My great friend, John, W8WEJ, achieved the ARRL Triple Play Award on March 4, 2009, and was given Award No. 191 !!! WOW! At that time I started to think about trying for it myself. However, it wasn't until the W1AW/portable operations from all the U.S. States in 2014 that I began to get serious about trying to accumulate the 150 necessary LoTW confirmations. By the end of the W1AW/ program, I had acquired most of the necessary confirmations but not enough.
This spring I checked my records and found that I needed only four more states to reach the 150 total:
Georgia - Phone and Digital
Minnesota - Digital
Washington - CW
I actually posted a note on my computer monitor with the above information but it stayed there for several months before I did anything about it.
On 26-July-2018 I got an email from N1ADM asking if I could give him a CW QSO from WV as one of the last two he needed to complete his Triple Play. In his email he said:
"I don’t have much to offer in return, except for my gratitude. Georgia isn’t very tough to work for awards, but I am happy to work skeds with anyone who needs my grid or county."
HEY, this dude's in GEORGIA - and I need GEORGIA on Phone and Digital. What a match!
We worked that night on all three modes and N1ADM now only needed ND on CW to complete his award and I only needed MN on Digital and WA on CW. BTW, N1ADM scored a ND QSO only 1 hour later and received his Triple Play Award (No. 2073) the next day.
Now that I was only 2 QSO's away, I finally got busy looking for MN on Digital. Using FT8 I called "CQ MN" on 20-M for awhile - no response, then again on 17-M - no response. When I moved to 30-M, before I could start calling CQ, I saw WBØN calling CQ from EN34. A quick look to QRZ and YES - he was in Minnesota! In 2 minutes we had completed and he quickly uploaded to LoTW. Now I only needed ONE more - Washington on CW.
I looked around the Internet and found WR7K was a station in Washington and I decided to email him. Guy, WR7K, promptly replied with his phone number and I set a sked with him for the next evening via a follow-up email. When the sked time came I telephoned him but got his answering machine. I called him on the sked for 5 minutes with no response. I then noticed on QRZ that Guy was born in 1939 so I thought he might have fallen asleep on the couch!
The next day he emailed to say he was out at the sked time and we should try the next night. Well, a half-hour before the sked time, Guy, WR7K, called me on the phone to say 40-M sounded a little noisy at his end but we could still try if I wanted. The sked had been set for 11:30 p.m. EDT so I was not ready and had to turn on all the equipment. When I got on frequency, there he was calling me with his 100-watts. BINGO! A CW QSO with Washington was made. I telephoned him and got the machine again so I left him a message and he phoned right back. By the time I hung up the phone and uploaded to LoTW, his QSL was already there! That gave me the needed 150 QSL's and I applied for the Triple Play award right then.
Many awards only require you to work a certain number of QSO's (like 100 for DXCC out of 340 countries) but the Triple Play Award requires you to work ALL of the U.S. States on three different modes. Getting them confirmed on LoTW is usually a lot easier than getting QSL cards. Since they are all recorded on LoTW, it's a snap to apply for the award - you do it all online!
I'm very pleased to have finally completed this award. And, it's a VERY NICE looking award as well.
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