F6IRF: And the QSL's ?

With over 30,000 QSO's per year, QSL'ing becomes a big problem. Sending 1QSL /QSO would be both expensive and useless (a majority of contest QSO's are done with the same stations... who furthermore are not QSL's hunters...). As it is impossible to guess who is interested by your card, the best remains to wait for the cards to come, and to try to answer them in an efficient way...





Step1: the received bureau cards are sorted by bureau.
Step2: Each received card is captured in BV7 software. Each small window corresponds to a different callsign I used in the pass. Entering the callsign, I can immediately see which band/mode for which of my call still needs to be confirmed.





Step3: when all the cards for a given bureau, have been queud, the calls are printed. The software takes care of the alphabetical order sorting. I do not use anymore labels, but rather directly print on the cards (it saves the annoying sticker gluing step!)





step4: each card printed is verified and signed


Here are the main bureau customers: from left to right K, SP, I, JA and DL... To be noted, the K stations are by far the most present in my logs... ahh if the rest of the world could also use LOTW!



Step5: Finaly the cards are packed and sent to the REF !
This represents only 4 monthes, the same volume is sent 3 times/year





Following are the statistics provided by BV7 (started to use it in 2004)
F6IRF: QSOs printed: 7855
FG/F6IRF: QSOs printed: 1961
F6IRF/P: QSOs printed: 195
IS0/F6IRF: QSOs printed: 105
UT/F6IRF/P: QSOs printed: 25
So from the nearly 10,000 QSO's have been confirmed via the bureau since 2004... (by the way, not all bureaux are slow ! UT/F6IRF/P operation is only 5 monthes old !)

In short: QSL'ing represents time money and energy that I would prefer to use on the air, on station improvments and on travelling; so please:
- Refrain sending 1 card per QSO (only new band/mode) This may be easier for you, but it is a nightmare for me ! (once again I am not interested by cards, they all endup to the trash !).
- Be friendly with the environment and the trees: try to use LOTW or E-QSL...