Friday, November 7, 2014

The QSLs of Loring A. Daniels,
a brief introduction


Earlier this year, I said I was making my way through my last QSL cards. And I was. And it was a lot of fun. I featured swap-club stamps. I was in touch with the former owner of one of the 1960s QSLs. And I sent out a shot-in-the-dark QSL experiment. (Alas, there is still no reply from that last one.)

This was all supposed to be in the name of closure for the final few QSLs in my possession, neatly tying off that category of ephemera.

But it didn't quite work out that way.

I was trying to move on from QSLs. I really was. But, over the summer, I came across an entire collection of them at a local antique mall, all from the same individual. I was amazed to find that they dated all the way back to the late 1920s. (That "standard" QSL card was created around 1919.)

I didn't have enough funds to pick up the whole lot, but I snagged a few dozen cards, mostly from the 1920s and 1930s.

The earlier QSLs are addressed to Loring A. Daniels of Tuxedo Park, Delaware. Later, Daniels moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I am looking forward to discovering more about Daniels and his involvement with ham radio. And I'm looking forward to sharing with you these cards, which date back more than 80 years in some cases. They're truly fabulous; many of them are hand-drawn and nothing like the professionally printed cards from the 1950s through 1980s that I've shared in previous posts.

In the meantime, today's QSL is more of a postcard/QSL hybrid. It features Wacker Drive in Chicago, Illinois, and was mailed to Daniels from Chicago in November 1930 with a 1¢ stamp.

The front of the card features the call sign W9CNO. The rest of the contact information is written in black ink on the front, over the postcard image. It tells us that the contact occurred at 2:30 p.m. on November 1 and that the W9CNO operator was Don Senesac of Chicago.

Senesac adds an additional note to Daniels on the back...


If you can't read it, the note partially states: "First qso with delaware and sure would appreciate a card. O-M - notice in last QST, only 19 of u boys in Del..."

QST means "calling all stations" and likely refers to a well-known amateur-radio magazine that has been published since 1915.

And so that's a first look at one of the Daniels QSLs. Much more to come!

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