By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor

This week, Surfin’ visits a website dedicated to QSL cards.

The first QSL card I ever received was from shortwave broadcast station Trans World Radio in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. I don’t remember the first ham radio QSL card I received, but I do recall that I never received a QSL card from my first ham radio contact.

I always enjoyed the QSL card aspect of ham radio. A QSL card represents a souvenir of a memorable contact, as well as proof of working a new county, grid, state, country or continent. Some QSL cards resemble picture postcards -- and some actually are picture postcards. Some are handmade, while some are generic. No matter, I enjoy collecting them and have more shoe boxes filled with QSL cards than I do with shoes.

I don’t know how many shoe boxes Jean Michel Duthilleul, F6AJA, has filled with QSL cards, but he claims on his website, Les Nouvelles DX (The New DX) that he has more than 10,800 cards. That’s a lot of shoe boxes! Even though the site is in French, there is a button on the left that will transcribe everything into English.

Some of the featured QSL cards include those from the 10 most-wanted DXCC entities, cards for each of the deleted DXCC entities, pre-1946 QSLs for each US state and a slew of cards for DX radio operations that did not cut it for DXCC, either for lack of documentation or for not meeting DXCC requirements. And there are lots more; you can spend hours viewing all the items on Jean Michel’s website. I particularly liked the collection of 894 QSLs from Antarctica.

Until next time, keep on surfin’!

Editor’s note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, seeks the unusual in radio. To contact Stan, send e-mail or add comments to the WA1LOU blog.