What is Parks on the Air?
Parks on the Air (POTA) is an awards programme for radio amateurs who operate portable from parks, nature reserves and other protected areas, and for the people at home who contact them. Activators set up in a park and make contacts. Hunters, at home or elsewhere, try to work as many parks as possible. Every park has a reference such as US-0001, and the programme now covers tens of thousands of parks around the world, including the UK.
Hunting POTA activators
Activators are spotted on the POTA website by themselves, by hunters who hear them, and by automatic skimmers that decode CW and data signals. This page shows the current spots. Tune to the frequency, listen for the activator calling "CQ POTA", and give your callsign once. Activators are often running low power from a battery with a portable antenna, so be patient and keep the contact short: callsigns, a signal report and your location are all that's needed.
Sort by distance to find parks within easy reach. Use the heading to point a beam, or check the band conditions to see which bands are open. Data-mode spots are often on the standard FT8 and FT4 frequencies.
Activating a park
To activate, you need 10 contacts from inside the park on the same UTC day. Light equipment works well: a QRP radio, a battery and an end-fed or vertical wire on a fishing pole. Check the EFHW calculator for wire lengths. Register on pota.app to spot yourself and upload your log, and check the park's rules about setting up antennas before you go.
Questions
How many contacts do I need to activate a POTA park?
10 contacts from inside the park on the same UTC day.
Do I need to register to hunt POTA?
No, you can work activators without registering. To get credit and awards, register free at pota.app and your contacts are matched from the activators' logs.
Which frequencies are POTA activators on?
All HF bands. Popular SSB spots are around 14.250–14.350 and 7.150–7.200 MHz, CW near the bottom of each band, and data on the standard FT8 and FT4 frequencies.
How often do the spots update?
Every minute while the page is open, or straight away with the Refresh button.