DX Marathon News

We have had numerous requests from participants in the Challenge Class requesting that we publish those registered participants for the 2025 program. Well, as you know, we try to listen to “our customers” and we have now published this on the website.
You can either go directly wo entry.dxmarathon.com and click on the link that says “Registered Entrants List” or you can go directly to this link https://entry.dxmarathon.com/challenge-registered# As you can see, we have about 58 entrants so far in 2025.
I am open to additional entrants so if you are interested, please send me an email at wc3w@dxmarathon.com. A submission will not be accepted unless you register for this class. Remember also, for 2025, you can enter Challenge AND you can also place a submission into the traditional class of Unlimited, Limited, Formula, or QRP so two entrees are allowed.
You will have to make two separate submissions, one for each using the same adif file.

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I am excited to announce that DX Marathon is about to be granted the a non-profit 501C3 status by the Internal Revenue Service.
We have been working on this for quite some time, but today, I spoke with an IRS agent handling the case and there appear to be no further obstacles in granting us this status. I know a number of hams that were awaiting this as they wished to allocate some of their RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) towards our program. What this means to our organization, is that:

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This was released a couple days ago, in case you did not see it, please read on.

DX Marathon Announces a bolstering of CW participation in the program. June 12, 2025 — Port St Lucie, FL — The DX Marathon Program, one of the fastest growing DX programs today, has announced a new and interesting category to its program for 2025 that is intended to bolster CW mode participation. In 2024, CW represented approximately 13% of all the DX QSO’s out of a total of roughly 350,000 QSO claimed.
“The CW mode has always been my favorite and represents one of the most efficient and reliable modes,” said Mark Wohlschlegel, WC3W, Program Administrator for the DX Marathon Program. “It provides minimal bandwidth and fosters international communication without language barriers. CW also preserves the legacy of ham radio, promotes operator skills and discipline, and continues to play a key role in emergency communications, contests, and awards. By keeping CW alive, we maintain a unique, resilient, and historic aspect of our hobby that connects generations of operators worldwide.” To bolster CW participation within the DX Marathon Program, a new overlay involving three all CW Clubs has been established.
Those Clubs include CWOPS, Long Island CW Club, and the Straight Key Century Club who will compete for the highest DX score in 2025. The Club with the highest score will be awarded a beautiful plaque. Scores are accumulated by working 346 DXCC entities and as many zones as possible. “I am excited about increasing our CW only mode participation, and as our program is 2/3 international, 1/3 North American, I think we can accomplish this, “ says Mark. The combined membership of these three clubs is approximately 30,000 members. In order to participate, members of these clubs need to make a simple submittal through the website, www.dxmarathon.com and declare their club affiliation, generate an adif from their log, and submission is complete. This can be done today or anytime as many times as needed between now and the closing submission date of January 5, 2026.

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I wish to provide you with an announcement that I made in my presentation in Dayton. Your DX Marathon staff has agreed to do something special in a few months. As most of you know, we try to “think out of the box” and look for ways to make our program even more enjoyable for our participants and of course attract new participants. As a way to accomplish this objective, we have come up with a mini-Marathon or what we are calling a “Sprint” that will occur this Fall. We are still developing the rules but rest assurd, as is the case for our full Marathon, it will be made as simple as possible to attract new participants to our program and of course provide some fun for our regulars.
The Sprint will start on October 18, 2025 at 00:00Z. It will continue for 10 days and close on October 27, 2025 at 23:59Z We will have six classes, Unlimited, Limited, Formula (2) , and QRP (2) just as the rules state for 2025. Participants will have the option to select all modes, or you may select a single mode entry, CW, SSB, or Digital. All participants will receive a beautiful certificate showing their relative ranking in areas like world, zone, continent, callsign area, etc. No plaques will be issued. Our intentions is to see how this goes and if it has a positive outcome, we will plan on doing it again in the future.

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I did a zoom a few weeks ago with the Dominion DX Group.  Tom Mundy, N3GTG wrote me a real nice note thanking me and indicating he has already tried submitting his score via the submissions toolwhich of course any of you can do now. I was reminded that Sebastian and I did a video a while back so feel free to distribute it within your club.  Also, I am reminded as was the case within Tom’s club, after I give a presentation, every club needs a “champion” or “coordinator” to encourage members to participate in the DX Marathon.  Lauren, W4LEW is Dominions “champion”.  Thank you Lauren.  Bring your score into your club meetings and track how your club is making progress.  It really can be lots of fun and more importantly it give leadership in any club a tool to engage members.  I have observed that this separates the growing clubs from the dying clubs!

