UPDATE: I awoke to not one, but two confirmations via LoTW from the four South Dakota stations worked. Still needed are phone contacts with Utah and Idaho.

In the Worked All States category I have the paper for CW and Digital hanging on the wall. Missing is WAS Phone as I still need confirmations from three states. This has not been a priority for me because, well, I’m not a big fan of SSB. That mode accounts for less than 3% of my entire logbook. I can’t even imagine it having been an actual incentive for anyone to upgrade. If it were the only mode available to radio hams I’d be a coin or stamp collector.

Still, it would be nice to wrap up WAS Phone which would also make me eligible for the Triple-Play award. The three states still needed are Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota and as it turns out, this weekend was the South Dakota QSO Party.

You see where I’m going here…

I hung out amongst the heterodynes and CBer soundalikes in the phone portion of 20 meters looking for South Dakota. When I found it I thought that might end the quest, but I checked the call sign of the first station worked and he last uploaded to LoTW months ago. Not a good sign. So I kept tuning and eventually had four in the log when I went to bed Saturday night. It was tough to wrest those four contacts from the aether. They were all I heard from SD on phone despite being surrounded by seemingly hundreds calling “CQ PA” which was also happening this weekend.

I resumed the search the next morning not confident that the four SD stations logged were sufficient to get the single needed LoTW confirmation. But on Sunday all I was able to copy were the same four stations and eventually I gave up. If I have to I can always sit in a long OMISS queue to try to get where I want to go.

Now I wait and see if anyone confirms via LoTW over the next few weeks. I have my doubts. I would have liked to have put ten or more in the log to improve my chances but it wasn’t to be. As of now I still need three more states…