Oklahoma Parks On The Air (OKPOTA)

Put April 20th and 21st, 2024, on your calendar for the next Oklahoma Parks On The Air (OKPOTA) day. The POTA concept has taken the country by storm, and hams of all types are getting interested in the program. While every day can be a POTA day, we’re going to try to get Oklahoma on the map by activating as many of the 164 parks in Oklahoma over the weekend. And by getting as many Oklahoma POTA Hunters on the bands as possible. Activations will run from 0000Z on April 20th through 2359Z on April 21st. (7:00 PM CDT Friday through 6:59 PM CDT Sunday.) Please submit all log entries to the pota.app website by May 5th, 2024.

So, if you want to stay home and be a ‘hunter’ of POTA activations, get your home station antennas and radios tuned up and plan to make great contacts across the country throughout the day. Check for POTA activations on the pota.app website. The good folks at POTA will create a special page to highlight our activations that weekend.

If you want to go mobile and activate a park, start working on your portable radio/antenna combinations and create an activation on the pota.app website RIGHT NOW to schedule the activation of your favorite park. Then, make plans to ‘hit the road.’ A CSV list of POTA parks in Oklahoma is located at this link, and a PDF version of the list is available at this link. Look at the other scheduled activations at your same park to ensure you don’t saturate a given park. You can create a POTA account and schedule your activation at the pota.app website.

Park activations typically happen during daylight hours, so plan accordingly. More details will be available here as they develop, and the current information will be available at ok.arrl.org/okpota/.

See you ‘on the air.’

Jon Jeitz W5JWZ gave an excellent presentation on his POTA setup to the SCARS group recently. Here’s a link to his presentation to get you started. Note that some of the POTA procedures have changed. You can upload your logs directly to the website, however, this video has the old method of emailing your logs to a coordinator.

 

If you need help with radios, antennas, connections, operation rules, creating a POTA account, or anything else, find an Elmer, work with your club, or send me a note to n5hzr@arrl.org.