Here’s the second in the short bonus series of W8DFL QSL cards… two more to come after this one.

I’ll start off with this one from Sr. Cletus:

I’ve seen cards from priests out in the field, but this is the first and only one I ran into from a nun. Seems she was demoing the radio for a class or something.

How she picked Sr. Mary Cletus, I might never know. I’ve got to say, she does have impeccable penmanship.

This is interesting for two reasons, two slashes. Here’s Ove operating from the Åland Islands which seem to be Finish, but only kinda-sorta. The even more interesting thing is W8DFL/OE2 which means that Vic was operating out of Austria! I know he was out to Switzerland when he was transmitting from the ITU, but I guess he roamed further than that!

I’ll leave this with a shortwave listening card:

Why? I love the complete hand-made nature of this one.

I wonder who Bob is. I wonder how Vic was supposed to send a QSL since I can’t even seem to find the address.

But it’s fascinating to look at.

Even the coastline of the US is in there.

1935. Before WWII.

How things change.

After En’s uncle Bill passed away last month she went over to his house. He lived in his parents’ house, En’s grandparents’ house. Of course her grandpa was Vic Bambeck, W8DFL.

Bill gave her the bulk of the QSL cards that were stored in a shoebox, but on her trip over she found some postcard holders with more cards in them. This is going to be a mini series of the cards in the four postcard sleeves.

Oddly, the first card I’m posting isn’t even a card.

Here’s Vic and his wife in Geneva Switzerland. W8DFL is the guest operator for 4U1ITU. This is the ITU — the International Telecommunication Union. (It’s UN agency for all things communication!) The ITU is the world governing body for all things on the air. 4U1ITU is the amateur radio ration that they run.

So moving from one side of that conversation to the other…

Here’s someone he talked to — in Hyderabad, India. From Parma, to Geneva, to India.

So, another non-card. I was less than one years old at the time. This was Vic’s shack in the basement of that Parma house. Big gear. All that can be squeezed into less than two cubic feet now (and that’ll get you a legal limit amplifier to boot!).

Nauru? Chalk this up as a learning experience!

Nauru is a tiny pin-prick of an island in the Pacific. All told it’s less that 9 square miles in size. Solon, where I’m based at the moment, is more that twice as big.

The card doesn’t seem like it’s from an expedition… perhaps Ken was just there mining the phosphate that the island was… ?

The last one for today is another place I’ve not heard of:

Here we’re talking about Aldabra Island. Here’s an empty island in the Indian Ocean. Other than researchers this little atol isn’t populated at all.

So… this was likely an expedition since it’s in the middle of nowhere. The even cooler aspect is that Harry seems to be from Mombasa, Kenya. (!)

Ahhh… internationalism.

This is the last of the cards that I’m going to post since this is the last of the cards I have to post. I’ll post some meta-analysis later on as I process the data, but there aren’t going to be any new cards unfortunately.

Most of this last batch are cards that I couldn’t scan normally. Either they are too fragile or too abrasive to just stack in the document feeder for automated processing.

I’ll start with the oldest card of all that’s only partially filled out unfortunately:

I’m going to count this as a 80m contact. 85m is in the 80m band which ranges from 3.5-4.0 MHz — it’s in the bottom chunk that’s reserved for Morse Code. Morse Code is just sending out a single frequency coded just by turning it on and off. The single frequency is also called CW for Continuous Wave.

This was way back in 1930 from Warren. Vic lived there back then too so it wasn’t a long-range contact by any stretch. I just find the “OM” on the bottom funny. OM = Old Man. Of course back then he wasn’t. I’m older now than he would have been then.

Now what was I saying about abrasive?

The printing on the front may as well be glitter sandpaper!

The way the scanner works it slides it over the glass scanner… no way that’s going to make it through without scratching the glass. No way I’m going to try at least!

And let’s move on to fragile:

This was scanned in the carrier for the scanner. It was barely holding together as it was . I can make out the date a bit. 11/17/1931 probably… But that’s about all the handwriting I can make out.

It’s a bit worse for wear.

And no, I didn’t tape it; that’s the way it came to us.

Another cool thing of the hobby is how it brings people together:

Followed up just about two months later with a…

The eyeball QSL. Fun times… the same year that Ennie was born they set out on a road trip!

This is the penultimate update for this long string of posts. I’ll be sad when they’re all done. If for no other reason than I’ll have to come up with something more original every week.

Don’t worry though, I have other plans for that!  

This card, amongst all the rest, holds the honor of the oldest one in the collection. As I write this it’s an 80 year old piece of paper.

An 80 year old piece of paper that has TXTing on on.

B A GUD SPORT OM, PSE QSL 73s

(OM = Old Man. It’s opposite is an XYL. XYL = eX Young Lady.)

It’s cool to see something like “Experimental Radio Station” on the card. Back then the experiments were for real. You had an idea and you had to try it out. There’s no simulations that you can do to virtually try them out. You strung some wires up in the tree and did something.

The experiments, no doubt, let to Vic working on the development of RADAR in WWII.

Connections all around.

We also start to get to some of the rattier cards:

These got left to the end. Most of these wound up being scanned on the flatbed instead of the sheet-fed scanner.

I simply love the handwriting on the card. The flourishes around all the letters are simply beautiful. I don’t know anyone that would just write like that any more. Perhaps if you were addressing wedding invitations you might pay someone to do this… but never just for something ordinary.

Maybe radio just wasn’t that ordinary.  

The first real radio broadcasts started only in the 20′s. 1932 wasn’t that far removed from that.

I like this one for the extreme low-tech of it. The pre-paid 1-cent post card with a hand-stamped call sign.

