Pioneering QSL Card Automation: A Peek into 1968

One thing I didn’t see coming is how, once a book has been published, new stories keep surfacing that I wish had been included. It’s a constant struggle!

Sometimes, as Atlas of QSL Cards notes, there is a need to send high volumes of QSL cards to recipients. For example, dispatching hand-written cards to thousands of logged contacts after a contest is a Herculean task. For those of us who are not amateur radio operators, imagine you have a logbook of all the contacts you’ve made over radio during. It includes details like the date, time, and quality of signal. Let’s say there are 10,000 entries in that logbook. You need to send a personalised QSL card to confirm each one of those contacts. Daunting, isn’t it?

After months and months of hard work, it was time to celebrate! On a the evening of 26 October, a lively group of seasoned radio amateurs, joined by equally curious newcomers, gathered at a Helsinki library for a launch event for Atlas of QSL Cards. There, the hardcover edition of the book said hello to the softcover print, and saw its first public outing into the world.

Who would have thought that house cleaning can spark such a project? It all started with moving some cardboard boxes out from our home office—and now, the book is ready to go on Amazon’s virtual shelves. Amazing.

OH2AM 60th Anniversary and Prize Draw Recap

In August, from Saturday, August 10th to Sunday, August 11th, the 60th birthday of the OH2AM powerhouse was celebrated by making OH0AM QRV from Åland, Finland.

The book’s proofreader Martti Laine (OH2BH), along with the team—OH2BH, OH2GEK, OH2MM, and OH2TA—operated two simultaneous stations, featuring CW/SSB, the FT8 digital mode (and the advanced Superfox).