Kenneth Opskar, LA7GIA, the radio amateur who was detained in Chad for several days after his TT8KO DXpedition was shut down, has won the Intrepid Spirit Award from the Intrepid-DX Group. The honor was announced over the weekend at the annual International DX Convention in Visalia, California.

The Intrepid Spirit Award memorializes James McLaughlin, T6AF, an Intrepid-DX Group member, who died in Afghanistan in 2011.

“The award is intended to recognize and honor those individuals or teams that boldly activate rare entities where their own personal safety is secondary to their pursuit of providing contacts to the DX community,” the award announcement said. “While we do not encourage DXers to go into harm’s way, we recognize that circumstances sometimes require that and we recognize those intrepid DXers with the Intrepid Spirit Award.”