RTTY contest over the weekend and nothing much of a rarity making it, we will wait until the contest is over before listing worked, or spotted stations.
For those new comers I would like to recommend two awards that might challenge you and be fun at the same time.
It is the WPX award and CQ magazine is the sponsor. If you are a subscriber the cost is $6.00 if you are a non subscriber the cost is $12.00. However to qualify you need at least 400 prefixes more if you have them. Now of course you can ask what makes a separate prefix? Well, any change in the format of the prefix, example W1, W2 W3 are separate prefixes, while WA1.WA2, WA3 are also separate. So, if you have all ten prefixes from W1 to W0 and WA1 to WA0 you have a total of twenty. Of course some are not dxers, but you still have a chance with all the state side calls, N1-N0, AA1 to AA0, AB1 to AB0 and so forth. There are thousands of prefixes world wide and I have never applied for this award until a few days ago.
So, I started in all of my qsl collection and came up with 1805 prefixes and of course all contacts count from November 15, 1945 so if you have thousands of cards in your file, take a look and see if you qualify.
So much for that one, another award I never applied for was the USA-CA that one is for working counties in the U.S. in our 50 states we have 3.076 counties. The award starts at 500 and the next level is 1000, 1500, 2000,2500, 3000 and then all 3.076. This is by far the most challenging in my opinion. I was quite an avid county hunter from 67-72 however I stopped short of working them all in favor of DXing.
I never applied for the award until two weeks ago for 2860, but the award is for 2500 with the gold seals. I have 212 to go and my interest has been renewed in county hunting. I would like to finish the project before I go to that big rig in the sky.
As you have noticed my interest in DX has not waned and I am county hunting as a side line checking the 40 meter net 7.188 the cw net 7056.5 and the twenty meter net at 14.336.
If you want something to really challenge you, I would recommend these two, you will be hooked on them if you do.. BTW the USA CA is an impressive piece of wallpaper, looks nice hanging on the shack wall.
