ARRLWeb: Century Club Awards Weblog

Includes DXCC, VUCC, WAS, WAC, A1-Operator, Code Proficiency, Extra Class Certificate Program and Logbook of the World (Award-related issues only)

New Country to be added to the DXCC List this Week?

Jun 25, 2006 14:06 ET
Wayne Mills, N7NG/1

According to DXCC Rules, any entity that is a United Nations Member State or has a unique ITU call sign prefix bloc is considered a Political Entity under DXCC Section II, Part 1. The following story excerpted from a story published on Thursday, June 22 on the UN News Centre page (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=18969&Cr=montenegro&Cr1) indicates that a new DXCC entity may be added to the List in the near future.

The story indicates that the United Nations General Assembly is expected to consider the membership application of The Republic of Montenegro on Wednesday, June 28th. If Montenego's UN membership status is finalized as a result of the June 28th meeting, The Republic of Montenegro will most likely be added to the DXCC List effective 0001Z the next day. The DXCC "Start Date," the earliest date that QSOs will count for the new entity (which is also the "Event Date, the date of the event that gave rise to the addition) will be 0001Z on the day following that on which Montenegro's UN membership is formalized.

If the United Nations formalizes Montenegro's status as a member state prior to action by the International Telecommunications Union giving the new state it's own prefixes, ARRL will accept any prefix deemed legal by the appropriate authorities in The Republic of Montenegro. Activity from the new country is expected to begin immediately. A major DXpedition is planned for July-August. Stay tuned!

"Montenegro gains Security Council endorsement for UN membership

Per Stig Møller, Foreign Minister of Denmark22 June 2006 -- The Security Council today endorsed the newly independent Republic of Montenegro's bid to join the United Nations, bringing the world body one step closer to admitting its 192nd Member. Following discussions yesterday on the country, which held a referendum on 21 May to become independent from Serbia, the Council adopted a formal presidential statement recommending that the General Assembly admit Montenegro. The Assembly is expected to act on the matter next Wednesday."

More On The New DXCC Rule

Jun 16, 2006 09:54 ET
Wayne Mills, N7NG/1

The DXCC rules adopted in 1998 contained a new Political Entity Criteria based on lists created by non-ARRL agencies. These criteria were tried for a period of six years, and worked very well with a few exceptions. Without going into boring detail, suffice to say that the ARRL Board determined a few years ago that the "IARU Rule" was not an acceptable criterion and removed it. Informally, it was agreed that a need might arise for a similar, but more acceptable criterion in the future, and the door was left open for a new rule. With no means of recognizing sufficiently separate entities, a need still existed for a third criterion. A draft rule was formulated and working with the DXAC, the ARRL staff proposed a replacement in early 2006. The DXAC, the Awards Committee and the PSC concurred, and the rule was adopted. So what does it all mean? To understand the meaning of the new rule, one must understand the creation of Separation Entities. The first separation from a Political Entity (or parent) must be at least 350 km from the parent. The second and subsequent entities must be at least 800 km from the parent and any other separations from that parent. As in the example of French Polynesia above, as a separation from France, any new entity related to France and French Polynesia would need to be at least 800 km from any part of French Polynesia. If French Polynesia were to become a Political Entity, however, the first separation would need to be separated by only 350 km. (French Polynesia already had an IARU society in 1998, so upon implementation of the new rules in 1998, French Polynesia became a Political Entity immediately.) Another example of how this process works was New Caledonia and the Chesterfield Islands in 2000. Upon the acceptance of New Caledonia's Amateur Radio society as an IARU society, New Caledonia became a DXCC Political Entity. This in turn immediately reduced the distance required for a first separation from New Caledonia from 800 km to 350 km. Since the Chesterfield Islands are situated just over 350 km from the mainland, the island group became immediately eligible for DXCC Entity status. (Needless to say, the existence of an IARU society within an entity no longer causes reclassification of an entity.) The political status of an entity, therefore, determines the separation distance requirements, and the new DXCC rule reclassifies a number of DXCC Entities. As a result of the current rule change, there are approximately 27 entities currently on the DXCC list that are reclassified as Political Entities. Associated with these entities may be additional entities that now qualify as new DXCC entities. We are aware of only one. Can you find more?

The New DXCC Rule and Some Background

Jun 16, 2006 09:28 ET
Wayne MIlls, N7NG/1

First, what is the new rule? The following text has been added after Section II, 1. Political Entities: b)

c) The Entity contains a permanent population, is administered by a local government, and is located at least 800 km from its parent. To satisfy the "permanent population" and "administered by a local government" criteria of this sub-section, an Entity must be listed on either (a) the U.S. Department of State's list of "Dependencies and Areas of Special Sovereignty" as having a local "Administrative Center," or (b) the United Nations list of "Non-Self-Governing Territories."

Is this rule change primarily intended to add new entities? No. Why was it added? In short, the rule was added to continue providing Political Entity status for areas that are sufficiently separate -- for DXCC purposes -- from their parent countries, following the removal of the "IARU" rule. Of course, in turn a few additional entities may result. The new rule replaces or modifies the "IARU" rule originally part of the "new" DXCC rules adopted in 1998.

In 1998, the ARRL Board adopted significant revisions to the DXCC Rules. Critical among these rule changes were modifications to the Political Entity Criteria. Over the past twenty-odd years, there had often been considerable "discussion" about what constituted sovereignty. How separate does an entity need to be for it to count as a separate political entity for DXCC purposes? This question is a real challenge for professional geographers and politicians. Is it no wonder that ARRL and the DXAC had difficulties making these determinations in the past?

Political status is important for DXCC, because it determines the status of other "separation" entities. French Polynesia was a good example. Although never documented as such except at the outset, French Polynesia was always considered a separation from France. As such, under the rules of the 80s and 90s, the Marquesas and the Austral Islands would have to have been 500 miles or more from Tahiti in order to qualify as separate DXCC entities. If French Polynesia had been a Political Entity in its own right, the separation distance would have been only 225 miles.

The DXCC rules adopted in 1998 specified that for the future, three criteria would be considered for Political Entity status: 1) The entity is a member state of the United Nations, 2) The entity has a distinct call sign block or 3) the entity is has an IARU society. All three of these rules were intended to recognize separation from a parent sufficient for DXCC purposes.

The nice part about the 1998 Political Entity Criteria is that it uses lists that are determined by other organizations. Ideally, these organizations would have no interest in tailoring their lists to the needs and whims of DXers and DXpeditioners. Unfortunately, this wasn't entirely true in the case of the IARU society list. Making the Political Entity list a function of others' lists makes DXCC life much simpler.

Next, DXCC after the "IARU" rule.

DXCC Dialog

Jun 14, 2006 14:53 ET
Bill Moore, NC1L

Welcome to the DXCC Dialog blog! On these pages, we will bring you DXCC announcements and news of other things of interest going on at the DXCC Desk. Some of the topics we will cover are:

Monthly DXCC processing statistics; Special announcements; Rules changes and discussions; Replies to questions on a broad range of DXCC issues; Operations approved by DXCC; Information about operations not approved by DXCC; Profiles of DXCC staff members;

If you have an interesting topic for discussion, please send us a note at dxcc@arrl.org

73 es DX!

Bill Moore NC1L

DXCC Branch Manager