This week, the wayback machine only goes back to last week's and the week before to revisit Surfin' and reveal additional Web sites where you will find vintage QSL cards and useful tools.

PY1NB's dxwatch.com offers a collection of useful online tools that are geared to DXers and contesters.

More Collecting Memories

In response to last week's column about online QSL card collections, Jerry Berg wrote, "Nice job on your Sep 29 `Surfin': Collecting Memories' column, but you never mentioned the Committee to Preserve Radio Verifications, which I chair, and which has over 35,000 QSLs under one roof (mostly for SW and MW broadcast stations). Check out On the Shortwaves.com, click on `The Committee to Preserve Radio Verifications' link, then scroll down and click on the `The CPRV QSL Gallery' link.

Also, for what it's worth, my WA1LOU QSL cards are now online.

More Tooling Around the Internet

In response to the September 22 column about online tools, Felipe Ceglia, PY1NB, informed me about his online DX tools at his Web site, dxwatch.com, which Felipe calls "a Web cluster on steroids," allowing users to create lots of filter combinations to meet their needs. There is an "alert filters" feature that notifies users when a given spot is sent to the packet network that matches the criteria they have set up. There is a dynamic DX calendar that shows current, future and past DX operations. There is also a contest claimed-scores database that is quite useful for contesters.

Convert is a free Windows application from Josh Madison that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and more, and includes the ability to create custom conversions (thank you, Scott Medlin, KF4GNL, and Danny Richardson, K6MHE, for the suggestion).

Quad-Lock Unit Converter is another free Windows application that converts most of the units commonly encountered while solving engineering problems (thank you, Carl Zelich, AA4MI, for the suggestion).

Carl also suggested Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP, a collection of downloadable tools that includes Power Calculator; this graphs and evaluates functions, and performs many different types of conversions.

Being a Mac guy, I had Windows converter envy, so I started searching the Internet for comparable Mac OS X applications. My search led me to The Versatile Unit Converter, which is a free Mac OS X dashboard widget from Christophe Berthod, and qwikCONVERT from Ben Robinson, which is another free dashboard widget.

Until next time, keep on surfin'.

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, writes Surfin' on a weekly basis using two fingers on a keyboard that begs for more. To discuss keyboards, computers and radios, send e-mail or add comments to his blog.

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