I was happy to contribute an article to the recent ARRL Parks On The Air (POTA) book. This piece is based on my Pikes Peak mountain topping article that appeared in the June 2023 issue of QST. This book is a collection of articles about POTA from 14 different authors, each writing about a different aspect of the program. The articles are all easy to read and generally provide a first-hand account of how the author has experienced POTA operating. There is plenty of beginner information and operating tips sprinkled throughout the book. More experienced POTA enthusiasts will probably pick up a few new ideas as well.
The Table of Contents below lists the articles and authors, giving you a good idea of the material covered. The meat of the book is only 118 pages long and it is quite easy to read.
My piece covered the triple activation I did from the summit of Pikes Peak, combining POTA, SOTA, and the June VHF Contest into one mountaintop adventure. For POTA, the park was the Pike National Forest (K-4404). I’ve done this type of combo activation in the past, sometimes just SOTA + POTA or just SOTA + VHF Contest. This time I did all three.
The book is available directly from the ARRL or from the usual book outlets such as Amazon.
73 Bob K0NR
Thanks for contributing your article. I’ve seen the book and it looks great! Just the thing for those curious about POTA. And it’s interesting … of the 16 contributors to the book, I’ve actually had POTA contacts (as either an activator or a hunter) with 11 of them! That’s a way higher percentage than I would have thought. I wonder if the POTA community is actually a pretty small fraction of the overall ham population? Anyway, thanks for posting this. 73 Skip K4EAK
Skip,
The authors in the book are some of the more active POTA folks.
I found an article that said there were over 8000 hams registered on the POTA website as of 2021, not all from the US. It has surely increased since then.
There are currently about 750k licensed radio amateurs in the US. This is not a clean comparison but it gives you some idea of the numbers.
Tune around the HF bands these days and you almost always find a POTA activation happening, maybe several.
73 Bob K0NR
Interesting. I just checked and it looks like there are now about 13,000 registered activators on pota.app. (I’m tied for #474 on the list with 198 activations … which shows I’m definitely not in the running for “top activator” anytime soon.) So, 13,000 out of 750,000 means only about 1.7% of hams are registered activators! Even among ARRL members (160,000), it’s only 8%. You’re right … given that the airwaves seem to be full of POTA traffic every day, I would have thought it was more. Shows how much I know. 🙂 Anyway, I just ordered a copy of the book. I frequently take folks out to the local park who are interested in learning about POTA, but I’ll also give them a copy of the book to give them a more complete picture. Hope to see you on the air sometime. 73 Skip K4EAK
Skip,
Keep in mind that POTA includes non-USA activators, so it is not a clean compare.
Now you got me started with the numbers…here’s some more.
There are 3285 SOTA activators listed for the US, so registered POTA folks are 4 times that.
SOTA and POTA is generally a good comparison but the POTA numbers include non-US radio amateurs.
POTA parks are generally more accessible, so I think there is more activity per activator compared to SOTA.
ARRL Field Day is arguably the most popular ham radio event in the USA.
In 2023, there are 4562 entries listed on the ARRL website.
Of course, Field Day operations vary widely on number of participants per entry.
And Field Day is one weekend per year.
ARRL Phone Sweepstakes is a popular US/Canada contest.
In 2022, there were 1663 logs submitted.
The CQ WW DX Contest (SSB) is the largest worldwide contest and had 9004 logs submitted in 2022.
My conclusion is that 13,000 POTA activators is a significant number, even though it is small percent of licensed hams.
Bob K0NR