 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||
 Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update |  Next: Choosing Your Ideal Vanity Call Sign |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
September 1, 2001
This week, we surf to Web sites that will help you with the final courtesy of a QSO: a QSL.
If you send QSL cards, then you will appreciate the Web sites I am going to describe this week.
John Shannon's K3WWP's Ham Radio Activities Web site is a cool site with lots of interesting information on a variety of ham radio topics. One of the links on John's page is QSLING, which delineates John's philosophy about QSLing.
 Every call sign lookup server that exists on the Internet may be accessed at K3WWP's Ham Radio Activities Web site. |
If you select the Find A QSL Route link on the QSLing page, it opens a new page that allows you to look up a call sign using one of 31 call sign lookup Internet servers that are located throughout the world. For example, entering SP7MJL in the Poland field and clicking the SRCH button, opens a new page: WWW-Callbook-SP Web page located at the University of Silesia's Institute of Physics in Katowice, Poland, which will indicate that SP7MJL is Stanislaw Chorzepa in Sochaczew, Poland.
In addition to the call sign servers, there are links that provide other ways to get a ham's name and address. For example, select the Iceland link and a window to the Icelandic Radio Amateur's QSL Bureau Web page opens where you can view an alphabetical list of Icelandic hams names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
In case you don't have a QSL card to mail to the station you just contacted, then go to the Web site built by Bob Inouye, WA7S, where he describes how to make your own QSL card. The How to Make Your Own QSL Cards Web page claims, "if you have a computer with word processing software and a printer, you can make your own custom QSL cards, with each card individually printed for the ham you just contacted." WA7S tells you how to make one and two-sided QSL cards with basic computer equipment and software ("nothing fancy needed") and even provides a Word '97 template for rolling your own QSL cards. (See also Bob's article, "QSLs in the Computer Age," which appeared on ARRLWeb in 1999 --Ed.)
Until next time, keep on surfin'.
Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, of downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, is an ARRL Life Member and an incessant contributor to QST and QEX (514 pieces in 23 years), not to mention the author of five ARRL books and contributor to a bevy of other ARRL titles. First licensed in 1969 as WN1LOU, he upgraded to WA1LOU in 1971. Stan began using computers with Amateur Radio in 1978 when he bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer and wrote BASIC programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna bearings. A virtual beach boy, Stan has been surfing the radio dials as long as he can remember, however, instead of surfing all over Manhattan and down Doheny Way, he now surfs the Internet searching for that perfect page. To contact Stan, send email to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update | Next: Choosing Your Ideal Vanity Call Sign |
