QSL Cards

QSL Cards

A QSL card is the card QSL Shack composes for one of your callsigns and exchanges on your behalf when a contact is confirmed. You supply a picture and the wording. QSL Shack draws the card around them and fills in the details of the contact it confirms.

A QSL card belongs to a callsign rather than to you. Each callsign you hold has its own card, and the card that goes out is the one belonging to the callsign the contact was worked under, which is the callsign your logbook logs with.

The only way a QSL card reaches another operator's board is a confirmed contact. No button sends one. Both operators log the contact, the two entries match, and the cards are exchanged as part of the confirmation. To send a card to somebody you met off the air, use a Courtesy Card instead.

Every callsign already has a card. QSL Shack builds a default one, so a contact confirmed before you have ever opened the designer still exchanges a proper card.

Your cards are at Account, then My Cards.

How To Design Your QSL Card

1. Go to Account, then My Cards.
2. Under My QSL Cards, find the callsign and press Edit Card.
3. Add a picture under Upload Image. Press the folder icon to choose a file from your computer, or press Browse Images to take one from the QSL Shack image library.
4. Choose a QSO panel position. This is where the identity band and the contact boxes sit on the card, and there are six: bottom, top, left, right, and the two corner layouts, which draw the band and the boxes as a card within the card.
5. Choose an Image fit. The two corner layouts always run the picture edge to edge, so this choice does not apply to them.
6. Choose a Card color. It is the color of the identity band and of the border.
7. Under What the card says about you, edit each line and uncheck Display beside anything you would rather not print. Callsign and Class come from the license register: you may hide them, you may not change them. Name, city, state, country and grid square are yours to write.
8. Press Save Card Design.

The card beside the controls redraws as you work, so what you save is what you are looking at. Revert Changes appears as soon as something is pending and puts everything back. Leaving the page with an unsaved change asks you first.

How To Use The Image Library

1. Press Browse Images.
2. Pick a tab. A mixed selection opens first and is shuffled every time you open it, so browse a subject by choosing its tab.
3. Press Show more at the foot to load another 24 pictures.
4. Click a picture. The window closes and your card redraws over it straight away.
5. Press Save Card Design to keep it.

Nothing is saved until you press Save Card Design, so you can try as many pictures as you like. A library picture is copied onto your card when you save, so your card never changes because the library changed.

Can I Upload My Own QSL Card?

While it's possible to upload your own QSL card, we recommend against it. QSL Shack prints the QSO details in a "panel" we overlay on the QSL card in very specific positions depending on the layout selected. If your QSL card has an area to enter QSO details, our system would add a second one and print the data there. The best way to handle this is to simply upload the artwork for your QSL card, with NO panel to enter the QSO details, and then choose one of the supported layouts.

What Makes A Good Picture

Pictures should be JPG or PNG, landscape, about 11:7, at least 550 by 350 pixels and under 5MB. 1100 by 700 or larger looks best, and QSL Shack never enlarges a small picture to fit.

A picture that fails one of those rules is refused as soon as you choose it, with the reason. A picture that passes but is not quite 11:7 is accepted and trimmed to fit, and you are told which edges will be trimmed before you save.

How To Replace The Card On A Callsign

1. Open the card from My Cards and press Edit Card.
2. Change the picture, the colors or the wording.
3. Press Save Card Design.

What happens next depends on whether the current card has ever been exchanged. A card that has never gone anywhere is simply updated. A card that has been exchanged on a confirmed contact is kept exactly as it was: it moves to Previous Cards and your new design becomes the active card for that callsign.

Cards already exchanged never change. A QSL card is the evidence of a contact, so the card that went out stays on that contact's certificate and on the board that accepted it. Redesigning affects the next contact, not the last one.

Press Reactivate on anything in Previous Cards to make it the active card again.

How To Delete Or Hide A Card

Delete removes a card permanently and is offered only while that card has never been exchanged.

Once a card has been exchanged the button reads Hide instead. Hiding takes the card out of your Previous Cards list and changes nothing anybody else can see. Each card in that list tells you how many boards it is on.

What To Watch For

The card follows the callsign. A contact logged in the book for one callsign exchanges that callsign's card, whichever card you were looking at last. Your callsigns and their logbooks are covered on Your Callsigns and Creating And Managing Logbooks.

An expired license deactivates your QSL cards. The card screens say so, and you cannot change or send a QSL card until the license is renewed. Your Courtesy Card is not affected, because it makes no license claim.

Each version of a card reaches a board once. Work the same operator twice with the same card and there is one entry on their board. Redesign in between and the second contact offers them the new version as well.

A card is exchanged only when the contact is confirmed. How two logs are matched is covered on How QSOs Are Matched, and what lands on a board afterwards is on Your Board.