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DXing is a participatory sport. Your goal is to contact someone in a foreign land, a place that you may never be able to visit personally. The ham who lives in that place most likely has a similar goal. Having accomplished this goal, how does one share this accomplishment with other hams? A certificate of achievement recognized by the amateur community could be the answer. The ARRL DX Century Club provides goals that are internationally recognized and sufficiently difficult to achieve that they are known to be a mark of operator skill and patience.
The purpose of the DX Century Club is to create interesting incentives for hams who enjoy contacting hams in other countries--or entities (to use the current terminology). Complying with the rules set down by DXCC, hams can earn certificates attesting to their accomplishments. The rules recognize and address all modes of transmission allowed in the amateur bands 160 through 2 meters. The simplest achievement is DXCC, which requires proof of contacting 100 entities. More difficult are the challenges to contact the complete list of authorized entities and to do so on multiple bands.
DX Century Club is the scorekeeper and adjudicator of claims toward those goals. The task of qualifying the claims of every applicant is huge and requires the efforts of many people--ARRL staff and scores of volunteer QSL card checkers.
The DX Century Club Branch is one of five Branches--Awards, Contests, DXCC, QSL and W1AW--that constitute the ARRL Membership Services Department. The other 4 branches were described in previous installments of this series.
 Left to right: Wayne Mills, N7NG, and Bill Moore, NC1L, study the QRP DXCC Award. |
DXCC Manager Bill Moore, NC1L, leads a staff of full-time assistants and 140 field volunteer card checkers. Although most checkers provide their service in the US, 26 checkers operate in seven other countries. To become a volunteer card checker, one must be nominated and meet certain requirements based upon proven performance as a DXer. Foreign country checkers must be nominated by their International Amateur Radio Union societies, not by a club. A list of all Card Checkers is available on ARRLWeb.
The Awards
DXpeditions have created an enormous interest in DX in general and have opened the way for the casual non-DXer to earn a DXCC award. The most popular sites for DXpeditions are--in descending order--South America, North America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Hams in most parts of the world therefore should be able to make the required 100 contacts by chasing some not-so-distant DX and participating in a few major contests.
Nevertheless there are those who crave a greater challenge. The clamor for new challenges continues unabated. ARRL has responded with a number of awards to satisfy that urge. The #1 DXCC Honor Roll and the DXCC Honor Roll top the list of awards. In addition there are the:
For more information on recent DXCC awards see "New DXCC Awards for the New Millennium," QST, Dec 1999, page 47. The non-endorsable QRP DXCC Award is the latest addition to the list.
In summary, DXCC offers: 5 Mode awards--CW, Phone, RTTY, Satellite and Mixed; 10 single band awards--2, 6, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 40, 80 and 160 meters; the 5-Band DXCC and the DXCC Challenge. A 30 meter award has been approved by the Board of Directors and will be added later this year.
Hints
"The most important task a ham can do when applying for a DXCC award is to follow the application procedure. It saves time and money and it speeds up the process," says Moore. He offers the following tips:
Historical Facts
DXCC began in September 1937 ["Announcing: The DX Century Club," QST, Sept 1937, page 59]. In a few short years World War II suspended Amateur Radio operations. But in January 1947, ARRL announced a "start over" for DXCC ["ARRL's 13th International DX Competition," QST, Jan 1947, page 16]. Before the year ended, the new DXCC awards--# 1 mixed and # 1 phone--had been claimed by Charles Mellen, W1FH ["Operating News," QST, Oct 1947, page 69]. The "How's DX?" column, QST, Jan 1990, page 63, features an article titled "W1FH-Role Model," in which author Ellen White, W1YL/4, extolled the merits of "the quintessential operator."
By June 1953, hams in 100 different countries had achieved DXCC. By January 1967, 20 years from the restart of DXCC, 12,050 DXCC certificates had been issued.
A CW DXCC award was added in January 1975. A mere 6 months later Jesse Bieberman, W3KT, claimed CW DXCC #1.
The era of Amateur Radio satellite communication created a new means for DXing, suggesting that a satellite award might be an appropriate goal. In September 1977 a non-endorsable Satellite DXCC award was added to the list. Once again, in less than a year--May 1978--the challenge had been met. Ben Stevenson, W2BXA, claimed Satellite DXCC Award #1.
Cards and Automation
From this recitation of historical events we see that DXCC grew rapidly in popularity from the very beginning. That popularity translated into contacts, and contacts meant cards, hundreds of thousands of them. From 1990 to 1993 the popularity of DXCC created a deluge of cards; so many that the HQ staff at one time reported a backlog of 750,000 cards waiting to be processed. Clearly it was time for automation.
Field card checkers helped to relieve the torrent of cards forwarded to ARRL HQ, but the rules prohibited volunteers from checking cards more than 10 years old, for 160 meter contacts, or that showed altered or incomplete data. Those cards had to be sent to HQ.
DXCC handles about 55,000 cards per month and issues 3,000-5,000 awards annually. The DXCC year runs from October to September, but the Honor Roll year is from April to March. Imagine trying to keep track of these various credits without the aid of a computer.
In 1991 ARRL introduced a computerized logging system. By 1998 it was obsolete and a new tracking and reporting system replaced it. Presently there are more than 9 million records in the DXCC database and more come in each day from the online Logbook of the World system.
For
information on DXCC forms, rules, applications and more, contact DXCC by: DXCC@ARRL.org; telephone 860-594-0234; Fax
860-594-0259; and postal mail to ARRL HQ, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111.
