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3 Apr 2023

Some POTA Stats for New York Parks

Posted by khk. No Comments

[ Update: W3NY did it again, and activated another ATNO – I am updating this just hours after I pushed “publish” on this post 🙂 ]

For the last few months I was busy adding data to all New York parks in the POTA system. This involved researching the entities, finding out some basic information like how one could access the entity, and how one would activate. In addition to that, we tried to add links to the official park information.

While doing that, there was some other information that fell out of this research that other might be interested in. Let’s start with ATNOs, the “All Time New Ones”. There is no reward in being the first activator (besides the feeling you get when you do something that nobody else has done yet). Having said that, here is the reward for for those who activated the most ATNOs in New York: You will find your call sign in the following list 🙂 Read the rest of this entry »

2 Mar 2023

The POTA Triple Threat Activators

Posted by khk. No Comments

[ Update August 29th, 2023: I’ve since added a few more calls to my list ]

I’ve been active in the POTA program for quite some time. My first POTA contact was on 7/28/2018, and I’ve been hunting and activating parks ever since. When I look at my hunter logs, I count 11675 confirmed contacts with parks with 1832 unique activators. Most of them are phone contacts, followed by CW and then data at the end. I’ve worked plenty of these activators in two modes, but among all these activators, there is a small group that I call the “Triple-Threat Activators” – I’ve worked them in all three modes. Here is the list (sorted alphabetically): Read the rest of this entry »

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17 Feb 2023

The POTA Bailey-Sprott Challenge

Posted by khk. 2 Comments

 

What is it?

 

In 2021, two POTA hunters were able to hunt a park every single day of the year. These two hunters were Kenneth Bailey, N5HA and Julien Sprott, K9AV. I missed this in 2021 by a few days, some self-inflicted (traveling without a radio), and others were caused by park activators either not copying my call correctly, not logging my call correctly, or by not uploading the log to the POTA system. I have parks logged for those days in my own log. Vance Martin, N3VEM was digging in the POTA database, and found these two guys and their accomplishment. He then coined the term of “Baily-Sprott Challenge”, and started to report about the progress of POTA activators and hunters in his monthly POTA update videos (since then, he has passed the responsibility for these update videos on to Mark Heere, N3NWV). Here is one of these POTA update videos, the information about the challenge is towards the end of the short video: https:// youtu.be/r1JahJMcVS4 Read the rest of this entry »

21 Mar 2022

Get Your Ham Radio License Document After You Got Your Ham Radio License

Posted by khk. No Comments

You passed your ham radio license exam, so how do you actually get the license document? In the olden days, the FCC printed that document and mailed it to the new (or upgraded) license holder. Today, we need to download the license PDF ourselves and then print it, sign it and keep it available.

The following shows how you can get access to this document and download it.

The key to the license is the FCC License Manager. This is where you find your license, but also where you would apply for a vanity call sign, or make modifications to your license like update your address. Read the rest of this entry »

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13 Jul 2021

My Current POTA Antenna Setup

Posted by khk. 3 Comments

This article appeared first in the June 2021 issue of the RaRa Rag newsletter.

One of the questions I get asked frequently is about antennas for POTA (Parks on the Air) operations. The following is an overview of what I currently use for my POTA activations, and is therefore based on first-hand experience. As always, any antenna is a compromise, and it’s up to you to decide how much money and work you want to put into an antenna and how efficient the antenna needs to be. Read the rest of this entry »

30 Apr 2020

Now Everybody Is (Or Can be) A Bread Nerd!

Posted by khk. No Comments

It looks like a lot of people went from Wonder Bread to homebaked artesian bread connoisseur in a matter of seven weeks during the COVID-19 Pandemic, baking bread for the first time. If you have not yet joined the #isolationbaking or #breadnerd or #breadsnob crowd, here are some useful links to get your homebaking with either yeast or sourdough started.

King Arthur Flour not only makes quality flour, they also help us home bakers with a ton of information on their web site in the form of recipes and blog posts. Right now, they are hosting a number of different video series about baking, which you can find on their Facebook page, or their YouTube channel. Read the rest of this entry »

19 Mar 2020

Out of Reading Material Already Due to Social Distancing?

Posted by khk. No Comments

I hope you are staying safe by staying at home and not going out to protect yourself and more importantly your community.

In case you’ve already run out of reading material, here is an offer I’ve received in my email today. CQ Magazine is giving out two free issues: You can request both the current 3/2020 and the upcoming 4/2020 issue. Here is a screenshot of the email. The email address to request your free issues is FreeIssues@cq-amateur-radio.com Read the rest of this entry »

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10 Mar 2020

Raspberry Pi and Ham Radio Presentation

Posted by khk. No Comments

This is an old one, but still valid. This was a presentation as part of the Rochester Amateur Radio Association’sRaRa Academy” program. The slides are available at the RaRa Academy link – you will need to scroll down a bit.

de K5KHK

4 Feb 2020

Parks On the Air Presentation

Posted by khk. No Comments

POTAx  1

At last months RaRa (Rochester Amateur Radio Association) meeting, I presented about Parks on the Air and portable operating. The meeting had to be moved on short notice, and with bad weather (it’s winter after all), I did not expect a big turnout, I was wrong! Everybody showed up, and we even had a few guests who drove up from the southern tier. Don KD2REU recorded the presentation and you can watch it on YouTube:

The slides are available from the RaRa web site: https://www.rochesterham.org/meetings/2020-01-50_POTA_small.pdf

de K5KHK

29 Jan 2020

My Parks On the Air Stats After a Year and a Half

Posted by khk. No Comments

I’ve been involved with Parks on the Air (or POTA) for about a year and a half. My first POTA QSO was on 7/28/2018.

POTA

Since then, I’ve had 1000 hunter QSOs (that is QSOs I had with activators in a park) – at least based on what was reported to the POTA database. With that many QSOs, I have a nice sample to do some analysis. I downloaded my hunted QSOs recently (meaning, I copied and pasted from the web site into Excel), and after a little bit of scripting and pivoting I can report the following: As of 1/27/2020, I had 1000 hunter QSOs with 234 different activators. More than 50% of these QSOs were with just 20 different activators. Here are the top ten activators I’ve worked, who account for almost 40% of all QSOs: Read the rest of this entry »