So Many QRZs! But Not All the Same!

A few evenings back, while performing some sort of mundane domestic chore, I was tuned in to a fellow ham, Glenn WB2FOB, talking to a few of his pals through the local 147.27 repeater in nearby Troy. He was in the slo-mo mobile mode, taking a walking tour of his neighborhood, expounding on the virtues of a brisk nightly jaunt for the betterment of his health. During the course of the QSO, Glenn made reference to his personal website, advising "Just Google WB2FOB's home page". So I stopped what I was doing and did just that. While Glenn's website was not readily apparent within the first page of those Google listings, I found myself distracted by another listing which displayed an address as http://wb2fob.qrz.ru/ On the click, I was ferried to http://home.qrz.ru/ and, on an otherwise virtually blank page, except for a few Russian language ads, a minimum of (WB2FOB Cooper, Glenn m), (Albany) and (USA) was displayed.

I then typed in http://qrz.ru/ which produced a home page looking not too dissimilar from our own stateside QRZ callbook, complete with amateur radio related advertisements and other visual detritus. Detritus is a five dollar word, used only by science fiction writers and crossword puzzle authors.

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While I did not know if the Russian callbook was in any way officially associated with the stateside QRZ, I thought I would follow the global QRZ thread a little further. So I typed in another address - http://qrz.co.uk/ .

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This produced a dull and uninspiring white and green scene with only a query box with the query: "What are you looking for?" So I plugged in WB2FOB and the distant unseen database retrieved one or two pages of listings related to Glenn's Internet documented amateur radio activities. So, this too was a callbook of sorts. But with N2FNH, there were no ham listings offered. In place, unrelated details having to do with shopping and travel appeared. I did not make the grade with this otherwise ambiguous callbook.

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Then it was on to France and http://qrz.fr/. Not conversant in the language, I could only surmise that this was a personal blog, displaying images of an ICOM R20 wideband receiver and some associated text material for French consumption.
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Staying within the bounds of the European cloud, a quick jump to Greece and http://qrz.gr/. Here, another one of those with an equally barren display, a home slate for SV1UT.

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And for Spain? Well, some ads with an advisory that "This domain may be for sale".

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Finally, I typed in http://qrz.jp/. Like the British QRZ, vague at best, My Maxthon and Firefox browsers cannot interpret Japanese and neither can I. A lot of little boxes where words would be, plus a few ads, one with sketches of some sort of electronic-looking black box, actually scribbled in white. Could be a cable box tuner. Could be a wireless router. Who could tell?

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There may be other callbooks using QRZ out there, but based on what I have found thus far, it may not be worth any additional discretionary time to locate more. Fortunately, none of these resulted in porn that, like their movie stars, may just carry a social disease.