VOA Special event Raise Awareness

The celebration of the 80th anniversary of Voice of America’s first transmission was accomplished by three amateur radio clubs: WC8VOA in Ohio, K3VOA in Washington DC and W1VOA in Greenville, NC (W4AMC) on February 19-20, 2022. This event was to congratulate the VOA on 80 years of service and was not financially supported by the VOA. Possibly this event would make people aware of how important telling the truth on the air to the spread of democracy and world peace this service is.
Special call signs were used: W3V, W8O and W4A where the suffix of the calls spell “VOA”.

Jocelyn KD8VRX, Marc K3POE and Peter N4PVH worked for 9 months coordinating the event, designing the cards and getting the volunteers to man the stations. The “VOA” is well known world wide as a source for truth in Journalism and relied on for quality information even where it is banned by foreign governments. The listening audience is estimated to be >300 million people. (almost equal to the population of USA). This fact alone indicates that the services of the VOA are still, to this day, vital and held in high esteem world wide as a true information source. For some listeners, it is the way they learned the English language.

The event was a success! There were 3665 contacts made using SSB (phone), CW (Morse code), FT8 (digital) using 20/40/80 meter bands mostly but others were also used. The breakdown is as follows:

Item	Number
W3V	541
W8O	2049
W4A	1075
Total Contacts Made	3665 QSO’s
USA States worked	50
USA Counties worked	991
Countries worked	57
Continents worked	6

Digital QSL cards were send out to every contact as long as their email was correct on QRZ.COM. Certificates were also emailed out to all. If they managed to get all three stations, the certificate showed this accomplishment.

Digital QSL cards were send from each station as long as their email address was correct on QRZ.com and looked like this:

If a contact wanted a paper QSL card, a mailed request including a SASE would be send to each station who would mail the following card back:

A big round of applause to all the amateur radio operators, both the contacts and the volunteers, that made this a success and found the stations on the airwaves. If you have a chance to lend support to the VOA by telling your Representatives and Senators how you believe that the VOA should continue to receive funding to promote democracy and world peace, please do so.
Thanks, 73 Peter.

(Feature image Field Day at night at VOA site C)

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