Earlier this month (Fathers day weekend) our family took a trip to Cape May.  Cape May is probably our favorite beach town, because it suits our style perfectly - it's a historic town, quiet, family friendly, and close enough to drive to, but far enough away that it feels like we really went somewhere.

Usually there wouldn't be much "ham radio" related activity to write about in regards to these trips. Normally the most I do is make a couple contacts on the local repeaters from the beach, while the kiddos play in the sand.  This time however, I decided to sneak in a quick POTA activation.  Since POTA only requires 10 contacts for an activation, the family agreed to let me play radio while they poked around the museum and overlook platforms at the Cape May Point State Park. 

So, while the family spent some extra time enjoying the sites and sounds of Cape May Point, I parked under the shadow of the Cape May Lighthouse and made some contacts:

During this activation, I had a thought.  I'm not sure exactly what seeded it - but I suspect it was a conversation on the POTA Slack Channel that I had with W8TAM about QSL cards and lighthouses.  I enjoy QSLing, but I don't normally do it for my POTA activations unless someone sends me a card first, because sometimes there's a pretty good pile-up, and the postage could add up if I tried to send them to everyone.  I decided to do something as a fun middle-ground on my next few activations - since 10 contacts is what we need for a successful POTA activation, I'm going to pick up 10 post cards that are representative of the place I was activating, and then send those 10 post cards as QSL cards to the first 10 people to contact me on any given activation.  With that thought - if you happened to be among the first 10 to contact me at K-1610, watch the mail for a card (probably with a picture of the Cape May Point Lighthouse on it!)

Our trips to Cape May always feel short because time flies when you're having fun, and I can't think of a way to have more fun than to combine the beach, time with the family, ham radio, and an old-fashioned carnival on the lawn of the inn. (Do you think those strings of lights would make a good NVIS antenna?)

     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.

     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.