At 5pm in Arizona on New Year’s Eve, the UTC clock rolls over to 2023. Looking for POTA callers on FT8, I worked a few stations for my first official contacts of the year. I mostly chased POTA during the week on FT8. This earned the New Year’s Hunter award for making contacts as a hunter in the first week of the year.
On Sunday, I noticed NF3R calling CQ VOTA. Did he type POTA wrong? Googling VOTA, I started wondering if he was really working Volcanoes On The Air? A little more searching and I found the ARRL page for 2023 Volunteers On The Air. I hadn’t read my QST for the month yet, so missed the write-up there. https://vota.arrl.org/ Since
On Monday, having the day off work, James N7ELL, Rick W7STS, Randy K7NNT, Marcia K7AZM, and Evan all helped get my tower stood up after almost a year of working on it. See tower write-up.
On Monday night, I decided to call CQ VOTA myself. Reviewing the rules and points, I discovered I’m worth 35 points as AZ Assistant Section Manager. I haven’t been helping the SM Rick W7RAP in this role, but the ARRL site still shows it assigned. Anyway, figured I’d give some chasers points and ended up working about 20 in a row on 40m FT8.
Thursday evening was the January CADXA meeting. I was presented with the 2022 Presidential Service Award. We had an open forum where the mic was passed and members discussed operations over the last year and what they had planned for the year going forward.
The RTTY Roundup kicked off at 11am on Saturday. I wasn’t able to get on the radio until around 2pm, but worked a few hours until around 5:30pm. James N7ELL and Rick W7STS came over and sat in the shack as cheerleaders for an hour or so before we migrated to Taco’s Calafia for the Saturday Hamfeast. More RTTY Roundup in next week’s summary.