[Dx-qsl] JA buro's (somewhat clumsy) policies

Wed Sep 29 19:16:40 EDT 2004

> Are you sure about Japan's QSL buro being free? It seems to me that they 
> require a special JARL stamp (sticker) on each card. These must be purchased.

Only one QSO bureau in Japan is working, and it is JARL's. The special
stamp requirement has been removed a very long time ago. The JARL
membership is required to use the bureau for the member's
primarily-registered callsign. If a QSL card comes from outside JA to
the bureau for a subscribed callsign, it will be forwarded to the
recipient without additional fee. 
The bureau requests to pay JPY3600/yr for the service subscription of
each additional callsign , at least for sending to non-JA bureaus via
the JARL bureau with the callsign. 
For example, my membership of JARL as JJ1BDX includes the subscription
of the bureau service for the callsign JJ1BDX, but it does not include
the service for any other callsign, including K1BDX (I haven't
subscribed the service for K1BDX for the time which this message is
being written). Under this situation, if you try to send a card of
K1BDX within JA to outside JA via JARL bureau, the card will be silently
discarded.
If a card for K1BDX is send as "K1BDX via JJ1BDX", the bureau may or may
not accept and forward the card (I've heard a lot that the bureau
accepts it, but JARL still does not confirm it by a written document).
Recently this policy has been getting very much confused since the
bureau now considers JJ1BDX is *NOT* the same callsign as FO/JJ1BDX or
ZL/JJ1BDX, and demands JPY3600/yr for each callsign with foreign
(=non-Japanese) designator (i.e., JJ1BDX/JD1 is OK since Ogasawara or
Minami-Torishima is within Japanese territories.) Many hams who operate
overseas are against this strict policy of callsign-string matching.
Disclaimer: this is not an official statement of JARL or the bureau.
Caveat emptor. YMMV.
73 de Kenji Rikitake, JJ1BDX(/3) es K1BDX