QSL Card Gallery

WARNING

1. Noa-1

Design Notes

This one is based on 生盐诺亚 from Blue Archive, one of my favorite characters.

• The front uses a screenshot from Noa’s memorial lobby. She is writing by hand on the floor-to-ceiling window a line from Le Spleen de Paris, specifically “The Stranger,” by the nineteenth-century French modernist poet Charles Pierre Baudelaire.

Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis?
Enigmatic man, tell me, whom do you love best?

After that line, I added the ITU zone, CQ zone, and Maidenhead grid. I tried to use a handwriting-style font and stretch it with perspective so the text would look like it had really been written on the glass.

• On the back, besides the standard QSO information fields, I added a QR code linking to my blog. The background image is a screenshot from an official BA Noa video.
• Warning: I accidentally wrote UCT instead of UTC in the time-zone field. I did not notice it until the next card was already printed. If I ever print a second batch, I will fix it.

Print Batch

• Batch 1: 200 cards on 300g coated business-card stock, with rounded corners, printed by 久美印业 on Taobao.
  • The cards are not stiff enough, and the back side is hard to write on.
  • Still plenty left.

2. DFH

Design Notes

The whole design draws from the space-history lyric adaptation song 《东方红的心脏》 by the BiliBili creator 炙弹冰, itself based on シリウスの心臓(天狼星的心脏) by ヰ世界情緒.

• The girl on the right side of the front is the illustration used for 《东方红的心脏》, a personified version of the Dong Fang Hong satellite.
• On the left side of the front are two overlapping satellites. The solid one on the left is a screenshot of a 3D model of Dong Fang Hong 1. The colorful one on the right was generated from that image using the One Last Image Louvre Generator, producing a gradient look reminiscent of the One Last Kiss cover.
• The red and blue elliptical rings around the satellite are written in Morse code. The red one says “Long live the People’s Republic of China,” and the blue one says “Long live the great unity of the people of the world,” following the wording in the 1955 Standard Telegraph Codebook.
• The date on the solid satellite marks the launch of Dong Fang Hong 1 on April 24, 1970, and the day it stopped broadcasting “The East Is Red” on May 14. That was the satellite’s brief life, but also the beginning of China’s rise in space.
• The date on the colored satellite refers to the British bombardment of Macau on June 21, 1840, which opened the First Opium War, and extends to the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, when the Chinese people finally stood up. It carries not only the humiliation of China’s modern history, but also the broader anti-imperialist struggles of many Third World countries seeking independence.
• The satellite and the girl are separated by two sine curves symbolizing radio waves.
• Compared with Noa-1, this design adds an NFC mark on the back. I plan to add NFC tags to future cards so they can store card data, QSO data, or even trigger music and video playback automatically.
• The line below the email on the back, “How is one to live through a life wrapped in haze? Cast off hesitation, for the morning sun is both you and me,” is a lyric from 《东方红的心脏》 that I love very much.
• In the lower-right corner on the back, I added a short numbered score of The East Is Red to echo the Dong Fang Hong 1 theme of the card.

I also designed a PCB version of this card. It includes an NFC chip and antenna coil, and I placed a red LED at the chest of the figure on the front. When a phone scans it at close range, the LED lights up, which fits the “Heart of Dong Fang Hong” theme perfectly.
Because the cost is high, I plan to give the PCB version only to the first station I work in each call area, or to the first station contacted through a given operating mode.

The inscription on the Monument to the People’s Heroes reads:

Eternal glory to the people’s heroes who laid down their lives in the People’s Liberation War and the people’s revolution over the past three years!
Eternal glory to the people’s heroes who laid down their lives in the People’s Liberation War and the people’s revolution over the past thirty years!
Going back further to 1840, eternal glory to the people’s heroes who laid down their lives in every struggle against internal and external enemies, for national independence and for the freedom and happiness of the people!

Even today, the Dong Fang Hong satellite is still in orbit, quietly witnessing seas turn into mulberry fields.

Print Batch

Paper version:

• Batch 1: 150 cards on 350g pearlescent paper, rounded corners, printed via 未来既是未来 on Xianyu
  • Plenty left

PCB version:

• Batch 1: 50 cards with colored silkscreen from JLCPCB, NT3H2111W0FHKH XQF, rounded corners
  • Plenty left