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Most of you are aware, that your DxMarathon team spends time trying to assist you in reducing the number of mistakes that you make in submissions.  Last year we had almost 10,000 Q’s out of a total of roughly 350,000 that had errors in them.  

Some of the most frequent errors include 1) Pirates, 2) Bad spots, and 3) Invalid Call signs.

Recently, K2CIB and myself gained access to what is called Google Analytics.  Google Analytics provides information that shows how often our website is used, and it actually drills down into the website and gives us statistics on how many of you are using the information that we work so hard in posting!   Much to my surprise…..

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We have another sponsor to welcome, The Southeast Michigan DX Association. Thank you Fred, KD8ZYD for your support of the DX Marathon Program. This amazing club also sponsors DXpeditions—just a few–in 2024–Bouvet Isl, Jarvis Isl/Palmyra, Nauru, Rotuma, Sao Tom & Principe, Christmas Isl…wow…got to love this Club. All of our sponsors are updated on our website www.dxmarathon.com. Here is the list

• Highest score in Unlimited Class - Sponsor: Northern Illinois DX Association
• Highest score in Limited Class - Sponsor: Northern Illinois DX Association
• Highest score in Formula Unlimited Class - Sponsor: Ellsworth Amateur Wireless Association
• Highest score in Formula Limited Class - Sponsor: Northern Illinois DX Association
• Highest score in QRP Limited Class, 5 Watts or less - Sponsor: Jeff, KE9V
• Highest score in QRP Unlimited Class, 5 Watts or less - Sponsor: David, NM0S, QRPARCI
• Highest CW only Score - World - Sponsor: The CW Operators Club
• Highest CW only Score - NA - Sponsor: The CW Operators Club
• Highest CW only Score - EU - Sponsor: The CW Operators Club
• Highest CW only Score - CWOP Member - Sponsor: The CW Operators Club
• Highest CW only Score - SA - Sponsor: Tom, K2GO
• Highest Phone only score - World - Sponsor: Collins Amateur Radio Club in Memory of Art Collins, W0CXX
• Highest Digital only score - World - Sponsor: Bill, K2TQC
• Highest score in Africa - Sponsor: Dane, S53T
• Highest score in Asia - Sponsor: Southeast Michigan DX Association
• Highest score in Europe - Sponsor: Gert, PA2LO
• Highest score in North America - Sponsor: The Metro DX Club
• Highest score in Oceania - Sponsor: North East Radio Group (NERG)
• Highest score in South America - ARAUCARIA DX GROUP - ADXG
• Highest score for the 6m band - Sponsor: Mike, W4UM
• Highest score for single band entries for the 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30, 40 and 80m bands - Sponsor: ARAUCARIA DX GROUP * ADXG
• Highest score for the 60m band - Sponsor: Ron, K4SX
• Highest score for the 160m band - Sponsor: Davie/Cooper City Amateur Radio Club
• Highest Youth Score (15–25) - Sponsor: Bill, W2CQ
• Highest Youth Score (14 and younger) - Sponsor: Ann, W1AS
• Highest YL Score - Sponsor: Jose, N4BAA
• John Sweeney Super Marathon Award - Sponsor: Bob, W9AP
• Highest DX Challenge - Sponsor: ARAUCARIA DX Group
• Runner up DX Challenge - Sponsor: ARAUCARIA DX Group
• Top World Club Score (75 or more) - Sponsor: South Florida DX Association
• Top World Club Score (26–74) - Sponsor: Kevin, W1DED
• Top World Club Score (25 or less) - Sponsor: East Tennessee DX Association

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ALL. We can always use sponsors so if your club or you as an individual wish to sponsor (note how many individual sponsors we have above), just give me a shout!

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Included in a few comments on emails back to us, are suggestions that our submission tool is not doing the job.  On the other hand, we have hundreds of emails that have told us that it has significantly simplified the submission process, AND it allows for submission and tracking progress all year long.  We are immensely happy with this tool and will continue to use it.  I would like to point out the “notes” that are on the entry page.  Please read and understand them.  This is very important because comments made on some of the emails we are getting back…I think maybe some of these points are not understood.

