Parks on the Air

Parks on the Air – now in England

This scheme started out from an ARRL event to activate all the National Parks in the USA, during a year. So many Radio Amateurs became involved that following the year there was a high level of interest in working from National Parks. As a result Parks on the Air was born.

In some ways it is similar very to SOTA (summits on the Air), with parks being a lot more accessible, and with Parks on the Air (POTA) you can, I understand, work from a motor vehicle.

POTAs main website is at https://parksontheair.com/ everything you might expect is there, however there is currently very little information on what is happening from a point of view of England, this I am sure will be resolved by Andy 2E0UAW who is the English Administrator. Scotland and Wales being separate, so there are at least a couple of Job opportunities.

As with SOTA you have activators and chasers (hunters in POTA terms), you are required to make at least 10 QSOs in any mode you like, however as you would expect you can not use a land based repeater, however, you can make contact via a satellite (this could be useful if you park you are operating is down in a valley).

You can’t just operate any old park it has to be on the POTA database, and this in England mainly applies to National Parks, Country Parks, and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) like the Lincolnshire wolds for example.

The English Location details can be found at https://stats.parksontheair.com/reports/park-info-select.php?entity=England

Parks on the Air, as you would expect has a facebook site and there is some activity on twitter, surprisingly they also use slack and once you have registered on the POTA site you can get details on how to join the slack channels.