SIGNOFF
>From De Syam <syam@Glue.umd.edu> Fri Nov 24 02:42:25 1995
From: De Syam <syam@Glue.umd.edu> (De Syam)
Subject: JA QSL Return Rates
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951123212820.4154A-100000@cappuccino.eng.umd.edu>
I am a serious QSL'er and therefore I observe the content of each bureau
shipment I get with some care.
The last two shipments I received from the Bureau contained an inordinate
number of JA QSL's even though the sunspots of the last couple years have
reduced the number of JA QSO's I have made considerably. Therefore I
took particular care to note the dates of the QSO's on the JA cards, and
was interested to find that most of them had dates 1991-1992, even though
there were some included from early 1995.
I am therefore postulating that the JARL Bureau was overwhelmed by the
number of QSL's it was called on to handle during the high-sunspot years
and simply placed a number of the outgoing cards "in the closet" until
such time as it had the chance to sort them out to the various bureaus
and ship them. Now that the lack of sunspots have reduced the volume of
current cards in the system the closet door has been opened and the piles
inside are gradually being reduced as those cards are being reunited with
the outgoing stream. Thus a measurement of QSLing percentage which
excludes only QSO's from the past 12 months might reflect a bias against
the JA QSL'ers. Though I have kept no statistics, it is my impression
that the JA's are among the world's best QSL'ers.
Very 73,
Fred Laun, K3ZO
P. S. Since the JARL Callbook lists only JARL Members, even that
Callbook represents only some 10-15% of the Japanese amateurs, although
one assumes that most of the active contesters/DX'ers are among this
10-15%. But the fact remains that some 85% of Japan's amateurs are not
listed in ANY Callbook, much less the U.S.-published Radio Amateur
Callbook. The same is true in Thailand, where there are now 124,000
hams. The radio club lost so much money printing the first three Thai
Callbooks that it stopped, so now the vast majority of Thailand's hams
are not to be found in any Callbook anywhere.
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