Archive - April 2022

As the 2021 – 2022 financial tax year comes to an end, it is time to take a look at how our mailing facility has worked over the last year. Overall  12,207 items of mail were posted at a cost of £13,298.42. We post QSL cards, bureau parcels and magazines using the various products as shown in the table above. During Covid times the costs were going up and up, but recently, since January we have seen costs fall, as new mailing products were introduced this year. The day to day QSL card mailings have dropped by 11p per item which is taking us back to the postal rates for letters before Covid. We  kept direct QSL costs the same during that time.

DX’pedition QSL costs are very competitive as always and we welcome talking to DX teams about mailing your QSL cards in the future. Bureau costs remain higher due to the worldwide shipping freight capacity under constant high demand. As we prepare for the next Bureau dispatch we are trying to find ways to reduce those costs. The biggest challenge to Bureau shipments is the worldwide customs regulations where we are seeing many countries putting a customs tax on Bureau shipments. No word yet from IARU about this matter. One benefit of Brexit is that we no longer have to pay 20% tax on sending mail to EU countries a saving of £1k last year.

With solar cycle 25 packing a punch, we continue to provide top QSL support to all. 

DF2WO, Harald, has some DX travels in the works. He flies to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, June 1, staying to June 22. This is grid KI48xe.
He will have his FT991A and hopes to be on all bands and satellite QO-100. He will have his usual antennas, a vertical, dipoles, and homemade hexbeam made of bamboo and wires. For QO-100 he will have an
80cm dish and BU500 rig, one watt.

He will mostly spend his time on FT8 but will switch to CW and SSB if conditions are good and “by appointment,” by emailing him at [email protected].

After Rwanda he plans to go to XT2AW, Burkina Faso, and D44TWO, Cape Verde, in September.

QSL via M0OXO OQRS