Amateur Radio Achievement Awards

These awards are usually in the form of Certificates. The applicant has to send the required QSL cards in cases like the DX Century Club. (DXCC), Worked All States of USA (WAS), Worked All Zones (CQ) (WAZ) etc., along with a requisite proforma duly filled in and with reply postage enclosed for sending the QSLs back to the applicant. In many other cases, GCR list i.e. general certification rules are applied.

In this, the application for the award and the QSL cards are checked by the Secretary / President of your Radio Club or National Society and certified on the application. At other times, certification by two other amateur radio operators can also verify having seen the QSL cards or log entries, as the case may be. Generally the fee for an award is taken in IRCs or US dollar for postage and handling. This may vary from anything like US dollar 2 to 10 in many cases, or equivalent IRC as mentioned by the Awards Manger.

Worked All Continents ( WAC) issued by the International Amateur Radio Union is the only free award till now, for the members of a National Society whose application is sent through the society only. It is available for working all the six continents in various endorsement like, CW, SSB, SSTV, RTTY, FAX, Satellite, 5 Band, QRP, 1.8 MHZ, 3.5 MHZ, 144 MHz etc.

Amateur Radio Society of India, the national society, is issuing worked Republic India(WRI) to VU and DX operators. You have to achieve a minimum of 100 points by working various VU stations on different bands. The points are different per QSO, for lower freq. bands and special prefixes in mainland India and VUs from Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Islands. (See Apr/Sept. 1995 issued of Ham Radio News). Awards Manger is VU2SDN. Another interesting award from India, to DX operators is the Golden key award. The Awards Manger is VU2TS. OM Ganesh.

Some of the awards are time bound and are available only for a limited period, like the Golden Jubilee Independence Award of India, which had a dead line of 30 November 1997. Information on several such awards are being given in the News Letters. Golden Jubilee DXCC award from ARRL was quite famous in this category.

There are hundreds of awards available. A directory of the awards is published by the Award / Certificate Hunters Club. The diploma Interest Group (DIG) of Germany is a club of Award Hunting Enthusiasts and they give a membership number which can be printed on your QSL cards. Similar membership numbers are available to members of other Award Hunters Clubs / Chapters. (We congratulate VU2SMN OM. Suhas who is the proud owner of over 500 awards.)

The greater the number of awards you have, clearly shows that you were very active and have thousands of QSOs in your Log Books, covering all the continents and countries.

Yes, there is an exception to the above detailing. There is only one award called "A-1 Operator" award. This you will get based on the good operating procedures of yours, as observed by at least two of the holders of A-1 Op. Award, who recommend your call, for the award. Thus, it is the award bestowed on you, for your procedures, operating technique, QSLing pattern, etc., (Again, we congratulate VU2SMN for achieving this also).