I just had to steal a quote from Julie, K8VOX as the title for this blog post because it describes exactly what the evening felt like!  One of the most frequent activators (Brian, K0ATZ) was out activating a couple parks and it seemed like everyone was around to play radio - he had quite the run going!  

     It was especially fun for me, because Brian was getting started right after we finished bath-time for the kiddos, and I was getting ready to tuck my daughter into bed.  I saw Mike, W8MSC post that Brian was starting up, so I asked my little operator if she wanted to try making a contact - she liked that idea so we sneaked over to the rig instead of starting our bedtime stories (shhhh...don't tell mama:-)
 
​    It only took her a couple tries to get through (with 1 false start), but she did it!  It just so happened that one of the other folks I've been working with on the new QSO storage system, Thom W8TAM, happened to be recording and shared the audio with the POTA Slack group!  I highly recommend you join us over there if you're at all interested in POTA - it's an awesome communication tool to share ideas, gear pics, spots, etc. that is WAY more useful than Facebook (although we are there too if that's what you're into.)  Anyway, for anyone who isn't on Slack, or doesn't want to join, here's the audio from my daughter's contact with K0ATZ:

     While you're here I do want to mention a couple new and exciting developments with POTA.  Firstly, as I mentioned, we have been using Slack for communication.  It's a great way to chat about our common interest without all the baggage that Facebook can bring.  It's also "real time" like Twitter, so it makes a fun place to chat with other activators and hunters while chasing parks.  Also, it is "channelized" and you can set up neat notifications by channel.  As an example, I have mine set to only "ding" me when spots get posted in the potaspots channel...how cool is that?!  Here's a bit of a sneak peak of the chatter when my daughter made the above contact:

    As I alluded to, the spots channel that is part of the Slack group automatically catches spots posted to the new POTA spotting page, so when folks make spots on that site, they show up there and also ding anyone in the Slack group who likes to know when someone is on the air.  This is the message in Slack that accompanies the ding:

     Anyway, it's been a fun week.  We had the announcement that the new POTA program is now accepting logs from all activators, there are 2 leaderboards up on the website so you can track your progress (one for Activators and one for Hunters), and there is a spotting system that, when used alongside the Slack app, can let you know when you need to run to your rig to work the next park, and  I'm within 8 days of finishing my Information Systems degree!  The full scoop on all the parks stuff can be learned by starting at www.parksontheair.com.

Post Contains Affiliate Links   

    A couple of weeks ago I pulled one of my on-going projects (the crowd-sourced one) off the pile and did a bit of work.  To bring anyone up to speed who hasn't been following along, I've been working on a project using a Seahorse box that, in a previous life, housed electronics associated with my work.  As I've been doing this, I've been getting input from my readers on each step along the way.  Last time I mentioned that I was pulling out all of the old bits that wouldn't be needed, to get ready to put the new stuff in it.  That left me with some holes:

     The power jack I'm going to leave in, because I'll reuse that to connect the charger to the built-in battery (which I'm also re-using from this box's prior life.)  This just left me with the other holes to contend with, and last time I promised that I would share my trick for doing that.  Big reveal:

​Epoxy.

     For something that will be painted or covered with something else, liquid epoxy is an easy way to fill in a hole.  In a situation like this, I just cover one side with tape, sit the item up on end, and fill the void.

     Once the epoxy dries you've got some fancy little windows.  Hit them with a bit of paint, or cover them with a decal of sorts (like I'll be doing with this one) and you're back in business!

P.S.    If your YL has a little metal yard sign that you busted when you snagged it with the mower wheel, use any left-over epoxy to fix that too.....

     You may or may not be aware of the rift that happened towards the end of 2017 between the the ​WWFF and the individuals running the companion US program - KFF. If you are an active participant, it's old news, but others might not have any idea it even happened.  Because of this, I wanted to share my take on the situation. 

3 sentance summary:
​
Any time people are managing a large program, there can be differences of opinions and ideas. How those difference are handled can range from elegantly to downright ugly, depending on which side of the fence you land on.  At the end of the day, this split was simply different people with different ideas.

