Ham Radio Portable Insights—Tips on Holding a Successful Group POTA Activation

Hi everyone! This week, let’s talk about operating with friends, otherwise known as group operating.

Group operating can mean different things to different folks. To some, it conjures ideas of a bunch of friends getting together in a rented pavilion, making a day of it. For others, perhaps it’s picking up a friend and heading out to some new-to-you park for a morning of radio fun.

Sure, it’s fun to get outdoors to do a Parks On The Air® (POTA) activation, but it doesn’t have to be a solo activity. POTA offers great opportunities to get out with friends, enjoy the outdoors, and share knowledge and experience.

A group activation can be a completely different experience, combining operating, teaching, experimenting and plain old socializing. That teaching and mentoring aspect is what amateurs have traditionally called Elmering.

The group activations that I’ve done normally fit into one of these examples:

A Two- or Three-Person Activation might involve a couple of friends heading to a new location and sharing one station. We normally pass the microphone back and forth so each operator genuinely participates in making contacts. Simply being present at an activation isn’t the same as operating; proximity is not participation.

Another option is meeting a friend at a POTA reference. He might run SSB while I operate CW. Running multiple stations in close proximity makes you think hard about various challenges, such as what steps to take to avoid interference between the stations. These can include keeping some distance between the stations, running lower power, and using bandpass filters.

Club Outings: I’ve done several group outings with my local radio club—the Portage County Amateur Radio Service (PCARS). We’ll rent a park pavilion and operate POTA for the day. As per custom, food is involved. No one ever leaves hungry from one of these group outings. These normally occur on a Support Your Parks (SYP) Weekend, but they can pop up at any time. Simply put the word out that you will be at such and such park at this time and invite other members to come out to operate. It’s as easy as that.

By the way, Support Your Parks Weekends are seasonal POTA activities held four times each year (the next one is Oct. 17-18). Other portable programs hold similar activity events, but SYP gives POTA operators a particularly good excuse to organize a club outing. Our club gets out for each one, even in January. You need to be either dedicated or crazy to set up outdoors in Northeast Ohio in January!

POTA Get-Together or Meetup: These are always fun, but it’s usually more about socializing and comparing equipment than about how many contacts we can make. Most of the get-togethers and meetups seem to be a state or regional thing.

A successful group activation doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does benefit from a little planning. Regardless of how many people participate, it helps to decide what you want the activation to accomplish.

There’s the Social Outing, where radios are almost secondary; everyone gets together to have fun and socialize. These are great and are sometimes unplanned.

For instance, do you camp? Next time you camp at a state park, take a walk around the campground and see how many fellow hams you meet.

The New-Operator event is great. Invite someone to come out activating with you. Maybe a new ham, a non-ham, or even a seasoned ham who might be looking for something new to become addicted to. In other words, give someone who has never activated POTA a chance to get on the air.

Technical/Experimental Day: I know a few hams who are constantly experimenting with their POTA setups. Maybe they’re tweaking go-kits, antennas, or power systems. Or perhaps you are messing with a new mode or band for POTA. The Technical/Experimental Day concept is great for this because you get to see what your friends are working on and compare notes in the field.

Emergency/Public Service Training: Speaking with a representative from the Fulton County Radio Club here in Ohio today, I heard a great idea for group operating. Their approach is an interesting one: They purposely seek out some of the most godforsaken areas they can find to operate from. The idea is to practice setting up and operating under less-than-ideal conditions, building skills and experience that could prove invaluable during an actual emergency.

Contesting: Maybe you would like to try to rack up a serious bunch of contacts? Try setting up multiple stations, use multiple bands/modes, and see how many QSOs you can make from a park! Better yet, do this for the weekend of your state’s QSO Party. You can amass a serious number of QSOs while trying to beat last year’s score. Lots of states now have State Parks On The Air contests as well.

Though not affiliated directly with POTA, the contacts made from a state park can be uploaded to your POTA account as long as your park has a POTA number.

Here in Ohio, the Ohio State Parks On The Air Contest tends to be a big deal. You can read more abo…