W8DFL QSL Cards - 5/30/2011

Today we have a wild and wooly set of cards if ever there was one! I'm not going to put all of them in even though there's more interesting stuff today than most of the past weeks. :-)One of the things I love about the cards is that they are a snapshot in time. Of where and when they were sent out. We have at least three sent from countries or protectorates that don't exist any more:This is from Northern Rhodesia. Four years after the card was sent it changed from being that to being Zambia. Another cool thing about the card (that doesn't show up on screen) is that the card is shiny silver!The return address is odd:

J.P. NortjePo  Box 34Norther RhodesiaAfrica

Really? Was he really number 34 in line to get a post office box? I'll have to investigate this one more.The next one in line is from Tanganyika:Another one from a country that is no more: Tanganyika. The card was sent in 1960. In 1961 it became independent. Then in 1962 it became the Republic of Tanganyika. In 1964 it became the country that would be known as Tanzania.This is another card that was printed up by the tourism board. It shows everything they have on offer: Kilimanjaro and the plains where you can go on safari and bring home an elephant.It was a different era back then.My uncle did all that. When we would visit his house in Rocky River we walked into the great room and looked at the neatly mounted heads of various animals from the African plains. I remember snuggling into the black bearskin rug that was in front of the fireplace. Everywhere you turned there was some critter mounted and displayed for all to see.But that's what you did back then.I wish I had some of his old guns now. Not to shoot critters, but to touch the history of it. I'll have to write another blog post on the development of the cartridges that were used to hunt game like that. It's a long and fascinating bit of engineering.Moving to a more modern change:

Yugoslavia split up in my lifetime. Most of you reading this probably was born before 1991 when it started to splinter.

Now Čepin is in Croatia instead.

The last one I'm pulling out isn't special for most people, but it'll be special for my mom I think.

Why?

Timişoara is where she went to college. Strike that... I'll call it what she calls it.

Temesvár is where she went to college.

This all went down after World War I and the Treaty of Trianon where Hungary lost almost three-quarters of its territory. Among the area lost was Transylvania -- Erdély -- where she grew up.

One corrupt ruler after another, culminating in Nicolae Ceaușescu.

There's another blog post for another time.

Maybe I should interview my mom and post that. :-)

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Call	Alt		Country	City	Post code	Date	Band	Mode	Comments
HT1HF			Nicaragua	Managua		Jan 18, 1970	20	SSB	C/O Pan Am
VP9EP			Bermuda	Warwick		Nov 11, 1959	10	Fone
VP9WB			Bermuda			Feb 21, 1959	10	Fone
VQ2JN			Northern Rhodesia			Feb 18, 1960	10	Fone	Zambia
VQ3PBD			Tanganyika	Dar es Salaam		Mar 17, 1960	10	Fone	Tanzania
XE1CCB			Mexico	Narvarte		May 12, 1962	10	Fone
XE1DW			Mexico	Puebla Pue		Nov 19, 1961	10	Fone
XE1LLS			Mexico			Mar 7, 1970	10	SSB
XE1WF			Mexico	Cuernavaca		Jan 12, 1960	10	Fone
YB0ACL			Indonesia	Jakarta		May 16, 1980	15	SSB
YN1AJH			Nicaragua			Apr 9, 1970	15	Fone
YN1GLB			Nicaragua	Managua		Oct 30, 1967	20	SSB
YN4CB-1			Nicaragua	Managua		Sep 11, 1959	10	Fone
YN4CB-2			Nicaragua	Managua		Sep 11, 1959	10	Fone	Brother Fabian
YN4FSC			Nicaragua	Bluefields		Oct 28, 1959	10	Fone	Brother Thomas
YO2BM			Romania	Timişoara		May 3, 1972	20	SSB	Where my mom went to college
YO3VI			Romania	Bucharest		Oct 21, 1959	10	Fone
YS1IM			El Salvador	San Salvador		Oct 27, 1959	10	AM	Doctor
YS1MS			El Salvador	San Salvador		Apr 10, 1960	10	Fone
YU2CAW			Yugoslavia	Čepin		Mar 20, 1972	15	SSB	Now Croatia