eQSL! Who Knew?

.
It's another typically bland early Sunday afternoon here in the little village down by the Hudson and there's a QSO currently in progress on the local 87/27 machine. Local lad Lee K2HAT has just advised the gregariously glib Glenn WB2FOB that the latter has eighty electronic QSL "cards" waiting for him at http://www.eqsl.cc/
.
Glenn expresses his total amazement as he confesses to having no prior knowledge of the website and then begins to wonder how many QSOs he has had over the years that had resulted in no QSL, some of which may have been inboxed at this Internet based paperless repository, just waiting to be unearthed, or unfiled, as the case may be.
.
I am eavesdropping on this conversation airing over my vintage Uniden Bearcat 800XLT as I am wading waist deep through my daily steaming e-pile of e-spam. Since I am presently online, I tab over to eQSL, register and login. Remarkably, I learn there are two electronic QSL jpegs addressed to N2FNH.
.
One such confirm came from Mark KA4MAY of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. The date of the QSO was June 24, 1989! Twenty years ago! I haven't kept written logs in years but it's a fair bet the exchange took place since at the time, thanks to a healthy sunspot maximum, I was working a ton of stations on ten meter single sideband, almost all of it in the mobile with the then new Uniden President HR-2510. This was the controversial mobile rig, that with a simple modification, went from being just a 28-29 MHz multi-mode, to a more versatile 26-30 MHz multi-mode. I had that radio. I loved that radio. AND! I still have that radio! And yes, it was duly modded. Would you expect otherwise?
.
The second eQSL was a little mystifying: an alleged 20 meter QSO with Richard N5ZC of Amarillo, Texas, dated January 17th, 1998. This claim is in jeopardy since I was a Technician at the time and what's more, I had no HF gear usable on twenty. There is an outside chance that the conversation did take place though. From 1996 through 2004, I spent the majority of my discretionary ham time doing packet radio, and all that discretionary time probing various international packet networks linked together by way the Internet. Many of these gateways offered access to local radio ports, most often VHF, UHF or SHF outlets but on occasion, there were also HF ports. And quite often, I did HF by proxy through these shortwave links. As an example, I was able to connect to a PBBS in Shanghai via a 15 meter HF link from a telnet server near Kyoto.
.
During the time frame specified on the eQSL, I was heavily mining a remarkably rich regional packet environment in the Dallas area and had several keyboard-to-keyboard chats. However, the N5ZC eQSL offers no reference to a packet QSO.
.
I feel the same way about eQSLs as I do about homebrew prepared reception cards. Both are OK, but kinda bland. Like the weather here in the little village by the historic river. But nothing beats bounding over to the mailbox and finding a crisp, or even even crunched, custom-made QSL CARD!
.