Greetings fellow amateurs,
I am the National Manager of the Australian (VK) QSL Bureau, and write to seek your assistance in publicising to your country’s amateurs, problems that are experienced by sending QSL cards to the VK Bureau for VK9 and VK0 callsigns.
VK9 and VK0 represent a number of territories of Australia, and in fact, all eight (8) of these Territories are listed within the Clublog 100 most wanted DXCC. Accordingly, these Territories are frequently used as locations for DXpeditions (during 2018, there will be seven different DXpeditions to VK9 alone).
In almost all cases, these DXpeditions are managed by amateurs from countries other than Australia, however because of the VK9 or VK0 prefix, it is incorrectly assumed that QSL cards should be sent to the VK Bureau.
This creates a very heavy workload on the VK Bureau, which has to first seek where the QSL manager is located, and then sort, and re-direct those QSLs to a different DX Bureau. Having to re-direct so many cards incurs costs that we can longer absorb, and so the VK Bureau has taken the decision that we will no longer be re-directing QSL cards for VK9 and VK0, and nor will we be returning those cards marked as undeliverable.
This puts the onus back on your country’s amateurs to correctly identify the QSL process for these callsigns; in almost every case, this can be readily found from www.QRZ.com or other internet links. In many cases, such DXpeditions urge the use of OQRS as they do not wish to receive QSL cards. It is quite clear from the number of cards we receive, that many amateurs never look up QRZ.com to determine the correct path for VK9 and VK0 callsigns, thus leading to the problems we experience.
Therefore, it would be appreciated, if you could publicise this matter to your country’s amateurs, requesting that in all cases, before they send their QSL cards to the VK Bureau, that they identify the correct path for routing of QSL cards to VK9 and VK0 callsigns. If they do not do this, in all likelihood their card will never be answered, and nor will it be returned as undeliverable.
Any assistance that you can provide in advising your country’s amateurs of this matter would be greatly appreciated.
With best 73s
John Seamons
(VK3JLS)
National and Inwards QSL Bureau Manager for VK