Parks on the Air had another record breaking month!

I found you can combine POTA with any number of other outdoor activities. I'm heading to a park tomorrow for a three-day, two-night camping trip in central Florida.
On tap are camping, hiking and nature photography, oh yes, and activating the park.
WK4LR

 

POTA In my opinion is the best. ran more frequency's and also learned to work a pileup efficiently and get them all logged. And its not a contest we can use all bands. I love activating A park. and I am Just getting started. love HF spent years in VHF and UHF cannot work HF at my QTH the Parks on the air. made me a good operator. and also folks setting up in the field and working with battery power Is the best emergency training one will ever get!

 

I'm sort of falling out of love with POTA. For me POTA is like a small town that suddenly grew so much so quickly that it lost the charm it once had. The very charm that made you want to move there in the first place.

 

That's how I approach it. I won't travel to a park solely to activate it, but if I'm there for other activities, I might get on the air. Many of the "parks" I visit are not traditional parks, but wildlife management areas, national forests, etc, so most of my visits are for hiking, camping, and the like.

Chris

 

Truth be told, the bloom is off the rose for me as well. It seems to be just people frantically chasing parks and shouting over each other, which is why I seldom activate a park any longer (not that I was super active to begin with). People seem to take it far too seriously. Not to compare programs, but I find the pace and community of SOTA to be much more in line with my preferences. Anymore, I do POTA (activating or chasing) around the campfire after activating a SOTA summit during the day.

Chris

 

It does get pretty crazy some days especially on the weekends, but I think some of the madness has tapered off a bit recently. From my experience the weekdays are noticeably more chill than the weekends having a more relaxed feel to me. I can only speak as a hunter/chaser but working POTA activators has allowed me to make many contacts with a pretty modest station so I'm still enjoying it. I can see POTA settling into something similar to your SOTA experiences in a few years, but being a newer program it's seeing a lot of rapid growth because it's the new thing.

 

Thanks for all the activation guys! I hear POA stations when not much else is going on the bands. Thanks again for keeping the bands active and FUN!
I hope to work you on the air soon. I have some videos on youtube so check out ncphotos or my callsign and it should pull them up.


Best 73,
Chuck, W2CSI,
ncphotos@gmail.com
Youtube ID: ncphotos

 

To stumble across one of these stations at A park becomes A highlite to my day. Always listening for them Always trying .
I live in an HOA Subdivison so when I here POTA I try hard to get A reply .
Keep going people .