This year (2023) is all about VotA for me. I started the year with a total of 17,500 contacts listed on QRZ. I will be trying to increase that total by 50%, this year. That means 8,750 more contacts to reach a total of 26,250.
At the time of this blog post, I am well on my way to reaching that goal. I have 24,126 contacts as of April 6th, 2023. Only 2,124 to go. I have brought the average that I need per day down, considerably. I am keeping track of that on my QRZ profile page.
I have avoided as many duplicate contacts as possible, but there are a few. Some of the contests that I have participated in have made that unavoidable. While the majority of the contacts that I have made, this year, have been using FT8/4, I still try to get as many SSB contacts as I can. Like I once heard somebody say, “If I am stranded on a desert island and I am really, really craving a Coca-Cola, I am definitely not going to turn down a water”.
While it will not count toward my goal, I will also be operating as W1AW/0 during the North Dakota portable weeks. I really wish that we could get more North Dakota stations on the air, but I am not the one to try to stir that pot. I will be operating during the week of April 19-25 for a total of 50 hours. All of the other stations (6 others, so far) that have signed up to operate W1AW/0 during that time period will be operating for a combined time of 28 hours.
Don’t get me wrong, I really want to stir that pot, but since I work 50+ hours per week and am busy with other projects, I do not want to argue with anybody that may have more on their plates than I do. Even people that may be retired could be busier than me.
EDIT: It turns out that I may have been wrong about signing up for so many hours, right away. With one day left in North Dakota’s week, there are a total of 16 stations on the schedule. I had to adjust the bands that I was scheduled to work, due to the high K Index caused by the solar activity this week. Today (Monday) I wasn’t able to hear any stations on 15m or 10m, so I stuck to the lower bands. Waiting my have been a good idea. Still… only 16 stations in the whole state?
As of earlier today, the ARRL actually started giving VotA stations a “rank” on their leaderboard. Right now, I am #111 worldwide. I am hoping to only go up from there. I will also not stop making contacts once I reach my yearly goal. If I increase my total contacts by 50%, I will set another goal to increase it by 100%.