“Single button, Hi”

…. ..

Welcome to the land of repeats… even with the extra one. Some get well soon cards (some of which are dupes themselves!)

Why this one? It’s the first reference to 6m that I’ve found. Though it’s not a completed card. I heard En tell stories about how her grandpa had a portable radio in the trunk of the car; I wonder if this is from that time?

I’m just pulling this one up since it’s from 1936. A giant 750w 160m amp in the middle. Wow!

This one is interesting. If you look to Vic’s station, this time he’s W8DFL/VE1. Apparently he took his rig up there to Nova Scotia and made some contacts back home! Sure is cheaper than long distance back then!

The series is quickly coming to an end. In a twist of synchronicity cards seem to be saying the same thing unfortunately.

More get well soon cards addressed to the hospital… one of which…

Was delivered in person. He got over the 1975 issue though since I’ve seen cards up through the early 80′s. It’s still tough to look at them though.

Here’s the one that got to me:

A “1-way” exchange. Somewhere out there there’s a fully blank card that Jim kept along. Still had a sense of humor though.

Eventually the call W8MWC did get reissued to a John in Adrian, MI.

Vic did go on to after all this to keep on making more contacts though!

Another batch of US cards — only 5 more to go (I think I’ll do 21 per for the remainder).

I’m writing this as I’m listening to an 80m net on 3.919MHz. The low bands are really open right now. Almost all the cards I’m seeing are 10m with a few 20 and 15 meter bands thrown in. I think I remember two 40m cards thus far.

Its neat thinking about meeting people on the air then eventually meeting them in real life. IN many ways this is like the internet now. You can meet people in a chat room or something and then flying out to meet them. Like internet dating or something.

Why this card? I like Wyoming. I love it. Ever since I crashed my bike there (ok, so I tipped my bike there) I’ve been enthralled by it. I guess you can say the same thing about Labrador. (What’s up with me liking where I crash?!)

One thing I noticed in this batch is a set of cards addressed to Deaconess Hospital. I have to ask En about that… what happened that he was in laid up for long enough to get some cards there.

We’re getting close to the end now — just about a month more posts before the queue is exhausted. Then I’ll have to start getting my own. I’ve been trying to fish some coax through my wall for the past couple hours and I’m getting might frustrated.

Gaahhh!!

But I guess Marion — the Big Jolly Grandpa — might make things better.

Another cool one is from K6TXW out in California:

“R U STILL 39?” Praise Bob!

Who says “kids today” invented txting. Maybe sexting, but still…

From one Parma to another:

I never knew about the Parma Idaho.

I think we’re firmly planted in America for the duration now… and today we have a relatively slow set of cards unfortunately.

(Ok, to everyone that wants these to end, we’re down to 165 to go… maybe fewer even. Patience… Then we can get all meta on this! )

I’m a sucker for cute critters. I love that the doggy’s tongue was hand colored! You might think it’s a screen of the red, but even an 600 dpi it’s just a solid tone. And you wouldn’t pay for a spot color that tiny when the radio folks are that cheap!

I can’t gen enough of the pictures of the people that are sending the cards. All of these are a moment of time captured and sent out to the world. Most of the time the people look happy. Bill Parker here looks happy. I’ve seen a few in the past of people that look like the next thing they yell into the mic is “Get Off My Lawn!”

Why this one? It’s not dated. I don’t even know who it’s going it. Something about Michigan. “737710 Michigan” ? It might be a frequency, but 7.47 Mhz is out of the amateur allocation so that’s probably ruled out…

But then there’s the antenna.

450Ω ladder line heading out the bottle that’s the center of the dipole. With a birdy that’s tweeting away at the ham drunk of the jug of XXX.

Good times.

The US QSLs continue… and likely will for the rest of the time as well for what it’s worth.

I’ll start with one that looks like a new one for the most part:

The style is very reminiscent of the cards from the 60′s with the big bold graphic letters. Then I noticed the paper it was printed on. Then Vic’s address.

The Bambeck family seemed to sprout up in the Warren area. Most of the really old QSL cards are aimed there. All of the newer cards went to Parma. This is the first one that caught my eye that was going to Canton. I guess that’s an intermediate stop on the move west for the family.

En also explains that their family only ever bought Hoover vacuum cleaners. Hoover was based out of Canton before the company she works for now acquired them a few years back. (Of course that company is back on the block again… )

In any case I finally looked at the date: 1936.

November 30th. Such a nice time to be down south in Ft. Lauderdale. It predates the Cuban missile crisis by a few years. Nice warm days instead of the post-Thanksgiving freeze that you get up here in the Cleveland area.

I spent a month of two down there in the summer while growing up. My dad moved down to Pompano Beach back in the 80′s. Pompano Beach is a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale. Like I said we were down there in the summer — when the atmosphere mugs you every time you open the door. You also get the clockwork rains in the early afternoon.

Ahh… and the bugs.  (Mom, remember? )

Good times…

I just have no idea how to read this one… It has some scribbled out W8DOH address info for Joseph Juhasz. It has something on it going to Albuquerque, NM… but how did Vic get a hold of it? It has some random scribbles on the for what looks to be a scheduled net of some variety with frequencies in both 40 and 15 meters. To top it off it’s not filled out.

The presence of the ZIP code means it can’t be older than around 1963, but even that would be rare.

We might never know… maybe I should track some of these folks down and ask.

Why this blank one? No reason other than it’s from a Herb Nelson. Probably not the Herb Nelson that has a dish named after him at our favorite diner… Jim’s Open Kitchen has a plate of a bit of everything that’s called just that: The Herb Nelson.

It would be cool if it here him. heh.