The American Radio Relay League‘s DX Century Club Award (DXCC) remains one of the most prestigious certificates in Amateur Radio. Many Hams who do not consider themselves award chasers nevertheless chase that particular piece of paper. Obtaining DXCC can be a bit pricy though. Are there more economical choices? The FT8 Digital Mode Club (FT8DMC) […]
When a station is calling “CQ DX” on the air, what do they mean? The obvious and easy answer is that they are looking for stations far away (at a “distance”) and outside of their country. So, if I hear K5PI in Texas calling CQ, which I am literally doing right now as I type […]
Not too long ago I wrote about the International Amateur Radio Union‘s IARU Region 3 Award. The object of the award is to work as many nations as possible in IARU Region 3. This region roughly encompasses Asia and Oceania. Note the emphasis on nations and not “countries”, a loose term often attributed to DXCC […]
The last few weeks have been very good to me from a QSL standpoint. After holding off on QSLing earlier in the year due to COVID-19 related interruptions to international mail I dipped my toes back in the water and sent out a bunch of requests. Here are a few of the recent successes. The […]
One of my earliest awards was the All Japan Districts award, sponsored by the Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL). Only requiring 10 contacts, it was relatively easy to achieve. It didn’t hurt that it seemed there were even more Japanese stations on HF in the 1990’s when I earned it. Compared to some stateside awards […]
The International Amateur Radio Union‘s Worked All Continents award is a popular entry level award for working all 6 populated continents. Antarcticians need not apply. For those wishing to do the same thing solely using the FT8 digital mode the FT8 Digital Mode Club offers up their own WAC program. The WAC award is presented […]
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has upended the normality to which we had all grown accustomed. This applies to the Amateur Radio pastime of Award Hunting as well. Problems I’ve encountered a couple of issues related to COVID-19 that have hampered my award hunting efforts. Social Distancing A popular way to maintain the integrity of operating […]
The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) represents Amateur Radio at the international level. When World governments gather to discuss issues that might impact Hams the IARU is there to argue our case. IARU members are the national Amateur Radio organizations in each country. This makes the IARU something like the United Nations of Ham Radio. […]
I’m a big fan of FT8. It’s allowed me to work far more stations recently near the solar minimum with a very modest home station than would otherwise have been possible. I’ve worked all US states and received the ARRL’s WAS award on a couple of different bands using this mode. Sometimes getting that last […]
The FT8 Digital Mode Club (FT8DMC) sponsors an award for working a certain number of Amateur Radio stations in Mexico. You can obtain the Worked Mexican Stations Award (WMSA) in three classes, depending up the number of different stations worked. Award Class Contacts I 50 II 25 III 10 The WMSA award is presented in […]