I now have a stateside QSL manager - AI4U - and paper QSLs should be directed to Jeff, rather than sending them to me directly - PLEASE! And thanks! But if you really insist on that Costa Rican postage stamp, or you just want to learn about what it takes to get a QSL card out of a direct-QSLing DX station, continue reading.
This page was written out of frustration. It was written because I have on occasion been accused of being unreliable about QSLing, but my experience has been that this has been almost entirely the result of errors, many of them obvious, made by the U.S. ham that just doesn't understand the basics of how to get a QSL out of a DX station in a third-world country that insists on direct QSLing. This page is not just about me and my own frustrations in dealing with the QSL paper crisis, it is about you and everyone else who attempts to get paper out of DX stations, or would like to. When I have told other hams here locally about my creating this page, they have thanked me profusely! It is written in the hope that you will have better luck getting your QSL to me (if you insist on QSLing direct), and mine back to you - and the same for every other direct-QSLing DX station out there. To help out, and hopefully improve the rate at which I am recieving QSLs and my correspondents are getting their replies, I have written up this set of suggestions.
I have been getting complaints that this is very long and detailed, and in one case, a ham has written to me angrily, suggesting that I have written so many rules that he wouldn't reduce himself to complying with it all. My response is fine, buddy, be as careless or as arrogant as you like with your QSL effort, or better yet, don't send me a QSL - neither I nor any other DX operator of my acquaintence would care. And that is that much less hassle with which I have to deal. But if you want a QSL from this DX station, and many others who are in similar circumstances, read on. The more of these suggestions with which you, dear reader, comply, the greater your chances of success - and the less your chances of your efforts and money being wasted. It is entirely up to you - do what you wish.
I am not a wallpaper chaser. That means I don't solicit QSLs myself, but, like most hams I know, both here and back in the U.S., I really, honestly do reply reliably to any I receive, whether they include green stamps or not, and whether the local postal system actually carries my response back to you or not. But it is important that you follow these instructions closely, as my unique political circumstances combined with the realities of living in a third-world country do not permit me to do reliable QSLing in many of the usual, more convenient ways. However most of these rules will apply to QSLing to anyone in the third world anyway, so it is a good idea to get into the habit.
The only reason that I and many DX stations like me, ever request direct QSLing is because there really is no other good option currently available to us - limited or no Internet access or inability to get properly set up for electronic QSLing, or difficulty in reliably sending log files to a foreign QSL manager, and living a long way from the QSL bureau office.
Unfortunately, experience has taught me that as a political refugee, mail sent to me from the United States is now routinely subject to interference (frequently meaning non-delivery) before it ever leaves the U.S (it almost always happens with mail having a machine-readable address). Sad, but true for what was once the least corrupt, apolitical and most reliable postal system in the world. I sincerely regret the inconvenience, but if you want my card, I'll be delighted to send you one, though following these rules will greatly improve your chances of successfully getting a reply. So here are the suggestions as they have evolved:
1. No TI Bureau please. I am not set up with the bureau, and QSLs sent there are a completely and totally wasted effort, as I won't get them. I am finally up and running on LoTW, and QSLs sent there should be handled quite properly. I am currently set up on eQSL.cc and have AG status, and you can QSL that way if you really want to (though I am not entirely sure why bother other than their eAwards).
2.Direct QSLs can go to the following address, using the rules below:
Scott Bidstrup
Apo. 589-4250
San Ramón de Alajuela
Costa Rica
Central America
3. Do NOT send QSLs to the U.S. forwarding address as listed in the FCC/qrz.com database by default, as so many hams have gotten in the habit of doing. For reasons I cannot go into here, it is just not a suitable option for me. So do NOT expect a response to anything sent to that address.
