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Question by Mark: What is the etiquette for amateur radio QSL cards.?
I will be on the air in a few days. I can’t have my cards printed until I know my callsign. Until I have cards printed should I use postcards, online or simply hold the information and send cards after they are printed? Does online posting go through the ARRL and is it accurate? Thanks
Thanks William, you’ve been a lot of help. I will be thrilled to let you know how it goes. I will have a General Class CSCE in about 133hours.
Best answer:
Answer by william_byrnes2000
I think you can wait until you get the cards. Not everyone is using them these days, so its best to send them and hope you get one in return.
There are ways to help insure you get one back. If you use an envelope to send the card, include an extra first class stamp as a courtesy to the recipient. It would serve as an encouragement to the recipient to send one in return.
If you use the online verification, it saves the postage, and it is acceptable for the verifications needed for awards like Worked All States, the DX Century Club (DXCC for 100 DX entities confirmed), and the County Hunters awards and so forth.
Its up to you. I ordered new cards because we always used them back when I was first licensed, so I wanted one with my current address, and I used Google Earth to find my exact grid square location, using the Grid Square calculator on the ARRL page. Google Earth had a satellite image, that found my lot before there was anything on it, I read the coordinates in degrees, minutes, seconds and fractions of a second, and input the data on the calculator to get the Grid Square.