Thanks to HV0A

Yesterday I worked The Vatican HV0A on 17m CW.  A career first from Alaska.  As it happens, I have been agonizingly close to Worked All Europe Class I with one point to go for many weeks.  I received the LoTW confirmation today, imported it into my DARC contest logbook, and voila!  WAE-I is in the bag.

http://www.darc.de/uploads/pics/wae-diplom.jpg 

Whispering on WARC

Of late I have been focusing a bit on working Europe on the WARC bands to close the gap on Worked All Europe first class award (WAE I).  I have also boosted the numbers slightly on 40m. JT65 has made it possible to work pretty reliably into EU most days and evenings on 30 or 17. While experimenting with WSJT-X 1.1 this weekend, I finally saw Cliff VK2CCJ working KH6OO on JT9 in the 12m band.  We eventually connected with this exciting new mode.

Worked All Europe

This DARC award is not all that easy from Alaska. WAE Diplom, as it is called, is the oldest and most renowned of all DARC certificates is awarded for contacts with amateur stations in many European countries and on the European islands on different bands. Each confirmed country of WAE-Country list counts one point per band, with a maximum of five claimed bands per country. DX stations may count two points for any contact on 160 or 80 meters. Working Europe on those latter two bands is really tough from Fairbanks. 

The different classes require the number of WAE countries and bandpoints. For the Class II, you need 50 and 150 respectively. Each WAE country counts for one point, but a maximum of 5 bandpoints may be used for one country. Class I requires 60/200. I've got the countries right here, but I'd better get busy on those extra bandpoints!