Addendum: It seems a lot of people misunderstood what I was saying with this blog post and it subsequently hurt a lot of peoples feelings. I am sorry for that as all I wanted to do was shine the light on the hunters as well as the activators. But this seems to have missed the mark. If you are finding this for the first time, you have been warned…on with the article.
I have thought about this a lot lately. You hear people asking things like how to handle pile ups and what frequency to use and so on. The usual answer is along the lines of “it is your activation so do it how you like”.
The IC-705 makes a great QRP PTA radio.
I am going to go out on a limb and disagree here. You see, I am both an avid hunter and a frequent activator as well. So I can see both sides of the discussion with this issue. Having this perspective had given me a position that differs from the usual.
I see it like this, the activation belongs to both the activator AND the people hunting the activator. I do understand that the activator has the lion’s share of the work involved. They have to pack up the gear, travel to a park, setup the station, operate in less than ideal weather sometimes, then breakdown the station and pack it away and finally travel home and upload the logs so the hunters get credit for it. The hunter simply grabs a hot cup of coffee, walks into the shack, juices up the radio and calls the activator once he checks the spot page. Done. So I can see where the mindset comes from that the activator owns the event.
CW works surprisingly well for POTA activations.
I propose a different idea though. The activation wouldn’t be an “activation” without the hunters… except if there were enough park to park QSOs to get the minimum of ten. Which I normally dont have when I can go do an activation. So the activation hinges on the hunters answering my CQs. They comprise a full 50% of the QSO and are equally invested, as they might not be investing in field kit but instead they are giving me something much more valuable…their time. Each one of those people are willing to take their time and use it to make contact with me. The is huge in my book. Each person has a finite amount of time and we take this for granted for some reason.
My “hunter” station…
So if I have a big gun power through a bunch of weak signals, I work them. They have spent a considerable amount of time and resources to be able to do that. If I get a letter of a call before the “big gun” comes in over the little signal, I will ask the little signal to repeat. I am just saying, all of my hunters are valuable to me. I do my best to work all of them when I activate. That is why I worked over 100 QSOs the other day, I answered the calls till no one was left. We are all in this together and we are all valuable, so when it comes to the “activation” remember the hunters are spending their time to hunt you just as much as you are spending your time to be hunted.
I hope this helps some new ham with their POTA journey and we can get those calls in those logs!
72
David - WK4DS