I received my QSL card from my October 11, 2010 ham radio 2 meter contact with the International Space Station last week.  I had started to wonder if it would ever arrive.  Here’s the story behind it.

When I made the contact I didn’t immediately think about getting a QSL card.  I had quite a few things going on at the time and the busy details of life soon swept my thoughts off to other tasks to be accomplished.    At some point I realized that I could get a QSL card if I followed the correct procedures and got all of my facts straight.  One problem though was that I didn’t have a QSL card of my own.  For non-ham radio readers a QSL (confirmation of contact) card is usually a postcard with a photo on the front side.  The photo can be anything.  Most hams have some sort of photo of their equipment (radios, antennas, computers, etc.) and many also have themselves in the photo.  On the back side of the card in form format are the details of the contact.  This usually includes the date and time, frequency, mode (AM, FM, SSB, etc.) and signal strength and readability. QSL cards can be used for documentation for awards such as “Worked All States” or DXCC – worked 100 countries.

 

The way QSL cards work is that one person takes the initiative and sends the other person their completed QSL card.  Upon receipt the other person

ham radio qsl card for Jon Kreski AB9NN from the International Space Station

matches the received QSL card to their records.  If it matches they then complete their QSL card and may send it to the other ham.  None of this is required by law and in practice most hams do this for things they want documentation for awards for and for documentation of “oh SURE you did…” kind of ham radio contacts.  The reason that not all contacts are confirmed is that it takes time and costs money to have QSL cards printed and postage also costs money.

Before I created my own QSL card I researched procedures for ontaining a QSL card to determine if it was even possible. 

 

I did a Google search found this link:  http://www.issfanclub.com/qsl which listed ARRL as the place to send the QSL card and request.  This made sense.  The ARRL (Amatuer Radio Relay League) is the national organization for ham radio operators in the United States of America.  Astronauts are busy people and I knew they had made quite a few contacts just on the small number of passes that I had listened to.  It made sense that NASA would forward their ham radio communications logs to a group like the ARRL that would match and process their QSL cards for them.  To verify that this was good information and not just some hacker’s site I also searched the ARRL site at this link: http://www.arrl.org/frequently-asked-questions .  I checked the QSL Card section at this link and sure enough – the information matched.  That seemed like the place to send a QSL card with hopes of getting one back.

 

Next step.  Create my own QSL card.  I researched QSL Maker here: http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/4780 .  Nice software, but it just would not produce the QSL card that I wanted.  Then I had a brainstorm.  http://www.eqsl.net/qslcard/Index.cfm had my eQSL card and I thought I remembered that you could print a QSL card from their website.  So I gave it a try.   Why did I try this “out of the box” solution?  Well, I only needed ONE qsl card.  I needed it FAST.  And I knew that I already had an electronic version of one.

 

Here is a copy of my humble QSL card.  I have a color capable buble-jet printer.  A quick trip to the local office supply store for some heavy paper and WHALA!  After a couple of tries on the printer I had ONE QSL card that I could print out and mail in to the ARRL.

I had tried for an electronic QSL confirmation but that did not work.  I wasn’t quite sure if I had something wrong in my data, if NASA had something wrong in their data or if they would only confirm via the manual method.  So I tried the manual method.

I assumed that it would take quite a bit of time to get the QSL card back.  I sort of mentally wrote-off the chance of getting one back.  I wondered if my writst watch which I used to record the time of the contact was syncronized with THEIR clocks on board the International Space Station.  I thought there was a pretty good chance of that though because my watch receives a radio signal every night from the Atomic Clock (official US clock) every night and re-sets the time on the watch.  I wondered if they had logged the contact.  They had made a lot of them – did they have the time?  Did they care to have that as a record?

Arriving home from work I saw the mail waiting for me.  There was a sort of strange looking business envelope from ARRL.  Strange in that most of their mailings are nicely professional.  Crisp printing, sharp graphics, etc..  This one had what looked like a manually printed and applied mailing label on it.  The envelope looked like it had been folded in 1/3′s prior to mailing.  And it looked smudged.  HUH…

 

So this is quite a nice accomplishment for me.  I likely will take steps to preserve this QSL card for the long term.  I also will display it with pride.  Not to boast – but to encourage others.  I am an Auditor by training.  And I can do this.  SO CAN YOU!  Read some of my other posts on the subject.  Review what http://www.AMSAT.org has on their website about the procedures for contact.  Do Google searches on the topic.  Listen to and ask what other hams have done to make their contacts.  Give it a try…  I thought, before I made the contact, that it wouldn’t be a big deal.  A 25 mile contact straight-up with no buildings or trees in the way.  Big whoop!  But when you finally DO make the contact?  WOOO HOOO!  YES!!!!!

 

Stay radio active!

 

Jon Kreski, AB9NN – Appleton / Green Bay, Wisconsin area