I have been hearing via the rumor mill that two entities on the DXCC lists are about to join the deleted list. Now of course this does not mean you lose credit for those entities if you worked them before the cut off date. Now, keep in mind, I have not seen any official announcement from the league and indeed if this rumor is true we should hear shortly in the form of a bulletin.
The two entities in question are KH9 and KH7, Wake Island and Kure Island. I have noticed the KH7 prefix normally designated for Kure is now being issue to stations in Hawaii, and although the KH9 prefix has not surfaced that much in the U.S. mainland I am sure it will once the deletion has taken place, or if it does.
In the discussion I saw about deletions the reason for these two vanishing were the fact they are military islands and to gain access requires a mountain of paper work and security clearances. So be it, we do of course have to watch the pacific theater as well as all fronts in times like these.
There were some other mention of entities that should be dropped from the list, one is BS7 Scarborough Reefs and of course P5 DPRK. If a vote were taken today by all major dx chasers I think these two would be most likely to be dropped. I favor this for a few reasons, BS7 is nothing more then a rock pile, in fact the last operation from this entity was indeed challenging. The operators constructed platforms in the water and several stations were set up and operated providing many thousands of contacts. Now, BS7 is not inhabited, no one could live there, there is no solid ground and the rocks are sometimes under water. This to me, although I am a major DX chaser is the height of absurdity!
North Korea, this is a rogue nation of course, we do believe any long term expedition will never take place, in fact the last signal on the ham bands was a Russian ham running an indoor dipole and less then 100 watts. He was barely heard on the West coast and not even a whisper back this way. The operation was limited to power, antenna height and one frequency only and that was 15 meter phone. Until such time as a normal relationship with P5 exists and a major expedition occurs and I am talking of a 24/7 multi band one, this country, or entity should be deleted. There were a scant few contacts made by a Polish ham and there were rumors flying about that he was going to operate from P5 as a lone op taking on the world. Such rumors were summed up as pure rumors and nothing else ever happened.
My feelings on the deletion is this, it will allow those who lack only one entity to claim working all the DXCC countries, I for one am one of these operators. This entity is like the mule and the carrot hanging over the Mule's head, he never gets the carrot, yet still plows the field chasing the carrot.
Until such time relations improve, or there is approval by Kim Jung to actually have a 24/7 operation for about a month this one should be on the deleted pile.
In fact I favor a ten year rule, that is if the entity is not activated in ten years after going on the list of DXCC then it is removed, added back if there is some major activity for a prolonged period. As far as the real estate, we have North Korea, HL stations were in the South and HM in the North, we have several HM contacts confirmed, but not after the date the DPRK declared it self separate, so they count for Korea.
We can see what happens in the future with the entities mentioned and hope it will gain approval of all concerned.
