(Climbing onto soapbox.) See below. IMHO VOTA is turning out to be a GREAT event, and I want to thank ARRL staff for coming up with the concept. We again ran a second station during the CQ WPX RTTY contest strictly on VOTA Phone, and ended up the weekend with 764 VOTA contacts. Of those, 557 were on 10 meters, in the Technician sub-band. I'm sure many were Techs too. The pileups were again HUGE, akin to being a DXpedition from one of the Clublog Top Ten most wanted countries. We will be doing a rinse and repeat next weekend for ARRL CW, and again for the ARRL phone weekend. I'm expecting a LOT of QSL card requests, as it seems quite a few new Tech hams need OR for WAS. Here is why this is all important: It's pretty cheap marketing for the ARRL, and I'm sure we will get a few more members out of it. I ran into several ops that said they were former League members, and are now considering renewing. Several mentioned that they have always meant to join, but will now make it a priority. Many I ran into that were not familiar with ARRL at all were directed to our website to get the detailed information on VOTA. All good stuff! Let's get those red badges out there and "on the air!" (Off soapbox..... ;-) 73; Mike W7VO
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Shubh Bhattacharya <atlanpura@gmail.com> To: w7vo@arrl.org Date: 02/11/2023 2:28 PM Subject: Thanks - VOTA
Hi Michael,
Thanks for hosting the Vota today on 10m.
I was super excited to get my very first HF contact (via Skywave) with your station today and great to see that my gear gets me all the way to the West!!
I uploaded the QSO to LOTW and hopefully you can QSL on that.
73, Shubh https://www.qrz.com/db/K4VTZ