SEPTEMBER MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH 7:00 PM
STOCKTON SAILING CLUB
4980 BUCKLEY COVE
STOCKTON, CA  

QST QST QST… The September meeting of the Stockton-Delta Amateur Radio Club will be held at the Stockton Sailing Club Auditorium, 4980 Buckley Cove Rd in Stockton. The Sailing Club is located at the west end of March Lane, west of Interstate 5 on the left-hand side of the road just before you enter Buckley Cove Park. We will be planning the multi-club Ham Fest, Swap Meet and potluck scheduled for Saturday September 30th. This is being held with the SARA Club and the Manteca Club and others. John NZ6Q will be giving a presentation on contesting and radiosport. He will also talk about the importance of your logbook. John and Annie N6ACL will be hosting a CQP County Expedition to Mariposa County for the contest. Your club has a lot going on and WE NEED YOU HERE TOO! So… grab your spouse, significant other or just that friend and we'll see you at the meeting! ALSO AVAILABLE ON ZOOM IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND IN PERSON Zoom Meeting Information: Topic: W6SF MONTHLY CLUB MEETING ON ZOOM Time: September 14th, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8715741939?pwd=alRiTFhydFNtMlBQZXAwOUd2YTN1UT09 Meeting ID: 871 574 1939 Passcode: 147165 One tap mobile +16699009128,,8715741939#,,,,*147165# US

JOHN & ANNIE'S CQP 2023
BARRETT COVE AT LAKE McCLURE
MARIPOSA COUNTY 
OCTOBER 5 - 8

QST QST QST… You're cordially invited to come join us for CQP 2023. We will be setting up at Barret Cove Campground at Lake McClure starting Thursday morning on October 5th. Once the antennas are raised, on-the-air warm-up start until the contest gets underway Saturday morning October 7th at 9AM. We will have 4 stations in operation on 80M through 10M with 80/40M dipoles, End-Fed Half Wave dipoles and more. Come and check out the BuddiHex HexBeam ! Club members are welcome any time. Come help set-up, come stay the weekend, or just come for a few hours on Saturday or Sunday and learn the excitement of Radio Sport.

You can check out the rules for CQP at www.cpq.org This is your chance to be the hunted DX right from your own back yard! We usually have plenty of food n drink. We are planning a Bar-B-Que on Saturday night and if you're not a tent camper, you can get a few hours shut-eye in our motorhome. Last year we logged 982 QSOs and Collin K6CMM came in 2nd place for the youth operator on 10M using his own call.

Come join the fun! It's a short drive from Stockton. Come for an hour - stay the weekend! 73, John NZ6Q and Annie N6ACL

JAN 1 – DEC 31, 2023

2023 will be celebrated by ARRL as “The Year of the Volunteer.” More information will be available throughout the year as the details are confirmed. However, the first adventure has been announced as a project called “Volunteers On The Air (VOTA).” Here we get ‘points’ for each contact made with another ARRL volunteer. So, if two ARRL members contact each other, they will each receive a point for that QSO. No special codes, sequence numbers, or section information needs to be passed. Make contact with a fellow ARRL member, and you each receive a point. Each of you must upload the contact to the Logbook of The World (LoTW), and your points are calculated when the QSO is matched. This could be an FT8 contact, a CW contact, a simplex 2M FM contact, an RTTY contact, or an SSB rag-chew.

To add more interest to the year-long operating event and help demonstrate the ARRL volunteers’ value, each level of volunteer activity has been assigned a point level, shown in the table at http://vota.arrl.org For example, if you make a contact with John NZ6Q, the San Joaquin Valley Section Manager, you’ll get 175 points for that one contact. So, I’ll need to up my HF game to handle all the pile-ups coming my way in 2023. Maybe I need that 160M inverted L and another HF rig ! I’m hoping you will be able to get some certificates, or wallpaper, for your efforts.

More details on this are at http://vota.arrl.org and in the January 2023 issue of QST. So, get your gear running, make sure your LoTW connection is working, and see you on the air!!!

VOTA Program Rules

I’m sure these rules may be extended or revised, so please check http://vota.arrl.org for updates.

• This starts January 1, 2023, at 0000Z.
• This ends December 31, 2023, at 2359Z.
• You must be an ARRL member. You can join or renew at https://arrl.org/join/
• All QSOs must be uploaded to the ARRL QSO matching system, Logbook of The World (LoTW).
• No repeater contacts are allowed.
• Contacts can be made on any band (except 12 M, 17 M, and 30 M).
• Contacts can be made on any legal mode of operation.
• You receive ‘points’ based on the volunteer level of the ARRL member you contact. Points range from 1 point for an ARRL member to 300 points for Rick Roderick K5UR.
• The point levels are listed at http://vota.arrl.org (Your favorite Section Managers are worth 175 points.)
• Each QSO will get only one point value. For example, someone who is a member, a life member, and an Assistant Section Manager will be worth the value of the highest role, 35 points for the ASM role.

Logbook of The World (LoTW)

All the reporting for this VOTA effort will be handled automatically by the ARRL Logbook of The World (LoTD) QSO matching system. If you already log your QSOs from your favorite logging software and it uploads them to LoTW, you will automatically be enrolled in the project. Your QSOs will be verified normally, and the callsigns of the people you work will be searched to find the appropriate points (table shown at http://vota.arrl.org ) that you receive for each QSO.

But, if you aren’t set up to use LoTW, now is the time to set it up. The LoTW quick-start page is a great place to start, and the “What is LoTW Document” explains the whole process. You must authenticate yourself with the system by receiving a postcard mailed to your FCC-registered address. You’ll run a program called TSQL that is used by your logging program, N3FJP, N1MM, DX Lab Suite, or something else to authenticate and upload to LoTW. You can start the setup process now, and you’ll be ready in a few days. Hold your logs until you get LoTW set up, and you can upload them when you get it all sorted.

If you need help setting up your LoTW account, watch some YouTube videos, contact your Elmer, or local club. If that fails, email me at nz6q@arrl.org, and I’ll find someone to help you.

W1AW Remote Operations

As a part of the Year of the Volunteer celebration, the mystical callsign W1AW will be traveling to the corners of ARRL-land. ARRL members in each state/territory will be asked to operate their stations for two different weeks using the callsign W1AW/x where x is one of the local regions: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, KL, KH0, KH2, KH6, KH7, KH8, KP2, KP3, or KP4. For example, California’s first week starts Feb 15 2023, at 0000z and will run through January 31, 2023, at 2359z, using the callsign W1AW/6. Each state will coordinate the time/band/mode slots throughout the week and hams will be able to operate their

Each state W1AW coordinator will make a schedule to optimize the on-air time for those interested in running the callsign. Contact John NZ6Q if you would like to be W1AW/6 between October 11th and October 17th. You can email to...  nz6q@arrl.net

This is a great opportunity to get on the air and have some fun, maybe earn a W1AW Worked-All-States Certificate, talk to the President of the ARRL (I did during the Centennial QSO Party in 2014), meet a bunch of new people and learn more about the hobby while you’re doing it.

CHECK OUT OUR OWN BOB KM6ONS AND KYLE K6KDD ON GOOD DAY SACRAMENTO

AUGUST 28, 2018