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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.


Wavescan 463, November 16, 2003

Vienna QSL Collection

It is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime experience to visit the massive QSL collection that is housed in the city of Vienna in Austria. This splendid work, to preserve and protect and catalog early radio history, is a remarkable endeavor on the part of Professor Wolf Harranth, ORF in Vienna, and many other cooperating personnel and organizations.

The Vienna Collection is known in English as "The International Foundation QSL Collection". However, this assemblage is broader than just QSLs alone, and it encompasses all forms of tangible radio history, including printed materials such as schedules and advertising, and sound archives containing historic recordings from stations large and small.

This massive QSL collection contains an estimated four million QSLs dating back to the very earliest years, and almost daily large cartons of QSL cards are received, mainly from Europe, but also from other countries overseas as well. Most of the QSL cards that are housed in the Vienna collection are from amateur radio stations, though this collection also contains unnumbered thousands of QSLs from broadcasting stations as well.

All QSL cards that have been entered into the computer listings are filed according to country and according to era and according to station. Thus it is that cards from any particular station in any country at any era can be located very quickly, in just a matter of seconds.

This entire collection has been housed for some years in a large and historic building just opposite the main headquarters of ORF-ROI in Vienna. However, the entire depository is currently being transferred to another location where the work will be recommenced in cataloging these vast archives.

Professor Harranth states that the earliest cards are dated in the year 1920 and that most from this era are handwritten, though a few are printed. The general condition of all of these cards is particularly good, though some are quite fragile due to deterioration from the effects of age and light.

Even though multi-thousands of these QSL cards are not yet entered into the computer listings, it is an interesting radio adventure to choose some exotic country or some early radio era. In doing so, you wiil find many old QSL cards you have never seen before, and many new items of interesting radio information will come to light.

The Vienna QSL collection is indeed a magnificent project in preserving important radio history. It is also gratifying to note that a similar work is being accomplished in North America and in the South Pacific as well. Jerry Berg in Boston is working with the CPRV collection, and Paul Ormandy and David Ricquish are working with Pacific Radio Heritage in New Zealand.