Radio, Photos, Linux and things in my world

In the radio amateur hobby, there are a wide rang of interests - almost as wide as the variation of peoples outspoken view of what this hobby should be! One of the things that goes back into the mists of time is an interesting habit of swapping cards to be the final confirmation that one person had actually managed to contact another. To stop people making false claims I guess and also as a courtesy. a hundred years later, the cards still get swapped around the world - more often out of interest but usually to support some claim to an award.

Creativity
In a rather technical hobby, this is one chance people get to excercise some creative ideas on paper - aside from radio-electronic designs. The QSL card. Now, there logically is the internet generations version the eQSL card. A group of amatuers created a company to provide this service, and its now immensly popular. Here is my eQSL which includes a photo of Ironbridge I took and my details. The online server puts in appropriate details out of the data I upload. Each person gets the (hopefully) correct details I took down.

Website
You will find eqsl on the http://www.eqsl.cc website , they offer a free service, but donations are a good idea if you make a lot of use of it. Plenty of logging programs amateurs use can send data direct to the log - so while I'm talking to someone I write in the software who, when, where and quality of signal my program can upload it and a card will be waiting at the other persons login.

No thanks?
There are some who spurn its use, well thats their view - personally I see no harm in it. Its accessible and easy to use and you don't have to pay if you don't want to. Even listeners can put thier logs online. I do still keep a paper log, then again computer mistrust is deeply inbeded and they're nice to browse through as well.

Old Calls?
Radio hams who have had/got more than one licence reference (a callsign required as identity) can add extra accounts in which are connected to the main one. I've put in my use of a Maltese visitors call I was issued 9H3DH, alas I spoke to very few people and the only card I ever received was for a previous user of it in the 90s (a rare but possible happening). I've uploaded data from my earliest licenced era as G6VSG in the 80s. Though not much was of interest as I never spoke much outside a group of friends. I do sometime re-use that ID.

Give eQSL a try.