December 19, 2012

DXCC Completed!

We are celebrating in the shack today on completing the requirements to earn the ARRL DX Century Club (DXCC) award. The DXCC award is a worthy challenge. To earn the ARRL DXCC award a ham must confirm 100 contacts each from a qualifying different DX entity. These entitities are defined in the DXCC list. To qualify, an entity must have some definable political or geographical distinctiveness.


Proof of a confirmed contact can be either a paper QSL card or a Logbook of the World (LoTW) QSL.  We are a big fan of the ARRL's LoTW so for an extra challenge we decided to we would confirm 100% of our qualifying DXCC contacts via the LoTW (and not use any paper QSL card confirmations).  This proved to be more of a challenge than we anticipated since we had to complete several contacts with many DX entities before locating a LoTW subscriber.

We also decided to make all of our contacts using transmitter power of 100W or less and with a simple wire antenna.  This meant we would not use amplifiers, towers, beam antennas for the DXCC contacts.  We were interested in demonstrating that the ARRL DXCC award is within the reach of hams with modest stations (like ours).

Today we filed our application when the 100th qualifying contact was confirmed in the LoTW.  Our award is #57,420.  What a great feeling!

Good DX and 73, NJ2X


PS: In 2012, the DXCC Desk processed 14,301 applications, comprising 1,491,661 QSOs.



© Michael W. Maher and NJ2X.COM, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Michael W. Maher and NJ2X.COM with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.