Like the United States, Japan divides up their nation into ten geographical areas and assigns each a digit used to create their Amateur Radio callsigns. The FT4 Digital Mode Club‘s (FT4DMC) rewards Hams who make contact with at least one station in each of those call areas using FT4.
The JCA is an award synonym of the Japan Amateur Radio League‘s All Japan Districts (AJD) award. The JCA covers only contacts made using the FT4 digital mode. If you’d like to also chase districts using CW, SSB or other modes, you might give AJD a shot as well.
The certificate consists of a modern, nicely crafted photo of birds presumably near cherry blossoms. Unlike some other digital awards, FT4DMC tends to produce subtle, understated designs.
There do not appear to be any band limitations. I can also see no single band awards available, unlike FT8DMC’s WAJCA.
The FT4 Digital Mode Club is an offshoot from the popular FT8 Digital Mode Club (FT8DMC). Rather than try and maintain a parallel award programs and the complexity that would involve, it appears they decided to spin up another club for the purpose.
To apply for the Japan Call Area Award, and all other FT4DMC awards, you must install the UltimateAAC application on a Windows machine. That application scans your WSJT-X ADIF log file and will inform you when you’ve qualified for the award at various levels. FT4DMC issues the award in digital form only (JPG or PDF) with no printing or shipping costs. In fact, the award is completely free, like all of their other awards.