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Ladies and Gentlemen: We have completed the 2024 scoring effort and the article and results will be uploaded to the website, www.dxmarathon.com. Please access this and we thank all of you for participating in the fastest growing DX program in the world today. Since posting, we were made aware of some clarifications and corrections which we will be making shortly. I thank those that have reported these back to us. Our aim truly is to get everything correct in the article.

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DL7PIA, Pia, won the youth plaque last year in the DX Marathon Program. She has just completed an interview with Kevin, K1DED

Kevin had invited me to do a couple interviews last year on the DX Marathon Program. He is an excellent interviewer, and a

few month ago, I had contacted him, and suggested that he do an interview with Pia. Well, Pia agreed and the interview is

complete and now posted on Kevin’s website. As most of you know, the DX Marathon Program highly supports youth involvement

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You may now enter your year to date progress for 2025 via the submission tool found on our website. Remember that you can upload as many times as you wish during the year. The last submission will superceded any previous one and you will be able to obtain a progress report on how many DXCC entities and zones you have worked.

Good luck in 2025.

We will be running K9EL’s presentation one last and final time on DX Spotting Tools. Those that have participated thus far agree that it is a powerful presentation that gives DX’ers lots of available spotting information. If you wish to watch it via zoom, I will be scheduling in the next couple of weeks. Please send me an email and deposit $10 via paypal on our website, www.dxmarathon.com.

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Good day DX Marathoners! I just arrived in Orlando and would love to see you at the Forum on Saturday CS-2 at 2:15PM. Come say hello, and I would love to have you give a brief testimonial! Just email or text me if you are here.

Secondly, the RATPAC Presentation. Here are the details. The RATPAC you tube presentation is up and running. Show this to your friends or present it at your ham clubs… Thank you

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Today, the Claimed Scores for the 2024 DX Marathon will be posted on the website www.dxmarathon.com. Please be reminded that Claimed scores are exactly as the name states, these are the actual “unverified” scores that our participants have submitted to us. We are now ready to begin our “verification” process which will take about six to eight weeks. If you are one of the folks who have not made any errors, your verified scores when posted at the end of our verification process will not change. However, if we do find errors to include but not limited to typos, broken calls, pirates, out of range contacts, wrong zones, or non-validated Q’s by a process that we use internally, then your final score could be less than your claimed score.

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REPLAY For those that could not make the presentation, I recorded it and it will show again next Tuesday, January 21 at 7:30 EST (January 22, 00:30Z)

You are welcome to join if you missed it and if you have friends, please invite them. Request that they send me an email to wc3wmark@gmail.com and I can get them scheduled. If you have yet to pay the requested $10, you can do so on the website www.dxmarathon.com and go to the hyperlink for Donation via paypal. You can address the contribution to mvwohlschlegel@gmail.com. Thank you.

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Happy New Year to all participants of the DX Marathon Program. We have made it through another year and I am very anxious to see how the numbers turn out for 2024. Remember you have up until 23:59Z January 5th to put in your submission.
This is the link to the submission site: https://entry.dxmarathon.com/ The easiest way to submit (just got an email from a new users who told me it took 5 minutes after producing the adif file from his log), is to use this tool. Just generate an adif file from your log, save it to downloads, and when you click on the big red icon that says Upload ADIF on the entry website…just do it…you are done. The other big icon on that submission page says “List of Submitted Entries”. After you submit, go and click on this icon and verify that you submitted.
Your call and time and date of submission will be listed on that sheet. Remember also, you can submit all the way up to the final hour, January 5th, and each successive submission will overwrite previous ones.

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The CQ DX Marathon Program is an independent organization run by volunteers. We have no funding per se other than our plaque sponsors. We have again applied for 501c3 status but it appears that this will take a few more months to accomplish.

There continues to be costs involved in running the program. It is our desire to try to generate some working capital to cover the costs that we do incur. As all know, the program has never required a fee to participate nor do we have any intentions to put one into place. Instead, we are attempting to raise some captial in a couple of ways.

