If I enter my location as 'G' for England, then select GB-BI I get taken to Birmingham Alabama, not England.

How do I report this? I was going to try my first activation tomorrow but a bit stuck now.

Cheers

​

Mick

Is it possible to use DMR when doing a POTA activation? I know land repeaters are a no go, but hotspots should be okay?

As I study for my General, I'd like to get started as a technician. I have access to FT-8`8nd and a few antenna options. Is there any activity on 10 Meters for POTA? Phone or Digital.

In a few months I plan to have my station fully portable and intend to take it camping next summer. Until then I will be doing some backyard operations and local park operations. There is a nice one about 5 minutes away up on a hill with a great view. What's the status of POTA? Has anyone been in contact with Fred VE3FAL? He is listed on the website as a founder and has an active YouTube channel.

Ohio Pota is tomorrow. My club will be activating Jefferson Lake State park. Call sign W8CWO.

I have everything ready to go for POTA. Please check out parksontheair.com. Awards system and database is ready. So get out there and send me those logs!

I'd like to know. I don't care about points or anything, although the titles are cool and all from the posts I've read...

Anyway, I got my General a few weeks ago and have a MFJ-9420 coming that I plan on setting up in a go box and carrying with me on my dual sport adventures. We go to one or two state parks/national forests every few weeks, so I'd be activating them on at least 4 times a year basis. This would allow more folks to pick them up. There are a few quite a bit farther away, that we try to do once or twice a year.

Anyway, my point is, I'd be combining two of my hobbies into one which makes it that much more fun for me. So, when I get my little go box sorted, I plan on doing this. I will post here and if we get the other Sked thing going there as well.

I think for this to happen, we're just going to take it upon ourselves since some of the posts here are a year old with no activity even though the OP is still around.

Hell, I may just try to set something up myself.

we can login and post dates and times of when we will be on air. keep a log of who we contacted , confirmation by qrz / lotw / or direct/bureau.

We need a subreddit like /r/hampotanow to post a date and time , while those who want to contact can read there and attempt a contact

I'd like to step up and start working on this project. I could start by writing up some sample rules borrowing ideas and verbiage from SOTA/IOTA to create a document that could be used as a launching point for POTA. To do this I have a few questions about how everyone feels the program should be structured and what some of the priorities are so we can get it going.

• Do we want activators and chasers or just activators. The program is IMHO structured to be more accessible than SOTA/IOTA so more people can be out there activating. It would also reduce the administrative overhead of calculating points for 2 categories as well as the extra set of rules for chasers. Same goes for Short Wave Listeners. These extra groups could be added in later as the program grows.

• General scoring: 1 point to activate a city park, 2 for state/provincial, 3 for federal or go by acreage? Minimum 5 QSO's but do we give extra points for extra QSO's up to a maximum?

• Bonuses for Park-to-Park, Park-to-Peak, Park-to-Island. Bonuses for back country activations (travel a minimum of 1.5 km / 1 mile).

• Regional representatives will dictate which parks are eligible and their point count bases on a general standard (size, distance from a population center, etc.) This will vary from region to region.

• Extra points if you camp out / multiple days / canoeing / hiking / trekking / etc. Extra point only count for each day if you move more than a minimum distance (1.5km, 1mile).

• You can activate up to your maximum number of QSO's / points per day, each day, as long as you don't leave the borders of the park (allows for multi-day stays). Once you leave the park you can not re-activate it until after Jan 1st.

• Seasonal bonuses for winter (or monsoon season, gotta keep that rig dry)

• QRP bonus

• All frequencies / modes will count

• Contacts must be outside of the same campground. (No activating the guy next door, but you can activate drive-in camping to back country.

• No terrestrial repeaters for official contacts but you can use them to find and organize your contacts. Internet/phones can be used to organize contacts as well.

• If the park has a day rate you are required to pay it. No hanging out near the entrance to do your activations.

• All activations reset 00:00 UTC Jan 1.

• Awards can be added later but to begin you can give yourself a pat on the back at 100, 250, 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 points.

