The last of my very first QSL cards

This is one of my first QSL cards. To my knowledge, it is the last of its kind in existence. I’ve not yet found any others.

My dad bought me my first QSL cards after I got my Novice class license in 1984.

They were printed by George Vesely, W9SKR, somewhere in Illinois. This had been my father’s preferred QSL card printer for many years. Indeed there are several different versions of my dad’s cards, all printed by W9SKR, still lying around his shack.

I sent a lot of these cards out, but since I changed calls the next year I didn’t save any of them. So this is the only one left. It is stapled to one of the floor joists above my dad’s old basement shack.

I’ll need to clean out his shack and take down all the cards, including this one, soon. But for a little while longer, it’ll remain there, ensconced, as a little piece of history.

Ocean County Mall, 1986

I happened upon this photo when it popped up in the General Cinema Memories Facebook group recently. (I worked for General Cinema when I was in high school back in the 1980s.) I was surprised and amused to see the local ham radio club’s Field Day activities promoted on the sign! The Ocean County Mall is in Toms River, New Jersey.

(Source)

There’s a good article in the July/August 2024 issues of On the Air, ARRL’s magazine geared toward new hams, that offers advice on learning the Morse Code.

I’m all for this. I love Morse Code, and it’s still a useful (and fun!) skill that all hams should have at least a minimal working knowledge of an appreciation for.[^cmm]

The author, TJ Johnson (K9KJ), offers a straightforward (and exactly correct) approach for learning the Code:

1. Learn the characters.
2. Add complexity.
3. Increase speed.

He also includes this extremely valuable advice:

• Use Farnsworth spacing.
• Learn the sounds of the characters, not the “dots and dashes”

And this is where things get dicey.

The article is accompanied by this visualization of the letters and numbers:

Letters and numbers, shown in ”dots and dashes” representation of Morse Code

I’m assuming that this is an editorial choice on the part of the publisher and not the doing of the Mr Johnson, since he actually goes out of his way to advise readers NOT to think about the “dots and dashes.” Unfortunately, it will likely reinforce in some people’s minds that they should make a visual connection between what they here and what it means. This is highly detrimental to learning any language, not just Morse Code.

While it’s a tempting artistic device, the dots and dashes really are not useful to learning the Code. We need to let go of them altogether.[^lg]

[^cmm]: Thanks to David Patton, for helping me to refine my position here.

[^lg]: Previously used the word “abandon” here, but I think “let go” better captures my intended sentiment.