If you still enjoy exchanging paper QSL cards
with DX stations, you should know that getting those
cards from here to there may
be a problem for the foreseeable future. The US Postal Service says it has temporarily
stopped accepting international mail for nearly 100 countries around the world due
to impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 10, mail service to 21 countries
had been suspended due to "foreign postal operator service
suspension" and another 75 countries were on the "do not mail"
list due to "unavailability of transportation." The regularly updated
list of specific countries, along with procedures for requesting a refund or
remailing in the future is at <http://tinyurl.com/sxvuqwb>.
In a related story, the ARRL says it was
experiencing 1-3 week delays in shipping member orders as of mid-May, due to
restrictions on how many people at a time could be present in their warehouse
and excessive demands on shipping carriers.
Here at CQ, we have experienced very
slow and sporadic mail delivery. On the bright side, our offices, which have
been closed since mid-March under state stay-at-home orders, were scheduled to
reopen on June 15.
