I started to work on my backlog of bureau (“buro”) QSLs last night. Like many contesters, I find QSLing to be an enormous chore, especially via the bureaus. But, as I am fond of saying, contesting is a marketing game; a nice QSL may be as important to operator you contacted as the QSO was to your score.
One of the fascinating things about the bureau cards is that they come in chunks by country. I’ve received a lot of cards for my CE/K8GU operation in August 2006. It seems as though Chile was highly sought-after in Europe, especially on CW. I must have been pretty loud up there, too, with the antenna at the edge of the cliff.
Working through the QSLs did bring back memories of learning to work a pile-up and log on paper. You see, I didn’t have a computer suitable for logging along on the trip. So, I had to log on paper. I entered the entire log into my computer on the flight home. (At Sarah’s prodding, I had read Harry Potter on the way down.) It’s a good thing I entered the entire log because I left the log in the back of the seat pocket in front of me.
Anyhow, I’m getting the itch to be DX again…