4. Do NOT send QSLs to a third-world QSL bureau unless the DX station specifically directs you to do so or specifically offers it as an option. In many third-world countries, including this one, the QSL bureau is run by a local radio club as a service to its members - and only its members - so if you are not a member, you don't have access to the QSL bureau (and that category of stations happens to include me). Also, most third-world QSL bureaus do not forward mail to recipients (in some countries it is even illegal to do so), so in order to collect bureau QSLs, it is often necessary for the DX operator to actually visit the club headquarters, usually in the capital - a trip that may be an arduous multi-day bus trip and therefore may happen as little as once a year, if that often. If the mail is addressed to a non-member or a station not set up with the bureau, it likely will be simply rifled for green stamps or IRCs and then discarded. Additionally, it is not unheard-of for bureau volunteers or staff members in third-world countries to rifle long-unclaimed envelopes received by the bureau even for its members - and so a QSL bureau can simply add yet another layer of corruption. As a result, I would personally consider third-world QSL bureaus only as an all-else-fails option - QSLs sent there without the specific direction of the DX station often end up only encouraging bad acting.
5. Put your QSL card in a plain white envelope with NO CALL SIGNS, LOGOS OR OTHER HAM INSIGNIA on either the recipient or return address or anywhere elsewhere on the envelope, and send it via ordinary first-class mail to the above address. Make sure there is no indication anywhere on it, even faintly visible to a postal clerk, suggestive of it coming from a ham or going to a ham.
Don't cheap-out and send your QSL as a bare postcard to try to save a few cents postage. I have yet to recieve a QSL card here that was sent that way.
I recommend that you use only plain, white, business-sized, non-window envelopes for your outgoing QSLs - the more ordinary, the better. "Privacy" envelopes printed with an obscuring pattern inside are best. Enclose the entire contents inside a tri-folded sheet of opaque paper (a sheet of blank printer paper works great) to obscure the contents from prying eyes equipped with bright lights. My theory, for what it is worth, is that the fatter, stiffer envelope also seems subconciously to the local clerks to have something in it other than a QSL card and green stamps and somehow therefore seems more important and more personal than QSLs, and more worthy of his time. One person sent me his green stamps inside the return envelope, hiding them further from prying eyes, and I think that is a good idea.
As a political refugee living in a country very friendly with the one from which I fled, my mail is routinely being messed with locally, and it is currently taking about a month to get it past the spooks. Sometimes they remove greenstamps they find, sometimes not (about one time in three, I figure), and sometimes simply trash the letter, so it is best, by far, to QSL via my manager. As of this writing, the last three were resealed with so much glue that the contents, including the QSL cards, were all stuck to the envelope, and in one case, the contents had been put in the return envelope and sealed up right to the fold, again with a surplus of glue! When I opened that one and pried the QSL card away from the inside of the return envelope, I was laughing so hard at the incompetence of the local spooks I almost fell out of my chair! But amazingly, they were honest and actually left the green stamps inside! Those guys should spend some time in Langley, learning from the pros about how to interfere with the mail without a search warrant, and do it undetected (or, perhaps, maybe they want me to know they're doing it as an intimidation tactic?). To prevent all this nonsense, I suggest that, in my case at least, you run a strip of wide packing tape across the back of the envelope, as that will make it mighty hard to open the envelope without it being pretty obvious that the integrity of the mail has been compromised. In fact, come to think of it, that's not a bad idea for any QSLs going to any third-world country.
Use the appropriate amount of first class surface postage to Costa Rica or to wherever you are sending it. Ordinary U.S. domestic first-class postage isn't enough, and if you just stick your usual "USA First-Class" stamp on it, it will go out postage-due and I won't receive it - postage-due mail here, as in many third-world countries, is not delivered to the recipient, but instead is theoretically supposed to be returned to the sender - though more usually, it is simply rifled and discarded. You need not bother with air mail postage for mail coming to me, as all mail from the U.S., Japan, VK/ZL and Europe comes here by air nowadays anyway, and once in the country it is all handled the same, so air mail postage is nearly always a waste of money. Just be sure that there is sufficient postage for surface first-class mail going to the country where it is addressed. If you have not already done so, I would suggest that on your next visit to the post office, ask the clerk for a schedule of first-class postage rates to foreign countries, and also purchase a bevvy of postage stamps of various denominations. Then you can prepay the international envelopes properly, and simply put them in with the rest of your outgoing mail, and not have to make frequent trips to the post office.
