Stuart Underwood wrote:
Very anxious, I sent out seven QSL cards. Waiting to get some back. I received only one. My questions is, is there a protocol for sending and receiving QSL cards for satellite work?
Wayne replies:
The satellite QSL protocol is essentially the same as for terrestrial contacts, except we put slightly different information on the QSL card.
Did you send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with the QSL cards? In my experience, about 20% will send a card back to me if I don't include a SASE. The response rate is about 80% when I include a SASE. This is very different from when I was a novice in the 1970's. I had a high response rate then, and I never sent SASE's.
I assume you were referring to domestic contacts because the ISS has a small footprint. For international contacts you need to send either an IRC or dollar bills for return postage. This gets expensive. A dollar is sufficient for a reply from Canada or Mexico, but you need to send 3 dollars to get a reply from Germany. It's difficult to buy IRC's in the United States. The U.S. signed a treaty that requires post offices to stock IRC's, but most U.S. post offices don't stock them.
Wayne Estes W9AE Oakland, Oregon, USA, CN83ik
Since I'm new at this, what information should one put an a satellite QSL? What information is different than on a terrestrial QSL. I've based the few I've sent so far, on examples I've seen on the web. I'm guessing they are most likely of the terrestrial type.
Kent
On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 11:17 AM, Wayne Estes w9ae@charter.net wrote:
The satellite QSL protocol is essentially the same as for terrestrial contacts, except we put slightly different information on the QSL card.
Kent R. Frazier wrote:
Since I'm new at this, what information should one put an a satellite QSL? What information is different than on a terrestrial QSL. I've based the few I've sent so far, on examples I've seen on the web. I'm guessing they are most likely of the terrestrial type.
There are a few different fields for satellite. I had satellite specific QSL cards made up with the following fields: Callsign, Day, Month, Year, UTC, Satellite & mode, Mode, RST, and QSL PSE or TNX There is a picture of the card at: http://home.earthlink.net/~k6ccc/QSL.html
Since I had to explain the "Satellite & Mode" box as a separate "Mode" box to the QSL card printer (he wanted to make sure that's what I wanted), I will do it here. Satellite & Mode is which bird and the band mode that was used (mode A, B, J or in more modern terms, V/U, U/S, etc); whereas the "Mode" box is for the emission mode (i.e. FM, SSB, SSTV, etc). I got mine from W4MPY, and he was happy to make a custom set of fields for me.
participants (3)
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Jim Walls -
Kent R. Frazier -
Wayne Estes