Archive - February 2018

Another busy afternoon in the shack, today I received an email saying that “you have QSO’s in your OQRS that are not in my logs, can I have the QSL cards?” Umm nope, most certainly not. I regard the safety and integrity of the logs I hold very highly and I do not give out QSO details. It is the responsibility of the DX’er to record the data of their QSO’s in a logging system and back that system up on a secure server or in a safe place to guard against losing valuable log details. Log it, Back it up, Keep it secure!

On opening my direct mail today I received two letters for ZC4A, but both QSL cards are not in log, oh dear let’s research this and see if I can recover the QSO’s… Hmm nope definitely not ZC4A, but on close inspection of Z60A log online I see that they actually worked Z60A, come on guys! Stop being cluster tarts and listen to the DX!

It is time once again to send our outgoing QSL bureau service to the IARU Bureaus. So what exactly does that mean and what is involved?

Since our last bureau dispatch in September 2017, we have received several thousand bureau requests on our Online QSL Request System, and received an incoming bureau dispatch from the RSGB. All cards have been processed and placed in Bureau boxes ready for the next mailing.

We can also send your outgoing bureau cards too! I have received a number of packages from hams to post with our mailing.

Here at the United Radio QSL Bureau we do not believe that bureau means slow! No it doesn’t. The IARU Bureaus for each national society process the bureau cards and send the cards to their members. The UR QSL Bureau uses a product called “M-Bag” it is for Print Media only, but gives a significant discount on parcel prices. It is significant that the Air Mail Priority M-Bag service is only a dollar or so more expensive than surface mail bag, this means that we can get our mailing to the IARU Bureaus in less than 7 days as apposed to up to 12 weeks using surface mail.
M-Bag service is available from many cuntries and is the cheapest way to ship large quantities of QSL cards internationally.

Since 2010 we have sent over a quarter of a million bureau QSL cards, many of the bureaus report back to us when they receive our package which we very much appreciate and encourage, we know that the bureaus sort and process our cards very quickly with the Ukraine bureau doing quite an amazing job every time with the first reports of cards delivered to the recipient hams. It can only take 3 weeks to get those cards delivered from the date they leave us here in the UK. Bulgaria, Russian Federation and Austria also come high on our fast service list. If you get a fast bureau card from us then please drop me an email.

So, stocked up with cardboard boxes, rolls of packing tape, customs labels & mail bags we hope you will soon be receiving the bureau cards through your bureau dispatches.

You can also support our QSL Bureau work by posting us your old out of date IRCs. We can sell them and use the money to fund the bureau costs. You can also donate using PayPal when you make a bureau request.

Thank you to all the donations of IRCs already received, you can see a list by clicking on the link.