I suspect that it might take a day or two after 180 posts for access to appear. Also, there could be cases where a post was deleted but your post counter under your username didn't decrease, so there's a chance that your true count could be under 180. I don't know whether this occurs on FT, but I'm thinking of situations such as where you quote a post that's later deleted, not when a mod deletes your post for cause.

AFAIK breadth doesn't matter as long as you're making travel related contributions, although too many posts like "+1000" would probably be held against you if someone were to look at content.