Saturday, May 2, 2020

Spanish IARU 95 Award - April 2020


The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) marks its 95th anniversary in 2020 and the national society for Spain (URE) have a special award scheme to celebrate the event.

Contacts can be made using any mode or band from 160 meters to 6 meters with the 10 different AMxWARD special stations. The special station callsigns are: AM95WARD - AM1WARD - AM2WARD - AM3WARD - AM4WARD AM5WARD - AM6WARD - AM7WARD - AM8WARD - AM9WARD

The award scheme runs from the 15th April 2020 at 0000z to 30th April 2020 (2359z). There are diplomas in PDF format awarded as follows (For European stations)...

SILVER DIPLOMA - Work 5 AM*WARD stations

GOLD DIPLOMA - Work 7 AM*WARD stations on at least 3 different bands (i.e. work 7 stations on 3 bands)

PLATINUM DIPLOMA - Work 10 AM*WARD stations on at least 3 different bands (i.e. work all 10 stations on 3 bands. This was later reduced to 9 as it was felt 10 was too hard.)

The award website is... https://iaru95.ure.es/

The Spanish National Society (URE) run award schemes like this every year or so and their award websites are excellent. As award schemes go, they really set the Gold standard.

Update 2nd May 2020... The award activation came to an end on the 30th of April and I managed 75 contacts on CW.


I worked 9 of the 10 stations on the 8 bands from 10m to 80m and I worked all 10 stations on 3 bands for the Platinum award (shown below).

The problem one of course was AM9WARD in Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Africa. They were always in demand with big pile ups and with the activity spread out over SSB and FT8 as well, they were always going to be a problem.

I missed the first 3 days of the award activation but I doubt if I would have worked much more from the start.

Awards below...




Silver Award
Gold Award
Platinum Award

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