When I got my amateur radio license and became active on shortwave, I soon made QSOs also with stations from rare DXCC-entities. Fortunately most of these stations used the QSL-bureaus at that time, but it often took years until their QSL card came back this way. In summary I can confirm that QSLing worked very well and reliably “via bureau”.
When the American Relay League (ARRL) started the Logbook of the World (LoTW) in 2003, it was possible to get QSLs much faster. Since the beginning the ARRL has made the LoTW available to all radio amateurs worldwide free of charge. These “virtual QSLs” can also be used for well-known amateur radio awards like DXCC, WAC, WAS, WAZ or IOTA. Fees have be paid for these awards as before. The fact that an increasing number of rare DX stations now charge for uploading QSLs to the free LoTW is unfortunately a different matter.
Nevertheless there are positive effects: A few days ago I had a QSO with T88HZ from the island of Palau. I uploaded my QSO-data to the LoTW in the evening, and the QSL was already there the next morning. T8, which is not often heard on the bands, is not the only similar case. When I look through my log, I find many other stations from which the LoTW-QSL came in less than 24 hours, also from rare countries. Some more examples for “1 day delivery”:
- 3C3CA (Equatorial Guinea)
- 3D2AG (Fiji Islands)
- 5T5PA (Mauritania)
- 9J2BS (Zambia)
- 9N7AA (Nepal)
- JG8NQJ/JD1 (Minami Torishima)
- NH2T (Guam)
- OY1DZ (Faroe Islands)
- P29NO (Papua / New Guinea)
- PJ6/G3TXF (Saba)
- T6AA (Afghanistan)
- TO1E (St. Martin)
- TO4K (St. Barthelemy)
- TX6G (Austral Islands)
- VP2EIH (Anguilla)
- XT2MAX (Burkina Faso)
Many thanks to the operators! I’m very pleased, that many stations even from rare DXCC-entities send their QSL so quickly and still for free (as was mostly usual in the past)!