Saturday, April 14, 2012

It si Saturday morning and I have a few things to do today.

I have to go over the property taxes today.

No comment.

I also have to start getting the grub together to go back to work. This is going to be a mild pain because I have to freeze some of it.

I have just had breakfast and am enjoying my morning coffee as I sit here. I have not turned on the Icom yet to check into the YL net which I generally do as I am making my coffee. It is a quiet day.

The mail has yet to produce a QSL card for either WA or SD and I'm a bit annoyed because both of them are overdue. The Washington card isn't quite as annoying as the fact that South Dakota hasn't responded to me yet. I have QSO'd the station more than once and sent him a card every time and at least twice they have been accompanied by a SASE so as to not cost him postage.

No answer and since the first QSO it has been five weeks or maybe more. It ain't right.

I don't need a fancy card, just a scrap of paper with a signal report and his callsign. My QSL fromm Alaska was hand made and is actually a favorite of mine. It shows someone cared enough to take the effort to at least give me tangible proof toward my Worked All States project.

It's common courtesy and I guess there are people out there that do not have any.

I once commented that the poorer the state the faster they resopnd and I suppose that in a sense this is true because I Googled the guy for the hell of it and it looks like he owns a damned airplane. As usual, money for an airplane but no time for the basics of good manners.

Before we go on here this particular contact has come through a WAS net where the members are expected to QSL one way or another. Almost every other person I have QSO'd with on this particular net has QSL'd rather quickly.

A couple of months ago I recieved a card from an SWL (shortwave listener) so I sent him one in return. This guy isn't a ham, but likely a kid with a shortwave band receiver and he gave me a signal report from Idaho. I suppose I made his day when he got my card. Years ago SWLs used to be about 5-10% of the card requests and a good ham would send out a card.

Another ham and I have chatted about the way some people do not respond and the truth is that there is one group of people that get a pass and that is old hams on a fixed income. Postage has gone up and there are still a few older retired hams that are on the air with the old patched up rig they put together years ago our of either a Heathkit or GI surplus components and they enjoy themselves.

These guys have a hard enough time just getting out of bed in the morning and can most likely barely afford the electricity needed to run theirrigs. I almost bought a rig from a guy similar to this that was going blind.

Guys like this get a pass.

Still, I have not figured out why the poorer the ham the more likely to get a QSL card in the mail.

Then again, this is actually a pretty god country if I can afford to gripe about something like this.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

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