The ARRL DXCC Challenge

If you’ve been DXing on the HF bands and Six Metres for some years and been collecting QSL cards along the way, have you thought of taking part in the ultimate search for New Countries? If so, then the DXCC Challenge could be for you. To qualify for the basic 1000 Entities award you will need to operate on various bands and treat a “new one” as a “new one” on that band. The good thing about this award with 335 DXCC entities to on chase ten bands, is that you never reach the end of the road! Even DXers who are top of Honour Roll have something to strive for - you need to seek out and confirm all entities on all bands from 160m-6m. 30m has counted for overall countries in any Mixed, CW or Data DXCC award claim for DXCC for years now, however it was agreed by the ARRL in 2001 that a 30m single band DXCC award would become available in October 2002 and that 30m DXCC scores would count towards The DXCC Challenge with effect from the 30th September 2003 listing.

So that’s good news for those of us who enjoy CW, are into the DXCC Challenge and have been working 30m for some years building up QSL cards.

So how do you go about taking part in the DXCC Challenge then? This involves a lot of admin work if you’ve been DXing for some years. If that is a turn off and you would much rather be tuning the bands then the Challenge may not be for you. You will need to organise your logkeeping properly and maintain it’s integrity 100%, preferably by using a Station Management Program that can track what you’ve worked, whether you’ve sent QSLs, if you’ve received them, and if they have been submitted to ARRL for checking. I personally use Logger 32. It’s a program written by Bob Furzer K4CY. You also have to consider the expense of collecting and also submitting QSLs – it’s not too costly once you have got a thousand or more cards in, which of course can take years in the hobby. Many of your cards will have come the cheap way via the Bureau but the choicer cards rarely come in via this route and this does add a considerable burden to the hobby costs, if you’re serious about taking part in the Challenge. In my case it’s taken almost 25 years to progress to where I am now, but I only became serious about submitting all my cards to take part in the Challenge when the ARRL announced it 3 years ago. Since then I’ve made some hefty QSL submissions to the ARRL each year to catch up on the QSL cards that I already had in my collection, but which I hadn’t submitted for DXCC checking. One thing to note is that if your QSOs are over ten years old then the QSLs need to go to the USA – they can’t be checked via the UK DXCC Checker. The same applies to cards for 160m – due to people cheating in the past with Top Band QSLs, the ARRL insist that these cards must also go to ARRL HQ. One thing about the DXCC Challenge is once you’ve have got all your QSOs logged, organised your QSLs correctly by band, submitted them to ARRL and had them checked, then it really is a doddle to submit your new ones every year for checking. After each submission you receive a print out that becomes your master checklist, and you can compare this to your electronic logbook. If you are a user of Logbook of The World, you can check and download your records from the ARRL Website and claim LoTW QSLs towards your DXCC Challenge directly on the site.