     From my viewpoint, what this all boiled down to was that while the global rules seemed to give some leniency to the member countries to adapt and modify rules to suit their own operators and awards, there were things that the US managers wanted to do, that the global program couldn't (or wouldn't) support.  Unfortunately, when it comes to something as large as a QSO management system with over a million records, some future requests can be hard to anticipate, and therefore can be very difficult to implement, and differences of opinions on how to handle those requests can escalate quickly.  

    What happened as a results, was that the primary stakeholders in the US program decided to split off and form an entirely separate program - POTA (Parks on the Air.)  The old US program and the global program still exist under new leadership, but there were some rule changes that some individuals may or may not like, while the rules for the newly formed POTA program are nearly identical to those that many US hams became accustomed to with ARRL's 2016 NPOTA event. 

     The most notable difference between POTA and it's predecessor, is that for a successful POTA activation, only 10 contacts need to be made, whereas it's predecessor requires 44.  Additionally, the POTA program is being built to support some things that we came to love about NPOTA a couple years ago - trails, parks that cross state lines, and at some point in the future, 2fers! (and 3fers/4fers/etc.)

     So why write about this?  I have two main reasons:

• I love activating parks when I travel for work!
• In the interest of full disclosure, I volunteered to help build the new QSO storage and award database for the POTA group.  

       So why did I, a person that usually hangs back from this type of controversy, volunteer to help out?  That's actually an easy one - I've been working on my Information Systems degree (I'll be done in 3 weeks!)  and I thought this was an excellent opportunity to use some of the things I've been learning to get some real-world experience.  Also, whatever disagreements there were between the US managers and the global managers arn't my business, and since I personally like the individuals starting the POTA program, I wanted to help them out!

     With all that said, here's my take on the two programs:

     I know there are some people that are very loyal to one program or the other - because of that, whenever I activate a park, I'll just be sending my logs to any groups that give location based awards, so that any chasers out there get the credit they are looking for.  To me this is really not a big deal, because I already send my logs to multiple places when I activate.  People chase all kinds of stuff - grid squares, counties, states, islands, summits, etc.  If I can help a fellow ham reach a goal of theirs simply by emailing someone my log, or doing a simple upload - why wouldn't I?

     For my own personal motivation however, I will probably be paying much closer attention to how I perform in the POTA program, because at the end of the day it better suits my style and more closely resembles what I became accustomed to while doing activations for ARRL's 2016 NPOTA event (but with a lot more parks to choose from!)  After all, with a busy schedule, a great family, and a sometimes intense travel schedule for work, it is much more appealing (to me) to have the option of sneaking out somewhere for 10 quick contacts, vs. debating whether or not I have the time, conditions, etc. to try to get in a full 44 contacts before the park in whatever city I end up in, closes.

     Anyway, I'll just wrap it up by saying that even though POTA and WWFF-KFF are now two completely separate things, I personally don't hold any grudges.  A park is a park after all, and I'm more than happy to send my logs to whatever storage system chasers would like, to help them reach their goals!  

73!

One final note - comments are welcome as always, but my blog is a "safe space" and all comments are moderated.  

Remember the crowd-sourced project I was working on? You know - the thing where each step along the way I asked all of you for your ideas and input? Well, I haven't forgotten about it!

I've had several major things going on (one of them being finishing up my Information System degree - 5 weeks to go!) Anyway, because of my busy schedule I've just been picking away at all my various projects a little bit at a time. This week, I managed to steal a few minutes in the garage while the kids were chalking on the driveway to work on the box the project is going into. For now this consisted of removing all of the old stuff from the box that isn't being reused, which left me with just the battery from it's prior life:

     With all the old parts out of the way, I'm just about ready to start mounting up the parts of my Bitx40 that are going in here.  The only real thing to do before I start that, is to fill in the holes that were left by removing the old connectors - the next time I get to spend a few minutes on this project I'll show you my trick for doing that :-)

​     73 for now!