Worked All States

A small cardboard tube arrived in this morning's post.  I wondered for a while what it might be.

Ah!  The ARRL label gave the game away as this - finally - being my WAS (basic) award certificate!

'Finally', not because it took me a very long time to obtain - in fact, it took me a very short time of about three years, but because I applied for it on the last day of December, 2014!  Format changes to the certificate printing were apparently the cause of the long delay.

Worth hanging on the wall. 

So, three months later, I have my certificate.  Not bad for the $17 or something is cost (postage was $9.70!), arriving in good shape and no dog ears in a stout cardboard tube.  QRZ.com might take a hint from the ARRL, in that the former organisation's awards ship in envelopes only somewhat stiffened by thin card, and a bit more prone to damage (though mine wasn't.)

I find myself again wondering about QSLing.  It's now almost a requirement to QSL via three main systems: LoTW, e-QSL and, more recently, QRZ.com.  It takes a depressingly large amount of time to process all the requests, though one does it in the knowledge that it is a two-way thing; it's never nice when someone fails to formally acknowledge the QSO.

I'm still short on Hawaii for e-QSL, despite having had both the ARRL and QRZ.com WAS awards by now. The most difficult state to get was not Hawaii, in fact, but North Dakota, where few hams seem to exist amongst what is, admittedly, quite a low population - about half that of HI.

And to bring this post back to the general spirit of this blog - of enjoying ham radio on a budget - absolutely every single one of those WAS QSOs was with nothing more than a maximum of 80W SSB (more often 10W on PSK-31), and single-element wire delta loops.

Will I be chasing WAS on each and every individual band?  No chance!  That really is taking the hobby too far...