AWARDS: Is the Tradition of Amateur Radio Awards Disappearing?

BY STEVE MOLO, * KI4KWR

Is the Tradition ofAmateur Radio Awards Disappearing?

Stepping into my virtual time machine and going back over 10 years, you could obtain an award for making contacts with amateurs in many countries. Now, back from the virtual trip to December 2022 and the availability of awards is significantly reduced, but do we know why? What could be the reason for the decline in awards from the past? Have new modes in the amateur radio community created a loss of interest? Are there other factors? Let’s look at some possibilities.

Availability of Awards

My research has shown that, prior to 2010, you could find an award for every continent and many countries (most of the exceptions were smaller countries with very small ham populations). Within this search, most of the awards have expired the timeframe they covered, or the award’s manager / leadership have become SK. I can understand the loss of time-limited awards, but why did nobody take over the management of longrunning awards?

Awards Management

One thing that I would not want to do is insult the management teams of any currently active awards. Managing the awards, reviewing submissions, and sending out certificates does take time and requires volunteers to achieve everything. With some awards having a small group or club that sponsors them, it can be very time consuming to handle the administration and deal with the stress of satisfying everyone submitting.

Could integration into online logs tools like LoTW (Logbook of the World) or QRZ Logbook make confirming an easier process for the awards managers? This does add a layer of need from those two examples that need permissions and approval, but could potentially make awards come back to life.

Paper logs or online log submission no doubt makes the verification process a manual step and requires personnel. Manual processes have been going away in current business daily flows and turned into processes with other systems integration to make such tasks flow quickly. If you are reading this article and support an award in this hobby, could automating the verification process be possible to make your award more readily available? Again, this does require other parties to get involved but can result in greater (and quicker) success for someone seeking the award and reduced stress on the administrators.

Cost of Awards

This could be the sole reason of awards going away for many operators worldwide. The cost of everything in the current climate has gone up, so that is nothing new to anyone. Some awards, past and present, had a small fee of $5 and not mentioning any specific award or the group in charge of awarding it, but one I checked out to obtain for myself would cost over $100. Would automating the award submission and verification process make this go away? Perhaps, in some cases. However, some award sponsors use the funds for printing of award certificates or plaque costs.

Using the FT-8 awards as an example, the system for submitting is streamlined and you just download the award. This is likely the result of collaboration by several web developers working together to make this happen. But when the award is a plaque or a specially designed piece of artwork, that is something you cannot give away for free; it needs to be paid for to cover the cost of managing, creating, and mailing the artwork.

CQ USA-CA Monthly Update

500 C County Level JH3LIB – Award number 3844 dated October 16, 2022 JS1MRA – Award number 3845 dated October 20, 2022 W8GU – Award number 3846 dated October 21, 2022

1000 County Level W8GU – Award number 1953 dated October 21, 2022 I2DMI – Award number 1954 dated October 25, 2022 DF1BN – Award number 1955 dated October 28, 2022

1500 County Level W8GU – Award number 1604 dated October 21, 2022

Are There Too Many Awards?

In no way would this be true, or could it? This seems kind of paradoxical in a column about the shrinking number of available awards, but I guess the real question is whether there are too many options for the awards that are available. Personally, you can never have enough radios so the same should be for awards. But if you have looked at any of the now-possible 80-plus awards available for FT-8 and the other digital modes, you could cover the walls of your radio room with just those. Could the only awards people desire to achieve be the CQ and ARRL options and don’t go beyond that? Both organizations have been providing awards for a very long time and it’s possible that local Elmers and clubs may only be mentioning them to new award seekers.

Another possibility is changing interests of different generations. It is possible that most current award chasers are from an older generation while “wallpaper” has less interest to the younger hams. If that’s the case, how can we change those interests and attitudes?

What Can You Do?

Is this a plea to readers to support chasing awards? Yes, 100%. Obtaining an award is a personal goal but also has benefits of showing that your station is working well and you worked a QSO that not many have the ability to do. Is there a special event or activity coming up in your area for which your club or group might sponsor a short-term award?

Do you belong to an organization that supports an award, and nobody is seeking it? Maybe this is the time to jump start it and revise the application process and make it available for online certificate printing. It could cut costs for printing and mailing on your end and automated submission could be the refresh that is needed. I know there are awards out there that are rare and, with the solar cycle being so good, would make the bands live again. If there was something for just the 10-meter band in this year’s CQ World Wide DX Contest, I would bet many of us would have had been eligible for something on that band alone. 1 How amazing it was!

Notes: 1. Editor’s note: There sort of already is … all participants in the CQWW who submit logs may download participation certificates regardless of their score (with the temporary exception of stations in Russia and Belarus due to the invasion of Ukraine). So, if you operated single-band on 10 meters and submitted your log, a certificate will be available once the results are finalized.