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Back a few months ago while in Dayton, Bernie McClenny, W3UR approached me and asked if I would be interested in doing an article about the DX Marathon Program in the November 2024 issue of QST. Needless to say, it took me about 1 ms to respond in the affirmative.

I just received my November issue and sure enough, on page 86, the article has been published. I would like to personally thank Bernie, the magazine’s DX Editor, for giving us this opportunity to inform many about the fastest growing DX program in the world today. Thank you Bernie!

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We are still seeking some assistance in a couple areas as we continue to grow our program. Growth is a wonderful thing but we must insure that the administrative resources are also in place. A while back, I had advertised for a person that would be willing to learn more about how our scoring system works. We thought we had a candidate but other priorities for this person did not make it possible for him to pursue it. An interested person should have some knowledge of C# program language and if not C#, any experience in Java programming would probably work just fine. If you think you would be interested in joining our administrative team, please contact me at wc3w@dxmarathon.com.

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We are trying to expand the number of plaques awards for the 2025 season. A sponsorship for an individual or club is $100 that covers the cost of the plaque plus transportation. We have done a review of our award structure as it has not been changed in almost 18 years
A few weeks ago, I called out for a need for some added sponsors for 2025. Our sponsors make our program viable. My target is to add 20 plaques for 2025. So far we are approaching 50% of our target of 20 more plaque sponsors. Here are the generous individuals and clubs that have stepped up to the “challenge” and committed for 2025.

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We are trying to expand the number of plaques for the 2025 season. A sponsorship is $100 that covers the cost of the plaque plus transportation. We have done a review of our award structure as it has not been adjusted in almost 18 years. We are trying to broaden the awards. Your DX Marathon staff have recognized pockets of new awards but the only way we can get there is to have sponsors. Our sponsors make our program viable. So far we are approaching 50% of our target of 20 more plaque sponsors. Here are the generous sponsors who have indicated a willingness to step up and meet the 2025 plaque award challenge:

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We continue to be gifted with help from our loyal participants. One of our truly avid participants is Savas Pavlidis, SV2AEL. Savas wrote me an email a couple weeks ago, and suggested that we consider creating a Facebook page for the DX Marathon Program. The reasons:

-Increased visibility and participation: A Facebook group will enable participants and interested parties to easily share information, discuss the competition, and encourage others to join. This will contribute to greater participation and exposure of the competition.

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I had the priviledge of doing an interview with Kevin Thomas, W1DED last week. He just posted the interview. Kevin is one of the finest interviewers around asking amazing questions. Here is the link

https://youtu.be/g2yR-too7pI

73 Mark WC3W

During my visit to Dayton this year, I met a company that markets and labels merchandise for many programs within our hobby. After a few months of working with them, we are introducing a line of DX Marathon labeled merchandise that you can customize further with your name and call. Please visit the site and feel free to order. The site is now live. The hyperlink to the site is —Dxmarathon.goldmedalideas.com
We will be placing this hyperlink on our website in a few days.

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We are continued to be gifted with help from our loyal participants. One of our truly avid participants is Savas Pavlidis, SV2AEL. Savas wrote me an email a couple weeks ago, and suggested that we consider creating a Facebook page for the DX Marathon Program. The reasons:

Benefits of Creating a Facebook Group:

Increased visibility and participation: A Facebook group will enable participants and interested parties to easily share information, discuss the competition, and encourage others to join. This will contribute to greater participation and exposure of the competition.

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A couple weeks ago, I received an email request to be interviewed on the DX Engineering podcast hosted by Tim Duffy. I graciously accepted. We did the podcast yesterday afternoon and Tim has posted it on you tube. Here is the link for your viewing pleasure.

https://youtube.com/live/Mn3kf1Nq_7s?feature=share

Thank you to Tim and his staff for the invite and for posting.

73 Mark WC3W

As promised, a new submission video tutorial is now available for viewing via the website. Sebastian and I put this together to assist all in understanding step by step how to prepare your submission for your 2024 DX Marathon entry. Note also that this can be submitted anytime during the year, and you can submit multiple times, each time will supercede the previous submittals. The submission tool makes it easy for you to submit your score and there are many tools to self-check the quality of your submission thereby avoiding penalties for mistakes. Please check it out. As always the case, if you still have questions, please feel free to contact us directly.

