H4ØAA Bulletin 11

H4ØAA/H44DX QSLing update
24 August, 1998

The H4ØAA/H44DX QSLing task has been divided among three teams, each
concentrating on a particular geographic region.  Following is the status
of QSLing operations for each group:

U.S.A. & CANADA:
All AA-AL, KØ-K5 and W QSLs have now been mailed.  The balance of K6-K9,
KAØ-KZ9, all N and all Canadian QSLs will be released during the next two
weeks.

JAPAN:
All JA QSLs were released at the JAIA Hamfair in Tokyo this weekend.  
Cards that were not delivered in person at the Hamfair will be mailed
early this week.

REST OF THE WORLD:
Cards for Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain have all been released.  Most
other European countries are currently in process, and should be mailed
very soon.  Cards for Poland, Russia and all other countries not already
mentioned will be released within the next two weeks.

GENERAL INFORMATION:
All the first-pass replies are expected to be in the mail by 07 September.  
The balance of the requests--those with QSOs not initially found in the
database--will be researched further and released during the remainder of
September.  This second-pass research will include a review of the
original paper logs or computer files and, for those pileups that were
recorded, the video tape archive.

DXers are asked not to send second requests before the completion of this
second-pass research.  Bureau cards will be processed after the direct
replies.

A high number of QSL requests were received with one U.S. dollar for
return postage.  Unfortunately, the H4ØAA folded card has pushed the Air
Mail postage from Finland beyond this amount, so a large batch of
envelopes were Air Mailed from Estonia (ES-land), where more reasonable
postage rates are available.

In the process of answering the H4ØAA QSL requests, several periods of
"pirate" activity were discovered.  The worst cases were on 7 MHz and 28
MHz, affecting mostly JAs.

As a reminder, the ARRL has announced that H4ØAA QSLs will not be accepted
for DXCC credit prior to 01 October.  Cards submitted before this date
will be returned.

The H4ØAA DXpedition team would like to thank OH2BN, OH9MM, OH2KMG, OH2TA,
OH1RY, OH2BE, BY/OH2YY, BY/OH2BH and BA1DU, who already have put hundreds
of hours of effort into the QSLing project.  Finally, the continued
patience of the DX community is kindly requested while QSLing for this
67,000+ QSO-DXpedition is completed.