[Dx-qsl] Peter One

Thu Jun 1 21:27:53 EDT 2006

At 04:41 PM 06/01/2006, rayfri wrote:
>This "expectation" of "payment" of some sort seems to be all part of 
>today's societal philosophy of "what's in it for ME?"....
>>If I were to decide to go someplace and conduct a DXpedition, I 
>wouldnt ask anyone for "contributions" and wouldnt expect to get 
>"paid" in some manner for a QSL card in return. After all, it's a 
>HOBBY not a profession.

Costs have risen a lot since back then. For example, how many 
DXpeditions to remote QTHs in the 60s and 70s had a full-time 
helicopter onboard their exclusive-use ship for 2 or 3 weeks? Things 
Cost Money today, and a lot of things that were taken for granted 
back then are expensive now. I'm curious -- did operations to Peter1, 
Bouvet, etc back "in the day" carry yagis, 2 kW+ amps and 
state-of-the-art stations for 8 or 10 operating positions and make 
80,000 QSOs or more back then? How many cards did the pioneering 
DXpeditions send out, and how much was postage back then?
Peter 1 supposedly cost well north of *half* *a* *million* *dollars*. 
They did it for us, yes, but should they be expected to fund that all 
on their own? If Peter 1 had been a low-cost "seat-of-the-pants" 
DXpedition instead of the Major Operation it became, how many of us, 
"The Deserving," would have cleaned them out on 8 or 9 bands and 
three modes? If you want first-class operations with top-notch 
operators, it will continue to cost some serious coin in the future. 
If we don't support these operations through donations, memorabilia, 
etc, we won't have many more opportunities like that to put 
ultra-rare top-ten desolate places in our logs on 20+ band-modes.
While I'm indeed thankful that I got my card already, I couldn't care 
less if it was the last one they got around to sending -- even with 
my donation cheque and now my purchase of their DVD.
Cheers,
Peter,
W2IRT 