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I am pleased to announce that for the 2025 season, we will be adding another plaque award (there may be more adjustments later prior to the announcement of the 2025 Rules in November 2024). In the interest to continue to stimulate and grow participation in CW operation within the DX Marathon Program 2025 Rules Release). CWOps will be sponsoring a fourth plaque in the DX Marathon Program. This plaque will be awarded to the highest CW score in the world “among CWOps members.” This increases the number of CWOps sponsorship to 4 for which we are so grateful. The total CWOps sponsorship will include 1) The highest CW score in the world, 2) the highest CW score in North America, 3) The highest CW score in Europe, and 4) the highest CW score among member of the CWOps organization. CW is an amazing operating mode and we at DX Marathon hope to stimulate single mode operation in CW and with this sponsorship, we believe that this will be accomplished. In 2023, the total Q’s turned in by our participants employing CW was around 14%.

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Here’s the video of the presentation I gave at Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio. I hope you enjoy it.

73 and Gud DXing Mark WC3W

I will be attending Hamvention in Dayton and hope to meet lots of participants during the the largest hamfest in the world. I will be at the CWOps dinner on Thursday evening and will have a table and attend the SWODXA dinner on Friday night. I will attend the Contest Dinner on Saturday night, and finally will be giving a forum on Sunday morning at 11:00am with lots of updates on the 2023 year and how things are going in 2024.

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I am pleased to report that the books for the 2023 DX Marathon Program are closed. All plaques were produced and mailed a few weeks ago and certificate winners should receive an email some time before the end of this week with their merit recognition award. Congratulations to all winners of these awards, and congratulations for all who participated in the program. We finished up the year including my summary article a few months ahead of previous years.

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I would like to encourage all participants in the 2024 DX Marathon Program to start their submission process now. You can do it as many times during the course of 2024 as you wish. The submitted data is secure and no one can “look” at your submission.

As a reminder—we highly recommend all participant use this easy to use submission tool instead of the old excel spreadsheets. It is so easy to use as so many of our participants in 2023 have told us.

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The results for the 2023 DX Marathon Program are now posted on the website, www.dxmarathon.com. There you will find a complete posting of the summary article, the plaque and certificate winners, new records set, and much more information.

Please go to the website, and click on the “Results” tab. There will be a number of selections at the top which will provide you access to the various posted information.

Within a very short time period, you will each be receiving an individual email that shows the specific deducts that were applied to your claimed scores to arrive at your adjusted scores.

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I have just posted the following message in the FAQ section of our website (www.dxmarathon.com). I did feel that this is very important to our participants and thought I would mention it in my personal news section here as well.

There has been a major change in the call system within the UK that is now in place as of February, 2024. The UK system has long had what it calls “RSLs” – the D in GD0ABC or the J in MJ0ABC. These are not actually part of the issued callsign, proper.
If GD0ABC operates in London, they simply can sign G0ABC; this has always been true.
What is new is that GD0ABC may now sign G0ABC even when operating on the Isle of Man.
But, anyone signing GD0ABC must be in the Isle of Man. Those are the current UK regulations.

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About a year ago, the DX Marathon program staff had considered forming a 501c3 entity to allow for the tax free donations. We were successful in identify a company Open Collective that served as a proxy for us in allowing for such contributions. We learned about a month ago that they were shutting their doors. We are now looking for another entity or also considering the formation of a 501c3 ourselves.

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As most of your are aware, there has been some controversy regarding ham radio operation within the country of Cambodia during 2023. As is always the case, DX Marathon always strives to do what is fair and right as we vet out these kinds of situations. We are not perfect, and most of the times, we make the correct judgment. This is one case where we did not. I will not belabour the issue but will highlight the sequence of event that led to our disqualifying position made with regard to QSO’s secured during the first half of 2023. Many of you including myself had the opportunity to work XU8GNY in the first half of the year, specifically in the Spring of 2023. We vetted this situation out including the direct contact with Thomas Hubert, DL7BO in an attempt to see if he had in fact a legitimate operating license issued by the Cambodian government. We determined based on our best research including obtaining a copy of a license that he did not. For this reason, we established our position of not allowing Q’s with this statement to count within the Marathon program.