Postal clerks here are quite savvy about ham radio callsigns and they sure as heck know what a green stamp is - and nearly all have learned by experience that ham radio operators' mail often has a green stamp or two inside. So your mail to me will probably not arrive if it has a ham radio call sign, ham radio design or ARRL logo, etc., anywhere on it that a postal clerk can see, regardless of whether or not it had a green stamp or two in it when sent. Underpaid and corrupt mail clerks that are paid just a couple of bucks a day have become really good at augmenting their income by rifling the mail, so you've gotta be as inconspicuous and mundane as possible to improve the chances that it will get through unnoticed, and making it look like ordinary personal correspondence (both sent and return envelopes) seems to work best.
6. Address both envelopes legibly, by hand, with both addresses on each envelope. I'm not sure why (though I have my theories), but careful, legible hand addressing of both recipient and return addresses seems to significantly improve the chances that I will actually receive mail sent to me, especially if mailed from the United States. As for this particular country, personal correspondence here is more apt to generate a complaint if it does not arrive, than does business mail. So the more personal it looks, the better.
But it must be legibly addressed. The semi-literate state of many of the postal clerks around here means that if an address isn't legible and very obvious, they're not going to try. So if you're a doctor and insist on addressing the envelope in the same indecipherable script with which you write your prescriptions, swallow your pride and have your nurse address it instead. You do want me to actually get it, don't you?
7. Return envelopes. A self-addressed, unfolded return envelope is appreciated but not required. If you are going to include it, hand address it and make it legible and again, no call signs or ham insignia. Make sure the last line of your address says "U.S.A." - postal clerks here have no clue as to what country Podunk, Iowa is in, and won't bother to find out to know what to do with your mail - they'll just rifle and trash your envelope instead, and if I don't happen to notice the lack of "U.S.A." on your address before I mail it, all the money and effort of QSLing will be wasted.
If you send me your QSL in a business-sized envelope, it is best to use a correspondence-sized or reduced-size business return envelope so it can be enclosed without having to be folded. Envelopes that have been folded before being mailed are a clue to a postal clerk that something is up, and he is more likely to target it for rifling and subsequent disposal. I prefer the reduced-size business "privacy" envelopes, as they seem to have a better track record of getting through. I have no idea why.
Please write my address, exactly as you see it above, as the return address on your return envelope in the same handwriting as your own address. This will help ensure that the envelope will appear as plain and vanilla as possible to clerks handling it, and there will be nothing to draw attention to it - such as two different handwriting styles.
Don't bother to put a stamp on your return envelope - save your money. Your yankee-gringo postage stamp won't get a letter mailed from here (yes, you'd be surprised at how many stamped return envelopes I get from U.S. hams, and I am getting tired of having to peel the stamps off and throw them away) - in fact, an SASE with a yankee-gringo postage stamp on it, handed to a patriotic, ardently nationalistic Latin American postal clerk who, like most Latins, is sensitive about U.S. political bullying and economic imperialism down here is apt to make him feel more than a little insulted, and throw it in the pile for later rifling when no one is around. So if your return envelope has a stamp on it, I'll just have to go to the trouble to peel the stamp off and throw it away before I mail your reply card, and your forty-one cents will be wasted, or, more often, I'll simply have to replace your SASE outright. So, gringo, we don't need no stinkin' yankee-gringo postage stamps down here. They're is about as useful as a Maserati on an ox-cart trail - in the rainy season.
Another don't-do is to use a computer-generated label(s) or one of those tiny pre-printed, pre-glued stick-on Santa-Claus address labels on the return envelope, particularly if the envelope has been folded. That screams to the postal clerks here to that this is some kind of a response to a mass-mailing, or is relatively unimportant and it isn't worth their trouble to handle it. So take the time to legibly write out your address and mine by hand on both envelopes. Save your computer-generated, pre-stamped, computer-addressed, mass-produced, whiz-bang return envelopes for your domestic QSL effort, and go to the effort of getting out a pair of blank envelopes and a ball-point pen if you really want to actually receive a reply QSL through these third-world postal systems.
