I was thinking about why I find Parks On The Air, POTA, attractive. I’m a relatively new “Ham”. I’ve only been licensed since January of 2021, but since then I attained the General then the Amateur Extra license. Check out my post on online study guides.

There is the obvious element of POTA which is operating from remot(ish) locations. Getting outdoors, seeing different locations and enjoying the changing seasons. POTA can be a year round sport.

In addition to the outdoorsy aspects of POTA my biggest pleasure has come from improving my skills as an operator…much improved.

On one end of the radio operator spectrum you can scan the dial for hams calling “CQ”, (seek you). When you make contact you generally have a short chat or QSO at which point you move on to your next QSO.

When I was first getting introduced to HF communication, I was curious if there was a more organized way of making contacts. Enter HF nets. Like UHF/VHF nets, these are more likely to be organized and scheduled regularly. HF nets do attract a lot, (a lot), of participants given the nature of long distance HF communications. You could easily be the number 50 in the queue, so if you’re itchin’ to talk this might not be the ideal method of getting on the air. There is a lot of standing by.

At the other end of the spectrum is “contesting”. Contesting is the high volume, high speed portion of the hobby. The idea is to make as many contacts as possible during the time frame specified in the rules of that contest. If you’ve listened to a contest in progress it probably sounded very chaotic. It’s not, it is just very fast paced, with each contest specifying the elements needed during each exchange to count as an official contact for that contest. Contests are based on bands and times. That is, there is a start time and an end time and the band(s) on which the contest will be operating. You still must scan the dial to find the contesters.

I’m not very good at it, but contesting is fun once you get comfortable with it. Notice I said comfortable, not good.

That brings us to POTA. Right off the bat, you can find the POTA stations who are at the “P” by going to parksontheair.com and in the top banner clicking on “POTA Spots”. The page that is now displayed can be filtered by band and mode, (CW, SSB, FT8, etc.). If you are wanting to do 40meter SSB you would select those and the page would now display who’s on the air, the park they are operating from, the frequency they are using, when the last time someone heard them, and a few other bits of information. Tune them in, make contact, exchange pleasantries, 73 and log your new friend.

Wait, what? That sounds like shooting fish in a barrel. Well not exactly…it’s easier!

You know where they are. They want to talk to you and have a short QSO, it’s going on all day, every day, usually till shortly after sundown. The big deal, at least to me, is how much doing POTA will improve your radio skills. It’s kind of like contesting-lite.

Before we go any further, a couple of terms. The station shown on the POTA website soliciting calls, (CQ POTA), is called the Activator. He/She is “Activating the park”. The station calling the Activator is called a “Hunter”. Once the Activator makes ten contacts he has Activated the park. Yay! A certain number or types of activations earn awards. The same applies to hunters. So, without leaving the comfort of your shack you can earn awards, and at the same time help the activator score points. Win-win.

I’ll make a post about specific operating details soon, but a minimum contact consists of you calling the Activator with just your callsign; them responding with your callsign, a signal report and their park number; you respond with a signal report, your location, and “73“. It’s really that simple, and not generally at the breakneck pace of a contest.

So how will POTA make you a better operator? The way POTA is structured, you can spend more time making QSOs and less time searching for Activators. That allows more time for getting into a grove making contacts. You really will get better once you find your rhythm.

For me as a new-ish amateur radio operator I started out Hunting. It was the logical place to start…very slow paced. In another lifetime on the radio, I learned that knowing what was going to be said was just as important as the actual words themselves. This holds true for POTA exchanges. You will be amazed what you can pull out of a very weak and/or noisy signal when you know what is supposed to be said. Since the POTA exchanges are brief, you’ll catch on quickly. Just listen for a few minutes and you’ll be ready to jump in. See, you just got better and you haven’t even left home yet.

Rather than me going over all the “lingo” and such, check out a great YouTube video where Mike, K8MRD,  teaches his neighbor how to POTA. It really filled in some of the gaps for me about doing Parks on the Air. Mike is a prolific, right to the point YouTuber. You’ll see the rhythm at which Mike operates. That won’t be you, (or me), at the beginning. but once you get that cadence down you’ll be making tons of contacts.

Like the tourist who asked the New Yorker, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” To which the New Yorker replied, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Seven tree