Parks on the Air (POTA) is an international amateur radio award program that encourages licensed operators to visit and operate portable radio equipment from public parks. It grew out of the ARRL’s 2016 “National Parks on the Air” (NPOTA) event; after that one-year special event ended, volunteers founded POTA in early 2017 to continue the fun. The official POTA site describes its mission as promoting emergency communications awareness from national, state, or provincial parks: https://parksontheair.com/. Since then POTA has become wildly popular. POTA awards are given for making contacts (“QSOs”) from parks, with points tallied by number of contacts, bands used, modes (voice, CW, digital), and other criteria. In short, POTA combines outdoor activity with radiosport, urging hams to “get out of the shack” and enjoy nature while practicing radio skills.

How POTA Works: Activators and Hunters

In POTA, an activator is an operator who sets up a temporary station inside a designated park and calls CQ POTA, while hunters (or “chasers”) are other operators who try to contact them. Activators typically announce their plans (often on the POTA website or social media) so hunters know when and where to listen. Any contact between a station in the park and any other licensed ham counts as a valid QSO (no special exchange beyond callsigns is required). When an activator logs at least 10 QSOs from the park in a single UTC day, the activation qualifies as complete. After the activation, the activator uploads a log file (in ADIF format) to the POTA website. The POTA system then credits each QSO to the activator and to the hunters, and updates award standings and leaderboards. (Hunters do not submit their own logs; they earn credit automatically via the activator’s log.)