W1AW Centennial Operation - The Way To 9B WAS

OK, it took me a month to catch on. I read about the ARRL Centennial celebration. If you haven't heard about it, take a moment to check out the link. What you want to see is the Centennial QSO Party.

I'll wait.

Now, I didn't get very excited about the Centennial Points Challenge. I'm sure I'll work a few points this year just as a natural side effect of operating in contests and other events throughout the year. When I read about the W1AW portable operations from all fifty states (plus US territories), I didn't get all excited either. After all, I already have 6-band WAS. It took the LoTW and many years of work to complete that, doing mostly contest operation, so I didn't make the connection at first.

The W1AW portable operations make it easy to achieve 9-band WAS.

I think it hit me one night when I was looking at spots for FT5ZM. (Great DXpedition, if you didn't manage to work them, well, it wasn't their fault...) I saw spots for W1AW-portable. Some of them were on 30, 17 and 12m.

Now, I said I have 6-band WAS. That's because there are no contests on 30, 17 and 12m. I do operate there, but it's been mostly DXing. I do a little casual style operating with USA stations, but many of these rag chewers don't tend to QSL via LoTW.

I then made the connection -- these highly visible W1AW-portable operations are the perfect way to fill in all the holes in your LoTW WAS confirmations. All of the W1AW-portable contacts will be confirmed on LoTW. They will operate from each state twice throughout the year for an entire week, being on the air virtually all the time. Perfect.

Since then, I've been sneaking into the shack working W1AW-portable on all the bands that I need. I have two award accounts, one for Floyd County and one for the QTH in Gwinnett, so I have a chance to fill in the holes for each.

Don't have WAS? Or need WAS on a hard band like 80m, 15m or the WARC bands? This is your chance. Good luck.