As you have now seen, a subset of amateur radio operators are most interested is making contacts with distant countries and operators. This area is known as DX (long Distance) and DXing (talking with stations who are a long distance away). The American Radio Relay League sponsors an award program that keeps track of which countries a particular station has "worked" and confirmed making a contact with another country. This award is called the DXCC which stands for the DX Century Club. The fundamental award is for making contacts with a minimum of 100 countries, and then goes on up from there. More on DXCC and DX is contained on the DX sub-page on this webpage. Sometimes, amateur operators make special efforts (some simple and some very complex and expensive) to plan a trip to a particular country or DXCC entity to active the country or entity by taking radio and antennas and making radio transmission from that entity. The act of traveling to a country or entity with radio and antennas for the purpose of "activating" the country and making with other ham operators around the world who would like to contact that country or entity is called DXpeditioning.

I have been fortunate enough to make a number of DXpeditions. All except one of my DXpeditions have been "single operator-single organizer" type DXpeditions, meaning that I have had to take all the equipment and antennas and do all the arranging for radio operation in the foreign country. Other DXpeditions are very complex and involve often a multi-national team of radio operators to share expenses and mount a larger operation. I have been involved in one of those larger, multinational team efforts to Pratas Island, a coral atoll owned by Taiwan in the middle of the South China sea. I have been fortunate to need to do some  traveling for business, and not always, but sometimes, I have been able to combine my business needs with some additional time to activate a DX entity for a DXpedition. The link bars below take you to the individual pages that summarize and present material and pictures on the DXpeditions that I have conducted in the past. There will also be a link for future DXpeditions, as those become planned and develop.