Parks-on-the-Air (POTA) is exploding. There are now more than 6,000 registered users and the growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down. With exponential growth comes lots of questions from new and prospective hunters and activators. One of the reasons this blog exists is to answer those questions. Questions about how to actually activate a park are the most frequent. There are a lot of great content creators on YouTube who make videos of their activations. These videos are more professional, polished, informative, and entertaining than the videos I make. Still, I have some ideas to share that may be helpful to POTA participants. One of those ideas is to share an entire activation.
Today I activated K-6327 Tenoroc Wildlife Area in Lakeland, FL. Tenoroc is known for its fishing, kayaking, gun/archery range, bird watching, and hiking. Tenoroc has plenty of lakes that were formed due to phosphate strip mining. These lakes have plenty of bass and alligators. My interest is not in the gators but in POTA activation QSOs. I decided it would be a great place to make a video of an entire activation (minus antenna set-up and tear down), so that is exactly what I did. If you are new to POTA or considering POTA, these videos will show you what happens on an activation. You will hear me call CQ on both CW and SSB. You will encounter QSB, QRM, and intentional interference. There are even a few Park-to-Park QSOs. I had QSOs on 17, 20, and 40 meters The video quality gets washed out by sunlight occasionally but the audio is good.
Enjoy the show! de K4NYM
Radio Free Florida: K4NYM 