DXCC

The DX Century Club, or DXCC, is an amateur radio operating award earned by making contacts with licensed amateur operators in at least 100 "countries" (i.e. geographic locations listed in the rules for the award) around the world, many of which are physically distant from the claimant (i.e.DX).

The award is granted by (and is a registered trademark of ) the American Radio Relay League. Radio amateurs worldwide are eligible to apply although applicants from the US, its possessions and Puerto Rico must be ARRL members. Proof of two way contacts, either in the form of QSL cards or online confirmations in the Logbook of The World (LoTW), must be submitted to and verified by ARRL to qualify. Each DXCC award certificate is dated and individually numbered, and is widely recognized among the global amateur radio community as confirmation that the holder is an accomplished DXer.

As amateur radio grew, achievement awards for working several distant places were developed. As early as 1926 the International Amateur Radio Union started issuing the Worked All Continents certificate. In 1934 R/9 magazine began the Worked All Zones award. The ARRL started to examine the issue in 1932 and, after considerable work to determine what constitutes a "country", presented its criteria in 1935. Although the first DXCC certificates were awarded in 1937, the award program was suspended during World War II. When American amateurs returned to the air on November 15, 1945, the DXCC award program was re-launched and has continued ever since.

Most - but not all - entities on the DXCC list are conventional countries. All have some definable political or geographical distinctiveness. For example, although Hawaii is part of the country called the United States of America, it counts separately in the DXCC award program due to its distance from the rest of the US. The criteria for inclusion or exclusion of entities from the list have been refined occasionally during the life of the program.

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