In days of yore, speaking in amateur radio terms, on-air contacts were not so readily made as they are nowadays and the information exchanged was perhaps not so detailed - thus a contact with another station frequently resulted in subsequent correspondence albeit just to obtain confirmation of the event.
Someone, unknown but to whom we surely owe a debt of gratitude, had the idea of extending a normal printed visiting card type of courtesy and adding the details of his equipment and signing it with the date and time of the contact - and later adding more technical information such as prevailing weather and even further comments.
From these lowly beginnings we have progressed via professionally designed and printed cards bearing the same details in elaborate colour cards, using an exceptional variety of fonts, adding pictures of the operator, his shack and, when inevitably money raised its ugly head, containing advertising material or tourism information, right through to the modern home-made computer-derived magnificently colour printed on high quality paper or card and in some cases even tailored for the particular contact as a "one-off" genuine gesture to the distant operator.
Much is laid down as to the post-QSO methods of exchange of these cards and it has become a thriving "industry" within the Amateur Radio fraternity. We should not discount the listener report cards which also provide much useful information within the hobby.
All such cards, spread as they are throughout the world, duplicated many times over particularly in the case of special events, rare locations, unique happenings, anniversaries and of course from extremely highly active amateurs are in great use in the Contests and Awards scenes of hundreds of Clubs, Societies (both local and National and International) and help form a fragmented but complete history of Amateur Radio.
Latterly, unfortunately, it has been noticed that some are acquiring a "commercial value" and unfortunately are being bartered for cash at Rallies and other outlets whereas the purists treasure them for what they are and historians gather them for display in Museums rather than, particularly in the sad cases of amateurs going "Silent Key" seeing them destroyed.
The object of this section of the RSARS website is to show some samples of current home made cards from Members, coupled with, where possible, comment on the method of production all with a view to adding a tiny documented area to the historical data so essential to be preserved.

It may be expedient to use the "official" Corps badge ("Jimmy") - you can right click the graphic which is placed below for your convenience and chose "Save Picture as......." option and navigate to the file of your choice on your hard drive.

• If you wish to have your card(s) displayed on your own page in this collection:-

  1. First send a blank or blanks to me

  2. Add a text description of the "how" and "what with" etc...

  E-MAIL G3NVK

• GØSCP - T. Hughes
• GØSWY - M.I.Humphrey
• G3DVL - F.Harrop
• G3EFY - T.W.A.Smith
• G3PNF - D.Bowden:-
  
  • Year 2002 activity
    
  • Year 2003 activity
  • The QTHR card
  • Year 2004 activity
  • Year 2005 activity - Part 1
  • Year 2005 activity - Part 2
  • And the cards for Year 2005 activity - Part 2
  • Europe 2006 - and a curtain call.
  • The Emerald Isle - May 2008.
  • A trip to France - June 2008
• G3UAA - D.A.Ramsey
• G3VIR - R.Brade
• G4KJV - J.Densem
• G4SVC - T.S.Axtell
• G6NHY - K.Marriott
• GI4JTF - Dr. E. H. Squance
• MØBTY - P.Fincham
• GM3KHH - W.G.Cecil
• G3SZS - R.Bee
• ROYAL ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION - Radio Branch