5 Band WAZ

Though I´m more on the technical side of our hobby it was milestone for me when I received the LoTW confirmation from KH6YY for a 80m sideband QSO.

This was the last missing Zone for the 5 Band Worked all Zones (WAZ). I got the award number 1105:

In detail there´s just one little drop of bitterness: I still miss Zone 31 on 80 CW otherwise it would be the all 200 Zones in CW.

For the beginners in Ham-Radio: the ham-radio world is divided in continents, countries and zones. The continents is what you also know from the real world.

Ham Radio Operators count more countries than there a nations as according to specific rules areas that are separated from the main land and some other exceptions count as separate countries. Ham Radio operators test their equipment by chasing countries as other people collect crown caps or stamps. If you made contact from Germany with another Radio operator in Australia and the exchange a confirmation of their contact it´s called a confirmed contact.

Currently there are counted about 340 different countries in the Radio World.

All countries are assigned to certain Zones. To make it a bit more complicated there are two ways of dividing the world in Zones. One is the ITU Internationale Fernmeldeunion (engl. International Telecommunication Union (ITU) www.itu.int. The ITU counts about 80 Zones.

Another concept was created by the american CQ magazine. The so called CQ Zones divide the world into 40 Zones.

As there a a number of frequency ranges for ham radio operators there a a lot of challenges to reach all zones on each of the legal frequency ranges. The traditional short wave bands are (specified by there physical wavelength): 160m, 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m ,10m. So there are 6 traditional shortwave bands.

The longer the wavelength the more challenging are long distance connections for ham radio operators. Thats why you start your challenges in working zones or countries based on 5-Bands (thats excluding the challenging 160m Band).

So my personal milestone was to get a confirmation that I made connection with all of the 40 CQ-Zones on each of the 5 traditional short-wave bands.

It will probably take me a few more decades to reach all 40 Zones on 160m as well. But that´s what the hobby is about. Take your personal challenge and work on it. It´s for fun, getting to know the very tricky scientific side of how to use solar winds and earth magnetic fields for your advantage, designing and building a transmitting and receiving radio station that allows you to make contacts and friends all over the world.

Join the world of Ham Radio!