8. IRC's. My success in negotiating International Reply Coupons here has not exactly been stellar. I have yet to present one to a postal clerk here who knew what to do with it (I have it on good authority that the only place in Costa Rica where they can be even semi-reliably negotiated is at the national post office in San José and I am not going to invest in $8 worth of bus tickets and cab fare and a day of my time to save a lousy buck or two in postage). Yeah, yeah, I know they're supposed to be good here - this is a Universal Postal Union country, after all, but try explaining that to an underpaid, poorly trained and totally uncaring postal clerk in small-town post office in a third-world country. The most you're likely to get for your trouble is an exasperated and very annoyed frown. I've even had them demand that I pay them for the effort and privilege of handling them!
On the other hand, the good ol' fashioned green stamp is the IRC that is always instantly recognized and eagerly accepted Absolutely Everywhere In The Known Universe. Every last postal clerk on the face of the planet I happen to inhabit sure as heck knows what they are.
9. Green Stamps. That brings me to the very sore subject of green stamps, so prepare for yet another rant.
Does sending me a couple of green stamps mean that you are bribing me to get my QSL? Am I getting rich quick by running a highly lucrative, for-profit, mass-production QSL mill, when amateur radio is supposed to be, well, amateur? I've occasionally heard that assertion, usually with some fairly angry and uninformed, and very hubristic grousing, nearly always of an accusatory nature, and nearly always from U.S. hams in one of those reactionary late-night roundtable QSOs on 75 meters that all us DX hams down here can hear loud and clear, and which often leave me quite embarrassed to be a (gulp!) U.S.-passport-holding gringo ham.
My answer is emphatically NO! Absolutely NOT! The days when a DX station could make a living, much less a small fortune, off of just the green stamps found in his incoming QSLs are long since gone, my friend. It is a myth that just doesn't happen anymore in the real world. Believe me, if a DX station is offering his QSLs via direct only, it is almost certain to be because he has no other good option available to him - I would be willing to bet that with the exception of a very few highly efficient and well set-up QSL managers, no one makes any money off of paper QSLing anymore, except maybe the card printers and stationery stores.
I've checked the costs and added them up, and buying card stock, printing up the cards, buying mailing supplies, getting to and from the post office, and buying the postage are indeed surprisingly expensive here and add up fast - and that doesn't even include the hassle factor, which in a third-world country like this, can be quite considerable.
To wit: A single black-ink cartridge for my Hewlett-Packard computer printer costs US$70 here and usually takes a lot of driving around town to find a shop that actually happens to have one in stock. It is usually good for about 400 cards, and blank card stock to print the QSLs costs about 10 US cents per card (yes, I could probably get some offset-printed cheaper here, but printing here is generally not that much cheaper anyway, and the printing quality, on the rare occasions when it actually gets done as requested, often is embarassingly poor). So that works out to 17 cents, just for the ink on the card you want from me.
The 23-mile 4-wheel-drive, two-hour round trip I have to make to get to the nearest post office and back involves burning a minimum of two and a half gallons of gasoline at the current price of US$4.60 per gallon and I average about 4-10 QSLs per trip, even when I have other business to conduct in town. You crunch the numbers on that one.
Envelopes cost 15 to 25 US cents apiece here and decent ones that will actually survive handling by the international postal system but are not marked as airmail are quite hard to find and require a lot of driving around to obtain. When I find them, there is usually only one or two ten-packs available, and I will soon be going through the hassle of trying to find them all over again in a few weeks. I frequently can't use the return envelope even when it is provided (yankee-gringo postage stamps, computer-addressed stick-on labels, unsuitable semi-transparent paper, damage from too much glue from the spooks, or illegible addresses are the usual reasons). Finally, first-class, slow-boat postage to the U.S. from Costa Rica is currently 155 colones, or 35 US cents.
