Archive - April 2025

ACOM Repaired

15 April 2025
I have always been fascinated by power amplifiers, the glow of the power tubes lighting up the shack on a cold winter evening keeping yourself warm in the heat while talking to Vladimir In Moscow or Stuie in Darwin. Amplifiers just have that cosey feeling. Anyway sadly, both my Acom 1000’s had developed problems, I bought a spare just so that if one went down, I had another to use during a repair, you just know that if the amplifier goes down it will be during that time you need it to work the All Time New One that you have been waiting for so long to work. Well my plan didn’t work out did it! Both went down at the same time. 
However these days trying to find an electrical engineer with spare parts and willing to work on it was quite a challenge. Some of the old guys now have hung up their test gear for the last time, even some of the emporiums do not have the qualified staff to do the work. Phone call after phone call was, “you will need to send the units to Bulgaria to the factory” Not on my life I thought… So I carried on looking around.
I have seen the DX Shop on “X”  “The DX Shop – High End equipment for the serious Radio Amateur Manufacturer of Linear Amp UK amplifiers. http://thedxshop.com ACOM amplifier dealer/service.” 
I dropped Roger an email and told him of my plight, he agreed to take them in for repair, I drove over on Friday and left the Acom’s in his care. Monday comes and both are ready to be picked up. One had a failed tube  and a couple of components down and the other had a failed transformer.
I often hear people say “where can i go to get my amps fixed?” Well I can highly recommend The DX Shop. Roger has the knowledge, experience and the parts to fix or refurbishment of amps of any age.
Just take a look at his website and you can feel confident that you came to the right place. Credit where credit is due. The DX Shop is the one for me! 

Another Mailing

10 April 2025

It isn’t just QSL cards we mail out. Here is one of the Club periodicals that are shipped from here this week along with my usual weekly QSL postings. If your club needs a mailing manager drop me a line!

We have mailing solutions for your club or DXpediition.


 

2024 – 2025 Mailing Statistics

5 April 2025

As the 2024 – 2025 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 25,517 items of mail were posted at a cost of £25,972.95. We post QSL Direct cards, bureau parcels and magazines using the various products as shown in the table below. With 3,419 less items posted this year, with Solar Cycle 25 this last 12 months providing much increased propagation on HF.
DX’pedition QSL costs are very competitive as always and we welcome talking to DX teams about mailing your QSL cards in the future.

The past 12 months though have been challenging as we continue to battle through the minefield of Worldwide Customs, and find our way through letter mailing solutions that are becoming less reliable around the world and more expensive, prices never go down!

While most people use OQRS (Thank you) we still get a number of incoming direct letters. The problem being is that most of the incoming letters do not include the correct QSL costs, because most fail to read either my QSL policy or the DXpedition QSL policy. This increases our costs further and also costs us time as we have to email to let people know that they failed to QSL correctly. My advice is use OQRS ONLY!

Enjoy your DX! We as a team promise to provide you with a QSL service that works for both the DX’er and the DXpedition Team.