50 Years

Today I pulled my novice license out of the file. It reads "effective date: 09-23-66". Wow I've been hamming for 50 years...well, not quite. I also pulled my novice logbook out of the desk drawer.

It shows my first RF to the antenna was on Oct 16, but no answer to my CQ. Vance, W6ZZL, then got on using my equipment to show that I was getting out. He worked WN6UBL. It was almost 2 weeks before I had an actual contact. I worked WN7EQS on October 28.

It was a fun year as a novice but I couldn't quite master 13 WPM. I ended up with a technician license on 2 mtrs for a few months until I was able to upgrade and get back on HF.

I thought it would be appropriate to have a "50 Years of Ham Radio" QSL card to  go along with all of this. A few minutes with a graphics program and a quick order to Walmart got me what I was looking for.

New KX3 QSL Card

It's a new "QRP in the Park" season and I have a new rig. I need a new QSL card.

My new card, using Walmart digital photo printing and 3.3"x4" Avery shipping labels, costs about $.30 each in single quantities. This is a great match for my operating style. Rarely do I get on the air and work 100s (or even 10s) of hams in a short time. It would take me forever to work through 100 or more pre-printed QSL cards. This way I can make up QSL cards 5-10 at a time and easily update them without throwing out a bunch of unused cards.

Interested in doing the same? See my January 2, 2010 blog entry.

Photo QSL Cards

QSL cards are a ham radio tradition that I was introduced to when I was a novice in 1966. My novice card then was a fairly generic design ordered 100 cards at a time from the Little Print Shop near Austin, Texas.

These days I usually custom create my QSL cards to go with a particular event or location. Lots of places will print digital photos and most allow on-line submission. I've seen prices as low as 9 cents per print with no minimum. All that is needed is a jpg file the right size.

Start with your favorite graphics editor, even Microsoft Paint has enough power and function to do the job.

First create a blank colored background with the right aspect ratio to match the prints to be ordered. I planned to order 4" x 6" prints so I created a 800 x 1200 pixel background. This background gives you control over auto resize/crop that occurs when your file is printed. The color doesn't matter. It will eventually get trimmed off.

Use your editor to cut out from the middle of the background a rectangle the matches the final size of the QSL card. For a typical 3.5" x 5.25" QSL card on a 800 x 1200 pixel background this rectangle will be 700 x 1050 pixels. This space is where you create your QSL card.

Use your graphics editor to add whatever QSL card text and images you wish. For Microsoft Paint I found it best to crop and resize any photos or images before I paste them into the QSL card.

Send the jpg file off to be printed.

The resulting 4" x 6" print will have a colored frame that needs to be trimmed off. This should leave your 3.5" x 5.5" QSL card. A paper cutter works great for trimming.

Other cheaper options may be available but for the QSL card information I use a Avery #5264 3.25" x 4" shipping label stuck to the back of the QSL card. Inside the Avery box are instructions telling how to use a template included in Microsoft Word to create six preprinted labels per sheet of shipping labels.