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Current Feature Articles   Nov 20 The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler   Nov 20 Adventure in the Arctic: VO2A Expedition to Labrador   Nov 20 Surfin': More Radio Piracy on the High Seas   Nov 16 Youth@HamRadio.Fun: Fall Magic   Nov 13 Surfin': The Real Pirate Radio   Nov 06 Surfin': Homebrewing Today   Nov 05 DX the Hard Way   Nov 02 ARRL In Action: What Have We Been Up to Lately?   Nov 01 It Seems to Us: It Doesn't Just Happen   Oct 30 Surfin': Mapping Up ARRL Products: Circuit Design (More) Hints & Kinks--17th edition -- Now including the popular Hands-On Radio column from QST Workbench. Discrete-Signal Analysis and Design -- A clear, step-by-step approach to practical uses of discrete-signal analysis and design, especially for communications and radio engineers. Introduction to Radio Frequency Design -- Basic RF concepts (with some related analog subjects) for the amateur or engineer. Digital Signal Processing Technology -- Essentials of the Communications Revolution. An understandable presentation and reference on DSP in contemporary communications technology. ARRL's Hands-On Radio Experiments -- Over 60 basic electronics experiments from the pages of QST!

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This week's Surfin' features a Web site that is a one-stop shop for getting your QSL card on its way.

Pathfinder Online can help make QSLing a breeze.

There are a lot of databases online that you can search to find a name and address in order to exchange QSL cards with your latest contact. If you can't find the information at one site, try another and another until you succeed.

Dave Bernstein, AA6YQ, just told me about a cool tool for finding QSL information, Pathfinder Online where you need enter the call sign in question only once, then with a few mouse clicks you can search more than 80 different sites for QSL information -- including 74 country-specific call sign directories and DX Summit's spot notes going back to 1997. Now that's progress!

The Web site also has a link for calculating postage to get QSLs delivered between here and there, as well as between there and there. A link for International Reply Coupons (IRCs) provides the lowdown on the current status of IRCs.

Pathfinder Online also has links less related to QSLing, but more related to making actual contacts that result in QSLs, including a trio of DX-related links and a quintet of propagation-related links.

By the way, Pathfinder Online comes from the more powerful and customizable Pathfinder, a member of the DXLab Suite of free, automatic interoperating DXing software, which you can learn all about on the Pathfinder Online Web page (just click on the DXLab button).

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, remembers when an IRC was cheaper than a green stamp, which was about the same time that gas cost 29 cents a gallon. To communicate with Stan, send him e-mail or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.

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