Want to practice your listening skills, trying to dig signals out of the mud all the while learning more about running your rig and using whatever filtering, noise reduction, and notching you have available? Try chasing Parks on the Air (POTA) activators. It's going to be my Saturday morning ham activity now. I started by pulling up the activators on the https://pota.us website (main site is https://parksontheair.com) making a quick list of current activators and their frequencies. Then I started looking. Of course this time of year most activators are in the more temperate climate states. I could hear a bunch of stations trying to call the POTA activators and a few you would think was the rarest of DX given the pileups they had.
I managed to snag two today, one on 20M SSB to Mustang Island State Park on Padre Island by Corpus Christi TX and one on 40M FT8 calling from Lake Mineral Wells State Park, TX (west of Fort Worth). Award certificates are available for both activators and hunters.
Great fun!
73, Robert AE0CA
