CQ Zone 16 covers the easternmost part of Europe. It’s been the location of a lot of pain and suffering lately, but plenty of Amateur Radio activity continues to reach out to the world despite this. The Activity Group of Belarus (AGB) offers the Zone 16 Award to track your progress of making contacts with stations in the area.
There are three classes of the award. The initial award (Level III) requires just 8 contacts with stations in 3 different DXCC entities for applicants outside of Europe. Applicants within Europe have a higher requirement for contacts and entities. Refer to the AGB webpage for more details. Here are the requirements for applicants outside of Europe:
| Class | QSOs | DXCC Countries | Russian Call Areas |
| III | 8 | 3 | N/A |
| II | 15 | 4 | 2 |
| I | 20 | 4 | 3 |
There are scores of additional awards waiting to be obtained for different mode or single band efforts. The Zone 16 Award is issued for contacts made using the FT8, FT4, JT65, JT9, T10 and JS8 digital modes. They also single out band efforts on any band between 160M and 2M.
Like all AGB awards, the Zone 16 Award is completely free. AGB can deliver it in either JPG or PDF format.
The digital certificate features a map showing the countries that make up CQ Zone 16 and the Amateur Radio prefixes that are commonly used within them.
Like several other clubs that offer a large number of awards, AGB relies on the UltimateAAC application. Just point the app to your WSJT-X ADIF file to load it up and the program will let you know which awards, such as AGB Zone 16, you qualify for. Applying for the award at that point is a simple click away.