If you have any other ideas I'd love to hear them. Then we can start a document to formalize the rules.

edit: legibility

I live the idea since I live in Florida and there aren't many SOTA activation to do around here.. ;-)

I'd like to go about activating at least two parks this year, but what are the current "guidelines" about what counts as a park?

I understand it's still in flux, and designators aren't in place yet, but am I safe operating a large city park belonging to a system, or is it county park level and above? Or state park and above?

More or less, to avoid wasting time saying "Activating a park" (Other people's mainly, I don't care. I'm like a honey badger, I'll do it anyways), I'd like to pick a sites likely to be under the guidelines once they are finalized.

What would be some normal (and fun) awards? And what should we name them?

Here is what I'm thinking

Normal Awards

First Activation - Scout Award

10th Activation - Junior Pathfinder Award

25th Activation - Senior Pathfinder Award

50th Activation - Trailblazer Award

100th Activation - The Teddy Roosevelt Award (Though I would like this to be the Ron Swanson Award)

Points Based Awards (Still working out what points mean)

100 Points - ?

250 Points - ?

500 Points - ?

1000 Points - ?

2500 Points - ?

Fun Awards

First Activator for a park - The Virgin Timber Award

Throw out your suggestions!

Q: So what is POTA?

A: Simply put - Parks on the Air

Q: How did this come about?

A: Like most things in life, we didn't originally come up with it, but here is my story. Over the last several years I've often come across (on the radio and here on reddit) many SOTA (Summits) and IOTA (Islands) activations. These were always pretty cool to me, but due to my location not really feasible for me to participate in other than making contact with them. But there was one thing I've been doing for a long while and loving. That is going camping at our close state and federal parks (and national forests). So I thought to myself about a year ago, why not start a POTA!.

Well someone already did. Sadly it does not seem too active and there isn't much information other than go out and do it. So I brought it up on the #RedditNet IRC channel and boy did many people jump on board with the idea.

So here we are trying to organize it ourselves.

Q: What about the people that already have it?

A: No reason to leave them out, after all they did start something I find pretty cool. They have a good domain (http://www.hamparks.org/) but we want it to be better. But before we approach them we want to have a plan. Something solid we can take to them and say "Hey let's make the great thing even better together!"

Q: So what is your plan?

A: Well let's see

Step 1: Get a rough draft together of a General Rules guide together much like SOTA and IOTA have. Right now we are going through their guides to stitch something together. This will probably be the most difficult part, deciding what qualifies and how to identify it, etc.

Step 2: Work on getting a real website together. Something pretty nice. The kind where you can browse all the listed valid parks, you can log in and post where you are going to be activating from, upload your logs for contest points, apply for awards, and maybe even see who is active on a map (Just ideas)

Step 3: Hopefully work it all out with the current POTA people

Step 4: If all goes well, apply for non-profit status, and become a real association.

Q: Why the non-profit stuff on the end?

A: Well if we really want to do stuff like awards and run a good website we will need money. It's probably not necessary and this is just my suggestion for the time being. Membership in POTA should be free for everyone. But why not have a $5 lifetime silver membership to support activities. Maybe have some extra stuff for those who donate, like we will print out real awards for you and mail them, offer badges, etc. That's just my idea for now.

Q: Is this US only?

A: Of course not, we want this to be world-wide! We just need help from people in other countries to see how parks and forests work in their country. In the end the rules of what counts as a POTA activation will probably vary widely from country to country. Which is why we want everyone's help!

Q: So what does count for a valid POTA activation?

A: We are working on that, but the basic idea is that most state & federally controlled land will be eligible. National and State forests and parks are the easiest to acknowledge. Then you get into things like national monuments which get a bit trickier (How to get permission, what counts, etc). But this is a major thing open for discussion.

Q: Can I help?

A: You are here aren't you? :) Come on board and discuss these things with us all and make this great!

Thanks for you help -- KF5IUY

Some one should reach out to the old Parks on the air people. We should play nice for as long as we can. If they are inactive you would think they would be happy to let us have it.. but amateur radio is not short of turf wars....

Wherein we discuss and describe what we think should be counted as a "park"