Hello everyone, my name is Brandon KI5ZIR and I am a fellow member of the Edmond Amateur Radio Society. My interests within the hobby are DMR and other digital modes, portable field ops, and ARES. Today, I went out to Stinchcombe Wildlife Refuge in Bethany: POTA park US-11222.
For those who are new to the hobby and those who don’t know, POTA is an acronym for Parks On the Air. It is a system of historic and/or other points of interest throughout the US and elsewhere. The point of it is to get out of the shack and explore your surroundings, all whilst perfecting your skills as a radio operator. I would also like to note that I have learned things as a result of my observations working in the field.
POTA is but one of several “contests” out there with SOTA: Summits On the Air, JOTA: Jamboree On the Air, and others for one to get into. In order to say you “activated” the park, one must make at least 10 two way QSOs, and upload their log. It is completely based on the honor system. It is as simple as making a POTA account on the pota.app website, picking out a park within the POTA system, setting up shop, and making/logging the QSOs.
Pictured below are mine and fellow club member Dee’s KJ5FVI setups. I was operating SSB on the HF bands on my Icom 7100 whilst Dee was operating FT8 from his iPad and his Xiegu G90. We quickly figured out that Dee’s FT8 operation was causing RFI on my SSB phone contacts. I finished making the amount of QSOs I needed and relinquished the spot to Dee so he could continue making his contacts to “activate” the park.
I used a 10-40 meter end fed half wave strung up on my thirty some odd foot MFJ fiberglass mast secured to the grill guard on my truck and Dee used his truck mounted MFJ 10m vertical. Propagation being good, I made contacts with Sweden, Brazil, Washington state, Oregon and more while Dee had even more luck with DX making contact with Croatia, England, Ireland, and others. Ham radio is what you make of it and doesn’t just have to be at the home shack so get out there and explore!
73 my friends. 🙂
Brandon, KI5ZIR
