[CQ-Contest] 2014 SSB Sweepstakes Scoring Question

[Wes Plouff]

Hello to the CQ-Contest list! I have a question about a possible 
one-time issue with ARRL Sweepstakes scoring. I'm wondering if others 
have seen the same issue. I've sent an e-mail to contests at arrl.org with 
no response after a week.

In the 2014 SSB Sweepstakes, I worked W1AW/1 in Rhode Island and W1AW/5 
in Mississippi. W1AW/5 was my only contact in MS, and I thought I had 
contacted all 83 sections. As a small-time contester, I was thrilled to 
make a clean sweep.

Well, at my club banquet in June, when coffee mugs were handed out, it 
turns out none of us who thought we had clean sweeps were credited by 
the ARRL. So I looked up my logcheck file. It turns out that the log 
checking software marked W1AW/5 as a dupe, thus invalidating my MS 
multiplier and clean sweep. One of the other club members reported the 
same had happened to him.

I'm not upset at this, my final score is still respectable, but I am 
curious. This may have been a glitch because W1AW/portable operation 
during the ARRL Centennial year was unique to 2014. I'm wondering: have 
any other hams gotten into a situation where contacts with multiple 
W1AW/?? callsigns were invalidated by the checker? Has anyone heard a 
good explanation about why such contacts should or should not be counted 
as dupes?

73,

Wes Plouff AC8JF
Royal Oak, MI