Some years ago, the ARRL decided to stop issuing a DXCC certificate for just RTTY and merged the various digital modes all together for a single ‘digital’ certificate. I obtained the ‘digital’ certificate back in 2012 with just RTTY QSOs and was always a little sad that my certificate said ‘digital’. Last year, I heard rumblings in various discussion groups that they might make a specific RTTY certificate available again and this was confirmed by Roger, G3LDI in the CDXC Digest magazine.
I contacted the ARRL to ask about how I could get this specific RTTY certificate and initially I was met with some confusion as the person I spoke to seemed to know nothing about it. I explained what had been published and they got back to me a few days later confirming that although the process wasn’t in place yet, they’d be able to send me a certificate with the same number and date as my original ‘digital’ one but marked RTTY instead.
It took a while because one certificate went missing in the post and one turned up with the wrong details but third time lucky, I received the RTTY DXCC certificate you see above.
While waiting for the certificate to arrive, I’d gone back to the same company I used to buy frames for my previous DXCC certificates and ordered another two the same. I think it’s a decent looking frame and suits the DXCC certificates nicely.
I get my frames from Picframes, specifically the part number is BW247, 17mm natural dome shaped oak frame, custom size 356mm x 279mm with a crystal clear 2mm acrylic glazing, acid free backing sheet, and 2.5mm MDF backing board. The site is a bit difficult to navigate so if you want the same frame, you might be best to contact them with the details above.
I appreciate RTTY is a slowly dying mode, very rarely used outside contests and the occasional DXPedition these days but I don’t care. I enjoy using it and I’m happy to have this certificate on my wall.
If you have 100 DXCC entities confirmed using RTTY and you want to get one of these certificates, you should contact the ARRL DXCC team using the email address on this page. Explain what you’re after and the helpful people there will be able to assist.