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Many of you are aware that for 2024, we have introduced a brand new Class entitled “The DX Marathon Challenge”. In my previous post, I had requested that those participants that have an interest in this Class email me their intentions to participate by February 15th. The description of the Challenge is on our website www.dxmarathon.com under Rules 2024. We can accept up to 75 participants for 2024 so to reserve a space, please send me an email (wc3w@dxmarathon.com). So far, we have quite a few interested but we still are below the 75 participants threshold. For those participants that choose this Class, this will represent your single entry into the 2024 program. Even if you reserve, you will reserve the right to not submit, and select another Class. Those who choose to enter will submit at the end of 2024 their scores on 8 (eight) band 80-10 meters. The winner will be determined by summing the total number of DXCC entities and zones on each band. Two plaque will be awarded for the Challenge, one for the top score and a second for the runner-up.

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The DX Marathon Program values the logging and software developers that have taken the time to design features into their software that allows their customers to more easily participate in the DX Marathon Program. As we make incremental changes to our program to the benefit of our participants, we wish to give our software developers a heads up and a forum to answer any questions they may have.

We have set up a subgroup to our GroupsIO reflector to allow this open communications to occur. We did this to focus these discussions among software people both within our DX Marathon organization and the software developers. It was prudent to not “bother” our participants within the main Groups IO reflector with these discussions. I want all participants to know that your administrative staff values these developers and we will support them as they develop enhancements to their products.

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I have good news to announce this evening. The scoresheet for 2024 that many have requested is now available on our website www.dxmarathon.com. Please see the details below, as well as information on our submission process, country list and information for software developers.

1- The Scoresheet

We’ve just released the 2024 version of the “Scoresheet” for Microsoft Excel. You can find it at https://dxmarathon.com/resources/software/ Please note that there are a few changes that we have made to further refine the Submission Tool from the 2023 version.

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We have closed the submission for the 2023 DX Marathon Program. I want to thank all of you our participants who managed to make the January 5th deadline. We had almost zero requests for extensions and that we appreciate. I also want to thank each and every one for participating in the fastest growing DX Program in the world today. We have again set a year over year record of +50% growth for participation during calendar year 2023. If you recall, we were +42% from 2021 to 2022. We thank you for being a part of this exciting program and for your support.

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Some may have heard rumors about CQ Magazine and their financial condition. Please be advised of the following.

1. The DX Marathon Program will remain viable with or without CQ Magazine. I have mentioned in the past that our program does not receive any financial support from them nor do we draw any resources to operate our program from them. They do publish the rules in the November issue for the following year, and the program results in the June issue. Bottom line–do not be concerned with regard to the DX Marathon’s viability. We will do just fine with or without CQ Magazine.

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Happy Holidays to all our participants of the DX Marathon Program. Just a few end of year friendly reminders.

1. Please try the new submission tool NOW so that you will not have any issues during the Jan 1-5 2024 final submittal period. Remember, as in past years, there will be no extensions granted. We have made it possible for all to have ample time to get the logs uploaded. You can do it right now. Any subsequent additions will be incorporated so your last submission during the above period in the Jan 1-5 period should involve minor “tweeks”.

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NEW SUBMISSION TOOL FOR DXMARATHON 2023

Ladies and Gentlemen of The DX Marathon Program:

We wanted to make all of you aware early of an exciting change we have been working on throughout 2023 to simplify the submission process for your 2023 results to be submitted between January 1-5, 2024.

Why are we doing this? The answer is simple. We are trying to continue to make participation easy for everyone AND we must position our program for future growth as we expand. We don’t yet know what 2023 will bring in terms of participation but in 2022, we grew at a +46% rate. We have exciting enhancements we wish to make in the future so we must pay careful attention to our processes to make it possible to continue to administer the program in a quality manner.

