OnAllBands has reached the final stop on our tour of the top-ten Most Wanted DXCC Entities—Turkmenistan, a landlocked country in central Asia that hasn’t seen a significant amateur radio activation in many years.
Editor’s Note: When this article was written, Turkmenistan had briefly dropped into the top ten, but in the ever-shifting world of DXing, it has since fallen back in the rankings. Suffice it to say, top ten or not, it’s still ultra-rare.
Turkmenistan’s DXCC prefix, EZ, is certainly ironic because there is nothing “easy” about making contact with this country bordered by Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Caspian Sea. (The Caspian Sea does not provide access to international waterways, allowing Turkmenistan to hold its “landlocked” designation.)
Slightly smaller than Spain at 189,660 square miles, 70% of Turkmenistan is covered by the Karakum Desert. It is one of the world’s driest deserts, experiencing rainfall from three to six inches annually. It is home to the world’s second-longest irrigation canal, the Karakum Canal (900 miles), which brings water from the Amu Darya River to the southern regions of the desert.
This leads us to the OnAllBands Geography Question of the Day: Can you name the world’s longest irrigation canal? Answer below.
One of the desert’s most notable features is the Darvaza gas crater, which has been burning since 1971.
Amateur Radio Activity
Amateur radio was suspended in the country of seven million in August 2006, though a club station (EZ7V) and a couple other stations have been active from Turkmenistan. The ARRL announced that only QSOs made with EZ7V until December 31, 2006, count toward DXCC.
In the summers of 2023, 2024, and 2025, EZ/DL7ZM (David, DL7ZM) was active on a limited basis (10M and 6M) from Turkmenistan. He has made it clear that these activations were not “DXpeditions” with the intention of logging thousands of QSOs. His goals have been to demonstrate “radio propagation and the technology together with my partners here,” he wrote on QRZ.com in 2023. Other objectives have included encouraging students in Turkmenistan to become interested in studying electrical engineering and promoting friendship and peace through making contacts with operators in other countries.
For those he has made rare QSOs with, he wrote, “I assume this activity will finally be accepted by the ARRL, as I have a full license with call sign, frequencies, etc.” As of this posting, the ARRL has taken no official stance on the validity of these activations.
In 2025, he wrote, “My activity in Turkmenistan is completed for this year. It was a great success, first in the mountains and then at Oguz Han University. I concentrated on 6M, as we are interested in 6M propagation.”
QSL Cards
Scotty, KG9Z, DX Engineering customer/technical support specialist, provided us with the below Turkmenistan QSL card. He made a CW QSO with UH8EAK in August 1985. (UH8 was the previous Turkmenistan prefix.) At the time, the country was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union known as the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. It gained its independence in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Why is this card so cool? UH8EAK used a UW3DI transceiver created by Yuri Kudryavstev, UW3DI. In the late 1960s, Yuri designed what would become the popular UW3DI rig—widely used in the Soviet Union, often replicated by homebrewers, and still talked about today. It was originally a tube transceiver. Subsequent models featured semiconductors. Longtime DXers will also note that at one time, all QSL card correspondence with the USSR was done through P.O. Box 88, Moscow.
Wayne, K8FF, DX Engineering customer/technical support specialist, made contact with UH8BO in Ashkhabad in 1964.
Now back to our Geography Question of the Day: Can you name the world’s longest irrigation canal? That would be the Grand Canal of China, which stretches 1,115 miles, connecting Beijing in the north with Hangzhou in the south.
Check out these OnAllBands articles on other top-ten most-wanted entities:
- Kerguelen Island
- Aves Island
- Peter I Island
- Johnston Island
- Pratas Island and Kure Island
- North Korea, Scarborough Reef, and San Felix Islands
Visit DXEngineering.com for everything you need to upgrade your station to make sure you’re ready when entities like Turkmenistan are in play. You’ll find transceivers, antennas, amplifiers, CW keys and paddles, headsets and speakers, reference books like “Ham Radio DX: A Complete Guide,” and much more.
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Editor’s Note: Every month, DX Engineering features QSL cards from our team members’ personal collections. To highlight upcoming DXpeditions, we’ll be displaying a few of our favorite cards along with details about what it took to make these contacts. We’re excited to share some of the special cards pulled from the thousands we’ve received over the years. We look forward to seeing your cards as well!
