Category - Blog

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.

Italy Bureau Parcel Returned

29 March 2025

31st March  – QSL mailing today includes the Italian QSL Bureau parcel 2.7 kg being re posted to Italy. This time i removed the small value and declared Value zero as documents. I have not much hope that this will get through but all I can do is try.
Since this morning I have telephoned Royal Mail Business care, Royal Mail International, and HMRC Customs for advice, nobody has been able to tell me how to send documents with no value in a parcel. I really do think this is the end of Bureau cards. I would very much value the advice of a customs consultant on how to proceed from here.

March 29th – Italian QSL Bureau parcel returned again by Italian Customs!

The cost now for re sending Bureau parcels is becoming crazy! Surely enough is enough now.

QSOs by Band

25 March 2025

I always like to have a look at the multi statistics charts that we have on the Bespoke OQRS for specific DXpeditions. In this case below for VU4AX the QSOs by Band worked by Amateur stations in the United Kingdom by region.
Predominantly a Belgium / Netherlands team you can also see great support from the fellow ON / PA hams following the team! 

One of the statistics that we can produce, although I feel not appropriate to display here is the “Top 10 Dupe Stations” on VU4AX a Japanese station duped 20 times. This is one statistic NOT to be proud of, you should never dupe band mode slots for a DXpedition unless they ask you to.

REF Bureau Cards Posted

24 March 2025

Okay, so today i finally posted out the ZD7VJ QSL cards from Andy’s visit to St Helena in 2024. Thank you for your patience while the logs and QSL cards were sorted.

With today’s mailing, I have sent 1.2 kg of Bureau cards to REF the France QSL Bureau.

VU4AX Log delay

22 March 2025

March 23rd – Thank you to the VU4AX team for the  last log update. The log is now complete on OQRS.

I am am currently waiting for the last day of the VU4AX log, the re synced complete log and the ALL.TXT file for FT modes. The team are currently on their way home and are not yet able to get the information to me until they get home which is a long journey.

Of course i am aware that the log is not complete.  WAIT! Do not email me. This will be updated when the log is complete. I was able to get an email from the team waiting for their flight at New Delhi and they report that  they are safe.
No Busted / Missing calls will be done until i get the completed log.
Early Donors  from the donation page are processed through OQRS daily with QSL population and LoTW uploaded by OQRS.
Please only request QSL cards at this time if all  your QSO’s are showing. This will be uploaded to LoTW daily  by OQRS.