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.
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.)
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.
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.
73!
One final note - comments are welcome as always, but my blog is a "safe space" and all comments are moderated.
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