A Special QSL Card

I've been a ham for just 3 years now, and have tried most everything in ham radio at this point, and have met some success, and some failure along the way. It's been a good experience, and I've grown a lot.

One of my Elmers is my friend, Brian Kassel, K7RE, who lives just down the road in the next town, about 12 miles from me. Brian moved here a year and a half ago, and in that time, as helped me in many ways. We've worked on contesting, antenna ideas, and most recently, he's taught me to homebrew. Brian is an avid QRPer, and contester, and is very active in ham radio. He's also very willing to pass along his skills. A neat thing for me was to work him twice last winter as he was in the Bahamas, operating as C6ALK, for the upcoming ARRL DX contest. I worked him on 30 meters the week prior, and on 40 meters in the contest. A really neat thing was that we exchanged QSL cards for that at his house; so nice to get a DX QSL card from someone 12 miles away. In the meantime, Brian helped me to learn to build from scratch, and along the way was very instrumental in helping me complete my Elecraft K-1. He also gave me the parts for a balanced antenna tuner I built, and I've built a couple of rig interfaces too.

On October 10, I was home that morning playing with the K-1 and the tuner, when I heard CQ DX coming in on 15 meters. Conditions were good that morning, and I figured I would do the typical RST QTH exchange and be done with it and put one in the log. The station was SB7OOJ, and the QTH was Motola, Sweden. The op on the other end asked me about my location in South Dakota, and then informed me that he had a friend in the shack from South Dakota, and he would send the card home with his friend to be mailed stateside. I thought nothing more of it after that, until today. I got the mail, and lo and behold, I got 3 QSL cards in the mail, one from the station, SB7OOJ, one from the op, SM5CAK, and one from the South Dakota ham, KAØDEZ. It was a neat feeling to know that I made a contact on the other side of the world, a less than perfect antenna system, and on 5 watts. What was neater was the idea that I made it with a rig I put together with my hands, and a tuner I built from scratch, and then to work a guy from my state who just happened to be there as well.

I plan on showing the cards to Brian next time we get together, and I think he'll be pleased. I couldn't have done it without his help; well, OK, I probably could have, with the factory assembled rig and the commercially produced antenna tuner, and I could have ramped up the power, but it wouldn't have been as much fun, nor near as gratifying. QRP is fun, and so is home-brewing. You hear a lot these days about the increase in interest in QRP, and now I think I understand why. It is fun, and that feeling I got from that QSL card made my day. To my friend Brian, thanks for getting me going, and Elmering me on the fine art of QRP and homebrew. To John, KAØDEZ, thanks for sending on the cards. Mine are in the mail, rest assured. In today's ham radio, one can easily buy the stuff needed to make QSOs, but I'm glad I did it the "old fashioned" way of home brewing, and it made me want to do more. It goes to prove that not all the younger, new hams are content to be "appliance operators." I do have commercial gear that I use, but the contacts I make with stuff I made myself make it more special. -- 73 to all.