A number of different organizations offer awards for working Amateur Radio stations on all continents of the world. The American Radio Relay League’s WAC award requires just six different contacts. Thus, Continental Awards represent a low barrier to entry for modest home stations, particularly when using modes such as FT8.
Interestingly, the definitions concerning what counts as a continent are not always consistent with each other. Most “worked all continents” awards do not require a contact with Antarctica, despite the fact that geologists agree that Antarctica is in fact a continent. At least one award considers North America and South America as a single continent instead of two. So this set of awards could require 5, 6 or 7 land masses when determining what “all” really means.
Many of the continental awards offer endorsements or separate awards for separate bands or modes. The ARRL’s WAC has a Five-Band version for working them all on the five “main” HF bands (80, 40, 20, 15 and 10M). CRK’s S6S award has endorsement stickers for each of the five main HF bands.
IK3GER’s Work The World award ups the difficulty level by requiring not just an Antarctic contact, but also requiring contacts on multiple bands for the other continents. The award requires a grand total of 19 (class 2) or 25 (class 1).
Here’s a sampling of some of the continental awards available:
- Diploma 5 Continentes Modo Digital – ERC
- Five-Band Worked All Continents – ARRL
- Diplom S6S – CRK
- Work The World – IK3GER
- Worked All Continents – ARRL
- Worked All Continents – CDG
- Worked All Continents – FT4DMC
- Worked All Continents – FT8DMC