Introduction

The conducting contacts with amateur stations, located in different parts of the world, for the purpose of obtainments of the WAZ Award is surely the most popular form of the HAM activity.

The award is issued in numerous categories.

For aims of the certificate the world was parted into 40 zones. This partition images the historic map from the year 1947.

With the period of time political processes and precise of criteria of DXCC Entities defining caused series of changes in belongings of definite areas to zones, and also influenced in relays of borders route between zones.

The detailed regulations of the WAZ Award you will find here. See as looks the up to date and improved (thanks of the persistence and abilities of the persuasion by Floyd Gerald, N5FG) official list of WAZ zones and Entities/areas.

It is proper to advert on the fact that rules of this award put the equal accent on the distinction of DXCC Entities and geographical positions. Therefore some zones divide states or DXCC Entities on 2 or more parts, to ascribe it to different zones. Such cases are effective with the qualification of the route of zones limits on base of lines demarcating administrative units of states or geographical units.

The exact run-down of such borders of zones is represented on separate maps, on the page of zone which they refer.

As result of of the many months′ work with Floyd succeeded on 1 May 2007 to place the new, improved and up to date List of Zones.

 It did not succeed to me instead to convince the Committee of WAZ to the regard of following themes:

• The definition of rules and consequently the precise delimitation of sea-zones. nowadays oblige fairly general rules of their qualifying:

  • „straight line” – this does not refers anything in relation to various map projections (Earth allowedly is a sphere); e.g. the right line in the Mercator's grid is not straight on other maps; the border of the zone 40 from the beginning became taken as the arc;

  • „more or less in the middle the sea dividing territories of DXCC Entities or states” – hardly ever one can this use in view of:

    • areas of territorial waters,

    • appointments of treaties about the execution of demarcations on areas of the intersection of the several states jurisdiction,

    • the lay-out of the exclusive economic zones by states,

    • bilateral agreements regulated the route of borders in littoral zones or in gulfs.

The example demarcation of waters in the Poland-Germany treaty

• The approving for the award contacts with /mm and /am stations. At present at the use of the GPS system, one can very sensitively to qualify the position of the station. A consequence of the current situation is the dim criterion of the acknowledgement of the contact with /m station in the case of inland waters (gulfs, lakes or rivers) across which run state-borders or borders of zones. Especially when they are not a straight line. Without the exact navigation one cannot qualify from what state or zone transmits the crew of the boat. Example - small maps with borders of states coverer with borders of zones for:

		Lake Ontario: USA - Canada; Zones 4/5
		Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan – Iran – Turkmenistan – Kazakhstan - Russia; Zones 16/17/21
		Lake Tanganyika: Tanzania – Zambia – Burundi – Dem. Rep. Congo; Zones 36/37

The opposition thereon is inasmuch strange, that already for many years in the case of Antarctica bases about belonging to the definite zone one decides on the base of geographical coordinates - qualified by the subject ruling with the base.

• The most essential problem is the absence of assent of the Committee on the publication of the new official map of zones and finally the necessity of making use still with the already ancient map (the year 1947 is the foregoing millennium!)

This map no longer reflects the current route of political borders, shapes and names of states and consequently - she possesses incorrectly marked limits of zones.

Leaving of the old map creates the serious consequence - divergences between the official map and the official list of zones. Errors which result from here, are copied and spread by different publishers of maps.

Besides except errors, the exactitude of this map – in the situation when least DXCC Entities have a surface smaller than 0,01 km² - is useless!

Thereby in the section WAZ errors are placed information on errors and inaccuracies on the official map.