Japan has one of the largest populations of Amateur Radio operators in the world and FT8 is now one of the most popular operating modes. Combining these two facts, the FT8 Digital Mode Club (FT8DMC) offers the Japanese Stations Award (JSA) for working as many Ham Radio stations in the Land of the Rising Sun as possible.
The entry level award requires a minimum of 100 unique Japanese stations. You can work your way up by 100 station increments to 1,000. From there it’s 1,000 station increments up to the current maximum of 10,000 stations. That comes out to 19 different certificates.
Keeping track of the such a large number of contacts would have been tough in years past. But with digital log entries from WSJT-X and the application used to apply for the award it’s now a trivial task. The software does all the hard work for you.
Each of the certificates sport a colorful photo of Japan or some aspect of Japanese culture. A small map of Japan superimposed over a Japanese flag is present on all of the awards.
To apply for the Japanese Stations Award, and all other FT8DMC awards, you must install the UltimateAAC application on a Windows machine. That application scans your WSJT-X ADIF log file and will inform you when you’ve qualified for the award at various levels. FT8DMC issues the award in digital form only (JPG or PDF) with no printing or shipping costs. In fact, the award is completely free, like all of their other awards.