LA8AJA's homepage

LB1GB asked for the url to the tv-show where LA4LN and I (LA8AJA) appeared a couple of years ago. The show was Newton, and aired January 21st 2007 on NRK. I thought I had a post about it, but just couldn’t find it. I know I posted the url on contesting.no, but when I found the url, it was incorrect. After searching NRK, I finally found the url. It’s all in Norwegian and can be watched at this url. The show is a Norwegian version of a Jay Leno clip some years back. Who will be the fastest to transmit a message. Will SMS beat morse-code? Find out in the clip. You can find it around 23 minutes out in the clip.

I got several new confirmations on LoTW lately. Mellish Reef was very welcome with VK9GMW on 40M CW (#225 LoTW). 3D2NB on 40M CW gave me #226 on LoTW. Other nice ones confirmed are 9M6/N2BB 40M CW and 5X1NH on 40M CW and 20M RTTY. Thanks to all LoTW users.

When it comes to radio, the only thing to report about, is 4U1UN worked on 20M CW (#271 20M). 6M seems to slowly come alive. I haven’t really checked the band, but I see cluster reports, so things are surely happening.

When going home after visiting some friends yesterday, the sun was setting. The view was spectacular, but no camera to catch it. When at home, the view was very beautiful, but it just wasn’t as spectacular as it could have been. I did however take several pictures and stitched them all together to form the attached picture. I think the result speaks for itself. I’m happy with it. What do you think?

Be sure to exchange any IRC you have lying around before the end of this year. A new IRC will be launched on July 1st 2009. See the picture to see the new one. The new one is called the Nairobi model. The old one is called the Beijing 2 model and expires December 31st 2009. You don’t know what an IRC is you say, no worry, just read the facts below. An IRC is used to cover return postage when doing direct QSL’ing.

An international reply coupon (IRC) is a coupon that can be exchanged for one or more postage stamps representing the minimum postage for an unregistered priority airmail letter of up to twenty grams sent to another Universal Postal Union (UPU) member country. IRCs are accepted by all UPU member countries.

UPU member postal services are obliged to exchange an IRC for postage, but are not obliged to sell them.

The purpose of the IRC is to be able to send someone in another country a letter, along with the cost of postage for them to reply. If the addressee is within the same country, there is no need for an IRC because a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) will suffice; but if the addressee is in another country an IRC removes the necessity of acquiring foreign postage or sending appropriate currency.

Source wikipedia.

Below you can see the sample of the beautiful K5D QSLdesign. It is designed by SQ8X. He was one of the operators at the recent VK9LA expedition. If you take a look at his page here, you can see that he has also designed cards for VK9DWX, ZS8T, ZD9BCB, VP6TD and several others. Stan is working as a freelancer: website and DTP designer, press- and radiojournalist and a professional photographer. Recently he is also involved in international movie productions taking place in Poland. I really like his designs and wish I could do the same, but I need more practice, though I did have a shot at my latest QSL which can be seen here. You can ask Stan to design a card for you if you are planning to go to a rare IOTA or DXCC. Stan has also done several hamradio websites like VK9LA.info, 3Y0E.com and ZS8T.net. The last 2 sites aren’t up and running anymore.

Sources SQ8X.net and QRZ.com.