My Faux QSL Cards

My first radio hobby was listening on the AM band. As a neophyte, I knew nothing about QSL cards, so I did not seek them out.

When I bought my first shortwave radio (Hallicrafters S-200 for $50 new), I learned about QSL cards because most of the shortwave stations mentioned their availability on the air. So I began sending my SINPO reports to every station I heard.

Soon the mailman was delivering QSL cards to my home. Some QSL cards were better than others. I particularly liked the QSL cards depicting the radio station equipment... especially antenna farms.

Reading Tom Kneitel, K2AES, in Electronics Illustrated, I was fascinated by the oddball radio operations he wrote about. When he wrote about Radio Americas on Swan Island, I switched the S-200 to 1160 on the AM band and logged the station without much difficulty. Since Radio Americas was so exotic, I decided to send my SINPO report to an AM radio station for the very first time. Lo and behold, I received a Radio Americas QSL card awhile later.

Got my ham license and abandoned AM and shortwave listening for a few decades, but rejoined the fray in 2011. Except for Radio Americas, I never kept a log of AM stations because as a novice, I knew nothing about logging just as I knew nothing about QSL cards, so every AM radio station I heard since 2011 was a new logging.

As the AM log started filling up, I decided not to bother sending SINPO reports to every newly logged station because it would be a time-consuming and expensive affair. (I’d rather spend the money on some new RG-58 or a new pair of high heels). And besides the time and money expended, it might all be for naught because urban radio legend had it that AM stations were not dependable QSLers (and I did not want to find out the hard way).

When I started writing about all my new radio loggings in my blog, Horzepa.com, the posts looked naked without an accompanying related image, so I began creating my own QSL cards to accompany my posts. And since I was the QSL card designer, I designed them to my liking, that is, depicting radio station equipment... especially antenna farms.

Below are the QSL cards I created for some of the stations I logged (in alphabetical order according to call sign; click on any card to make it appear larger). I will add new QSL cards to this webpage as I create them, so you all come back now, you hear!