So as I figure it, a paper QSL reply costs me at minimum an average of US$1.30 all told, so I genuinely don't make any money on my QSLing effort, especially when including the inconsiderate, reactionary, selfish jerks that refuse to help out with the cost but demand a card anyway (and that is about one in four hams from the U.S. in my experience), or include only one green stamp (about the same proportion) and/or one of those useless but fancy bits of engraving called IRCs. In addition, as a political refugee, I cannot work here, so I live on a small and relatively fixed income - less than the average Costa Rican ham, in fact. So the help in paying the freight on getting a QSL back to you is enormously appreciated, and the other non-rich DX operators I know feel the same way. Remember as well, that as for me, this effort is entirely on your behalf. I am not soliciting cards from you, and don't care at all if you never send me one. In fact, if you don't, it just means that much less homework and hassle for me.
Having said that, however, I will assert that with 35-plus years of hamming behind me, I am a ham of the "old school." I consider QSLing to be an inseparable part of the glorious century-old tradition of amateur radio. So I am not going to just throw your QSL in the trash if you don't include a green stamp or two. But unless the QSO with you was really and truly memorable, my QSL to you will most likely find its way into the several piles to be sent off in bulk to the various U.S. QSL bureaus when I accumulate enough to help me reduce my mailing costs - and that means it will be months - most likely many months, even a year - before you actually receive it. You probably will eventually if you have an SASE on file at your own QSL bureau. So with me, like with most DX stations whom I know, you'll get the level of QSL response you're willing to spring for. And don't just email me, demanding that I send you a card, either. If you really want my card, surely you want it badly enough to do me the courtesy of going to the trouble and expense of sending me one, don't you? If you don't, I am not particularly interested in bothering to send you one, either - LoTW is the low-cost option. And I know a lot of other DX stations, both in this country and elsewhere, feel the same way about these issues. End of rant.
10. QSL Managers. If the DX station has a QSL manager, use the QSL manager. Mine is AI4U, and Jeff is very consciencious in my experience. No ifs, ands or buts about it, this will be the surest and probably even the quickest means of getting a paper response, and certainly will be the least hassle for me, the DX operator. Just be aware that the QSL manager probably is running a for-profit QSL service if you are sensitive to that issue. Unlike me, he can do that, and make it pay, because he gets cards offset-printed in bulk, lives close to a post office where postal service is cheap and reliable, and lives in a place where supplies are cheap, easy to get and of good quality, so when he does this in bulk (probably by computer) for lots of stations, he can do this for far less cost and hassle than can I and others like me, and actually make money. But I would hazard a guess that he isn't getting rich, either.
11. Why Do I Not Do Electronic QSLing? Since eQSL.cc confirmations are not useful for many contests or awards other than their own, I haven't considered it to be worth my trouble to get set up on that system, and even now I have done so entirely out of self defense. Yes, I am now AG. And then there is LoTW - brace yourself for yet another rant!
LoTW is a truly incredible hassle to get set up on as a U.S. expatriate ham, and by strictly following the outlined procedures given on the League's web site, it isn't even possible if you are a U.S. expatriate DX station that does not or cannot maintain a current U.S. mailing address. In fact, it would have been vastly easier for me to get my local Costa Rican license here in this infamously bureaucratic third-world country (when I am finally legally qualified to do so) than it would be to get set up on LoTW as an expatriate U.S. ham using the procedures outlined on the web site! I appreciate the League's desire to keep LoTW rigorous, but it is breathtakingly more rigorous than the paper QSLing method which they are trying to replace, and yet they still accept the far less rigorous paper QSLs for most of their awards, after all! And all that rigor, and the hoops associated with it that have to be jumped through, just adds up to a reduced uptake, especially by DX stations. Which hardly surprises me, having been through a short-cutted process that was itself quite a hassle that took nearly two months.
