years old.

Qal R. Mann, Krumudgeon

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