[CQ-Contest] pre-emptive QSLing

[Pete Smith]

For what it's worth, I thought people might be interested.  I have been 
following for several years the principle Jim described from KC1XX's 
experience, of preemptively QSLing each unique band/mode combination.  As 
he says, I had hoped that this would quickly reduce the number of QSLs 
needed to be sent.

For the first several years, I was surprised to discover how many QSLs 
still needed to be sent, following this rule. To be sure, I am not a big 
gun like KC1XX, but I have 67,383 QSOs in my log since moving here on 
December 1, 1994.  Consistently, between 40 and 50 percent of my QSOs still 
required QSLs (following this rule) as recently has last year.

This year, I get the feeling that maybe the corner is being turned.  I only 
had 5279 QSOs from the end of ARRL CW until the present date (including 
CQWW, etc.), but of those only 1621 will require QSLs.  That's only 30.7 
percent.  Maybe it's finally starting to work ...

73, Pete N4ZR
Happy Holidays