Then there is the portable/mobile designator issue. Here in tiny little Costa Rica, a country about the size of West Virginia, we have no fewer than nine call districts, and each one is about the size of a U.S. county in one of the larger U.S. states, so it is quite possible to operate mobile, with separate designators, from them all (except Cocos Island) in a single morning - before lunch, even. What is the point in treating each as a separate callsign, requiring a separate LoTW registration procedure? Would they treat operation from each and every one of the hundreds of counties in Texas as a separate callsign, and require mobile operators in Texas to register separately for each and every county from which they intend to operate, if the FCC required a separate mobile designator for each of them? If not, why impose such a requirement on a Costa Rican ham (or worse, a U.S. expatriate ham operating in Costa Rica, such as myself), for whom registration of portable and mobile designators is a vastly more difficult issue? It makes no sense. This is true, not just for myself, but for nearly all DX operators of my acquaintence. And those who are not set up on LoTW tell me this is one of the several reasons why.
Though it should be blindingly obvious to all, it doesn't seem to have occurred to the League that no system will become widely accepted if the process of getting set up to use it presents more problems to be solved, more difficulties to be overcome, and more hoops to be jumped through than the useful rewards it provides! This is why putting such a project in the hands of an evidently highly skilled computer programmer who is apparently without any intuitive understanding of the subtleties of human systems theory, has simply not worked as well as hoped. And so now you know why hardly any other DX stations are currently utilizing LoTW, though nearly all of us would really, really like to. Are you listening, ARRL? End of LoTW rant.
12. Allow time. Lots of time. This is the Land Of "Mañana" and that includes a local small-town, privatized and now therefore opaque and unaccountable, for-profit, monopoly post office that doesn't care because it doesn't have to. Each time I buy postage, I am given a computer-generated receipt that bears the slogan: "Excelencia sin limites" - 'Excellence without limits.' Those receipts have become something of a national joke.
Your QSL stands a fair chance of actually showing up someday (at least if you have observed the above rules), but who knows just when that "someday" will be? I have seen mail take more than two years to actually be delivered to me (one was an IARP license that had expired more than a year before I actually got it). As to on whose desk or in what pidgeonhole in which it resided during all that time, I have not a clue. Usually mail's fairly fast for folks other than me (typically one to two weeks from the States, three from Europe and Japan, and outbound mail takes about twice as much time), but that's very often as much a wish as a promise - I figure that eventually, I get about 40% of mail sent to me by post, but, because of the spooks snooping through it, it usually takes awhile - a month or two. The locals inform me that they are quite certain that Jesus Is Coming Real Soon too, but I am not holding my breath on that one, either. So if you don't get a QSL as quick as you would like, don't send a replacement for at least four months.
12. For the well and truly desperate for my paper QSL, and if my QSL manager hasn't responded, there is another option. If mine is the very last card you need to complete your 9-band DXCC on PSK and you figure your hope of ever seeing another TI on 160 meter PSK again is somewhere between slim and none, maybe my QSL is important enough to you to justify a special trip to the post office. If so, you can send your QSL to me by international "registered" or "certified" mail ("International Signed-For" works brilliantly from Europe or the U.K.). That way, every postal clerk that touches it here has to sign for the privilege, and that means it is almost dead-certain to get to me eventually (I have even had them forward such mail to me after I have moved, and that is really rare here). But it will take longer - as much as a month from the U.S., or six weeks from across the pond. This is commonly done here - virtually all mail of any real importance sent locally is sent this way, and since I have to go to the post office to collect all my mail anyway, it is no big deal on this end. I expect that the same is probably true for most other Latin American operators who receive their mail at an apartado (post office box). If I open up your certified mail and find three green stamps inside, I'll be sure and send out your reply the same way on my very next trip to the post office. Once again, you'll get what you are willing to cough up for.
So that's about it. If you have read this far, you must really want my QSL badly, and I'll happily oblige as soon as I get yours. But you gotta do your part by following the above rules. If you have tried all the above, including trying a replacement or certified mail, but are still without success and are well and truly desperate, email me for additional ideas.
Looking forward to hearing from you. And if you ever decide to vacation here, let me know well in advance and maybe we can get together on air at least, if not do lunch - and you can find out in person what it is like to be a DX station.
© 2008, Scott Bidstrup, all rights reserved. Todos derechos reservados.