The Bureau

Years ago when I was in High School, I was a part of the CB radio craze. I had a base station and mobile in the car and dreamed of far away contacts. . I was in a  Art/printing class and I designed and printed My own CB QSL cards-- this of course was long before personnel computers so it was quite an endeavour.
  Jump forward many years to My first Ham Radio license and My VHF/UHF technician privledges. This was just as the codeless tech license became available in 1992. ( think it was '92?). I actually had QSL cards arriving from My contacts on 6m and 2m. Wow--so I sent away and had some printed and started direct mailing these.
  Eventually I recieved HF priveledges and suddenly the DX world opened up to Me. Several Hams suggested becoming a member of EQSL and ARRL's Logbook of the World. I've been an ARRL member for many years so LOTW was a no brainer! EQSL also turned out to be a real nice electronic QSL service-- both of these are being used by many HAMs world wide.These seemed to be the easiest and cheapest QSL and contact verification and I didn't anticipate needing any other service.
  I occasionly had QSL cards mailed to Me direct and would promptly send one back. Then I started contesting and after winning several certificates, I started  to somewhat activily chase  award programs from the ARRL. It wasn't long before I realized that as good as LOTW is in verifying contacts ,I was still missing many DX entities because they did not use LOTW. Fact is  outside of contesting, sometimes I didn't even try for a contact upon reading in QRZ this Ham only QSLed Direct or Buro( bureau).
  Well I finally decided to check into the Bureau QSL service offered from ARRL and the W0 bureau. Turns out both services are fairly simple to start. I was advised by another Ham to first email My respective "sorter" from the W0 Bureau to see if I have any QSLs waiting for Me. This would help to know how much supplies I would need to start.. They have a website- www.zeroburo.org and the information is very good. The zero bureau is split into sorters for all the letters after the numeral part of Your callsign. Mine of course is "U" so I emailed the "U" sorter and several days later had a reply indicating I have cards waiting for Me.I next chose the amount of money to send according to the expected cards per quarter. I filled out an order form and was a little generous and sent $10.00 anticipating 12-60 cards per quarter. They will send Me cards every quarter ( 3 months) if I have accumalated more than 6 QSL's. Otherwise they will be held until the next quarter. Thus is one of the many reasons cards sent thru the bureau can take years to find their way home! :))
It does appear the different call areas each have a slightly different protocol so read the instructions carefully.Your service of course will depend on your call area and can be found on the ARRL website which gives the address for the respective websites.
    So thats the "incoming" QSL bureau and I now needed to setup My "outgoing" QSL's. The ARRL has a nice Outgoing QSL Service for members and has a pricing structure similiar to the incoming bureau's. They also have a detailed explanation on how to start, what DXCC's they cannot send to and other information. I filled out about 30 QSL's- some actually "via" a QSL manager either in the USA or not, others direct to the DXCC callsign. I sorted them according to the instructions, included proof of ARRL membership and added a check to cover the number of cards and put it into an envelope and sent it to ARRL headquarters with the proper address.
  Sounds complicated. It really wasn't too bad. Now I can anticipate receiving cards from the "buro" and never again need to hesitate when I see "direct or buro only" next to someone's call sign!
 There is also a program to verify these QSL cards for direct credit to DXCC and LOTW. After I navigate that maze I'll post the results. Happy DXing!!
 73---Tim