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I hope all of you are enjoying participation in the DX Marathon program during calendar year 2023. I am hearing from lots of participants that they are exceeding their past personal best scores. Your operating group is working hard making modifications to our scoring tool that will be employed for the 2023 period. We are doing our best to keep the website updated, particularly the Helpful Hints section and FAQs. Please regularly check these out as they can change weekly and serve to assist you in your DX pursuits. As always, I encourage you to also join the Group IO reflector—the numbers continue to grow and this is an excellent way to stay abreast of current information from your peers. Remember that scores for 2023 MUST be submitted between January 1 and January 5, 2024. No exceptions or extensions. Also, carefully check your submissions entries to avoid mistakes such as typos or pirate calls to avoid the one point/error penalty. I have just submitted the 2024 Rules to CQ Magazine. Watch for the November issue for the published 2024 rules. We have some exciting new changes that I think you will enjoy. Lastly, at the bottom of the webpage (www.dxmarathon.com) note the donation hyperlink entitled “Help fund the DX Marathon” We have made it possible for you to make a tax deductible contribution to our program. As you are planning your tax strategy for 2023, please keep us in mind, particularly those that have Required Minimum Distributions out of your 401K program. I hope you feel we are a worthy cause to donate some of those dollars to as we expand our program. Keep in mind that we are the fastest growing DX program in our hobby with a +46% growth between 2021 and 2022. Lastly, I have done over 50 Club presentations since the beginning of the year including Hamvention in Orlando, W9DXCC, and W4DXCC just this month. If you would like a speaker via zoom please email me at wc3w@dxmarathon.com.

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On July 3, I was interviewed by Kevin Thomas, W1DED. I have posted the interview link below. Kevin did an excellent job in asking great questions about the program. He also has pushed this interview out to QRZ and it appeared on the front page on July 4th. Bernie has included it in his newsletter as well.

Feel free to reach out to your amateur radio friends to view this as it does describe the key aspects of the program. Don’t forget, I am available also to do zoom meetings with your club. Just contact me at wc3w@dxmarathon.com.

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The DX Marathon Program has made it much easier for our participants and others to contribute to foster the growth of our program. Please look at the hyperlink at the bottom of this webpage and click on it. Why do I say easier? Well for some of us who are interested in making a tax deductible contribution, you can now do that. I was able to work out an arrangemnt with a 501c3 organization called Open Collective. By clicking on the link below, you can read how easy it is to make a deductible contribution. You can contribute a small amount monthly, or just give a lump sum. Payment can be made by check, credit card, or bank transfer. Once the funds are received by Open Collective, they will forward to your DX Marathon organization. Should you choose, you can give anonymously, or you can have your name posted in recognition of your support.

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

I hope you are all actively pursuing DX in this new 2023 calendar year. The propagation early in Cycle 25 continues to be fantastic.

Your DX Marathon operational team have completed all the final 2022 results that will be published in the June issue of CQ Magazine in less than a month. The article will contain all the winner of plaques and certificates as desribed in detail on our brand new website, www.dxmarathon.com. Your operating group which includes me and four other fellows are now discussing the 2024 rules clarifications along with some added categories. The new rules will be published in the November issue of CQ Magazine.

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

The time has arrived! We have launched our new DXMarathon website. You can go to the exact same address, www.dxmarathon.com to access it. We owe a huge thank you to Sebastian, KI2D our DX Marathon IT Manager for creating this beautiful site. This is the initial conversion and we have plans to enhance it in a number of ways including the translation of the rules in various languages.

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Hello CQ DX Marathon participants. I am WC3W, Mark and I have been working with John, K9EL almost six months now in understanding various aspects of the DX Marathon program. Wow, it is truly amazing that one man actually managed this pretty much by himself. It is an amazing program but takes a huge amount of work.

The presumption under which I am assuming the administration role was that I recruit a number of key individuals to dispatch the many tasks associated with the program. I have done this and our key volunteer managers are:

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Please join me in welcoming Mark, WC3W as the new manager of the DX Marathon! Mark will lead a team to continue the development and growth of the DX Marathon. If you would like to be a part of the DX Marathon team, please contact Mark right away: WC3W at dxmarathon dot com.

Mark is looking for a database manager, web site managers, software programmers, etc.

K9EL will remain involved for some time to assure a smooth transition. The official transfer date is January 1, 2023.

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Help plan for the future!

In 2005, W9KNI and CQ Magazine asked me if I was interested in managing a new contest for CQ Magazine — the CQ DX Marathon. This new contest/DX program sounded very interesting, and I thought it would be a great program to keep old timers interested in working DX. As it was a new contest, there was nothing available in terms of tools, scoring software, web site, etc. Over the years the DX Marathon has grown significantly and has become an annual event with a tremendous following.

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