W2IK | 
07 12th, 2011| 
In advance of the trip that two West Gulf ARRL folk are taking to W1AW, I have a few memories I’d like to share about several of my sojourns to Newington. Living on Long Island most of my life, and especially in the late 1980s and 1990’s, I’d find the time to play hooky from work several times a year and take the ferry across Long Island Sound driving the rest of the way to what many would call the “Mecca Of Amateur Radio”, the headquarters of the ARRL. I’d make the trip usually to do a few things such as hand-deliver my QSL cards to be checked for DXCC awards (sorry, but after all the work to get them I didn’t want them lost in the mail.) and taking tours of the headquarters building, which in itself is an interesting education, I’d usually make my way over to the W1AW operating building. Like a kid in a candy shop, you not only get to see them programming the computers and Harris transmitters for the ARRL’s code practice transmissions, etc. but if you are a licensed ham you get a chance to operate using the W1AW callsign and use top-of-the-line equipment, amps and beams.
