Earning operating awards is a popular sub-hobby within amateur radio. Awards range from local to international and many certificates and plaques are available. For DXers, there are two awards that are dominant or pivotal: CQ magazine’s Worked All Zones (WAZ) and ARRL’s DX Century Club (DXCC). WAZ requires confirmed contacts with 40 zones and DXCC requires at least 100 DX “entities.”
But there is another very interesting and extremely difficult to obtain certificate called USA-CA, or the USA Counties Award. Also sponsored by CQ magazine, it is a large and colorful certificate presented for collecting verifications from at least 500 U.S. counties. Endorsements are later given for 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500 and 3000 counties. Currently there are 3,077 counties.
The first Brazilian radio amateur to earn USA-CA All Counties for confirmed contacts with all 3077 U.S. counties is Terezinha Felix Cardoso, PT2FT (Photo A), now age 93 and a ham since 1972. In addition to USA-CA All Counties, Terezinha has also obtained DXCC Top of the Honor Roll, IOTA-400, WAZ, WPX, WAC, WAE, WAS-76, and many other operating awards.
In 2008, Terezinha received from LABRE (Liga de Amateurs Brasileiros de Radio Emissão, Brazil’s national ham radio society), the highest award to which a radio amateur from this country can aspire, which is “La Comenda da Ordem do Mérito do Radioamador.“
I invite you to enjoy this exclusive interview, to learn more about Terezinha’s passion for amateur radio and her achievements within the hobby. I was joined for the interview (Photo B) by Orlando Perez Filho, PT2OP, the vice president of LABRE DF (Distrito Federal).
CQ: Communicating with all the counties in the United States does not seem like an easy task. What year did you start with this challenge?
Of course it
