My QSL card from 1976

My First QSL card from 1976
Original RAW art

They guy on the left with the microphone is me. The girl is Marcie – my girlfriend at the time.
On the right is Randy Wright, and his girlfriend. Randy designed/drew this (he was an art student at the same univ I was going to)
This was a rather controversial QSL card at the time.
Most hams, particularly in 1976, were very conservative.
This “hippie” card got a lot of comments – I must have sent out 400-500 of them.

My next QSL Card was when I moved to Australia and got the call VK8RP.
I let my XYL (who later became VK8KYL) design it – we were staying in someones apartment while they were back in the states
(it was about 2-3 months before we had a place to stay when we first got there).

As you can see from her design – I think she felt like I had taken her hostage in the outback.

1983-1984

I got her to design a new one fairly quickly, but I bet I sent out 500 of these
(in those days I was making about 1,000 contacts a year – so I sent a lot of cards)
This was a bit more popular -- I prob sent 1,500 of these out

1984-1985

Later, I got ‘in to’ OSCAR – “Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio”
We were downtown at the newsstand (what the called the bookstore)
and saw a postcard that I thought would be perfect for a QSL card, so I bought one and called up the company and asked if they knew what a QSL card was.

They did, and I had them print up 2,000 of the postcards with my Callsign on the front

1985-1989

Back to Rockwal, TX – I had to give up my Australian call sign and I got WK8U.
In rockwall, my interest was ‘ATV – Amateur Television”
I made this one up. This was the first computer generated/designed one.
I only had a black and white laser printer

1989-1995

When we moved to Palm Bay I got my present callsgin W4RP, I still did ATV and started printing color ones

1995 - 2005

In 2006, my very talented son designed two new ones for me

That will be it for 2006 - ?