The Nosey News Hawk is flapping in a little late this time, dear readers, but not empty-taloned. We’ve got roves, milestones, huts, heat, snakes, contests, clubs, first-timers, hard-core hikers, and at least one operator who apparently treats 11 parks in a day as a reasonable thing to do. 😮📻
So pour the coffee, uncoil the wire, and let’s get nosy.
Why the newsletter has been spotty… 🚆🥾🎶🌵
A dispatch from the editor’s roaming headquarters:
Perry W1GRD has been out on a proper ramble since February 24, starting from Providence and working his way south by rail for a stretch of hiking through Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Home base for part one was a tiny house perched on the brow of Cloudland Canyon in Menlo, Georgia — which, frankly, already sounds more interesting than most people’s entire March.
The hiking, by his report, was superb, and the geology down there gave a whole different flavor from New England stone and ledge. Then came the rail leg: Providence → New York City → Atlanta, followed by a hop off into New Orleans“for a few days,” which of course turned into more than a few because New Orleans does that to people. 🎷🍹
Frenchmen Street was involved. Bourbon Street was involved. Dylan tunes with harmonica accompaniment were involved. There was dancing with a gypsy fortune teller on the square. There was even Grateful Dead played on request at a grungy Bourbon dive bar called Misfit Toys, which earns it immediate cultural distinction in this publication. 💀🌹
Eventually, the road called again. Perry is now westbound toward Tucson for more hiking, after a weather-imposed layover in Houston thanks to some properly rowdy storms. As for POTA, he’s keeping it light: three activations so far, one each in GA, TN, and AL, and no pressure to go wild with the radio. Still, being the founder of the PN&R Pack Mule Award, he made sure to log at least the required 22 QSOs each time. Naturally. One does not invent a mule award and then fail to haul. 🫏📡
One activation highlight: operating from a very cool rock shelter in De Soto National Park. That’s the kind of “portable operating location” that makes the Hawk sit up a little straighter.
More Arizona activations are likely ahead, and maybe beyond that New Mexico or Utah before the long arc home near the end of March. In other words: the editor is roving, the newsletter is slightly scruffier than usual, and all is well. ✈️🌄
Mark K8MST on new POTA efforts: governance, growth, and keeping the wheels on 🚧📈🧠
This one is worth your time.
Mark Torigian, K8MST — retired attorney, former general counsel for Hyundai Motor Company, and now a member of the newly formed Parks on the Air board — sat down to discuss where POTA is headed and what it takes to keep a fast-growing volunteer program from collapsing under its own success.
Mark’s story is classic late-blooming ham energy. Licensed in 2021 after putting the hobby off for years, he jumped into amateur radio during the pandemic, became a hunter, then an activator, and in remarkably short order found himself helping steer one of the most dynamic programs in ham radio. Not bad for a fellow who only just joined the circus and is now helping inspect the tent poles. 🎪📻
And those poles are holding up a lot. POTA now boasts nearly 50 million QSOs, 84,000 registered operators, and 85,000 parks across 236 DX entities. That is no longer a cute little side project run on vibes and coffee alone. That is a major international program, and major programs need structure.
That’s Mark’s lane. He brings four decades of experience in legal oversight, governance, internal controls, and program integrity, and his message is not “let’s drown this in bureaucracy.” Quite the opposite. The goal is to strengthen what happens behind the scenes so the experience out front remains smooth and fun. Think bylaws, clearer board structure, better financial oversight, improved data privacy, and rules that don’t produce twenty-five interpretations from ten hams. Which, as we all know, is a very real condition. 😏
Meanwhile, the IT side is undergoing its own transformation. A 21-person volunteer development team led by James Linden, VE3JLN, is rebuilding the technical backbone of POTA, modernizing a cloud system that has been carrying a frankly absurd load for years and now processes more than a million QSOs per month. Servers, unsurprisingly, are not fueled by goodwill alone. The current operating cost runs around $5,000–$6,000 per month, supported by volunteers, book royalties, and donations — not some mysterious corporate sugar daddy.
And yet, through all of this, Mark’s point is that the spirit of POTA should not be lost. He talks about Winter Field Day at minus 15 degrees, with three antennas up in an hour, as proof that this is not just game-ified logging. It’s skill, readiness, and community wrapped in a very ham-radio form of cheerful self-inflicted inconvenience. ❄️📡
The pledge from Mark’s corner is simple: make it better without breaking what already works. Stronger governance. Greater transparency. Better systems. Same POTA soul. Here’s the video:
Sparky Lassman logs his first of many 🎉📻🔥
First activation alert! And by the sound of it, Sparky Lassman has been properly bitten by the bug.
Sparky reports a very successful debut park activation, starting out by hunting other activators and snagging a 3-fer right out of the gate. That is one way to ease into the pool — cannonball first. By the end of the outing, he’d logged 12 QSOs, including 8 park-to-parks, which is not at all shabby for a first spin. 👏
It was not all smooth polished efficiency, because of course it wasn’t. There were logging mistakes, confusion about why only two of the P2Ps were showing in the app, and the dawning realization that Ham2K spotting does not magically auto-update from everywhere else in the universe. A noble assumption, but alas, software remains software. Still, he sorted out self-spotting, got through the bumps, and came away wanting more — which is exactly how POTA gets you. One day you’re fumbling with spots and wondering what validated, the next day you’re pricing portable masts and explaining to your family why you need another battery. 😈🔋
Station details for the inaugural romp: Xiegu X5105 at 5 watts with a JPC-12 antenna. Twenty meters was apparently a bit squirrelly, and a couple QSOs slipped away, including one Florida P2P on 14.274 that just wouldn’t quite come together. But the mood remains excellent: we’ll get ’er next time.
We suspect this is indeed the first of many.
W5ESE activates NZ-0079 from Mid Caples Hut 🇳🇿🥾🏕️
Now this is good portable radio scenery.
Scott W5ESE reports from Caples Conservation Area, NZ-0079, operating from Mid Caples Hut after a 5.5-mile walk into the site. He camped there for four nights, which immediately upgrades this from “activation” to “proper expedition mood.” 🏔️
His station was a (tr)uSDX and an end-fed half-wave cut for 40 meters, and the location demanded some smart band choice. The hut sits at the bottom of a valley, making NVIS a major factor, and by Scott’s account 40 meters was the money band. That tracks beautifully: when the terrain says “keep it local-ish and high-angle,” the good ops listen.
There is something especially satisfying about these hut activations — a little hike, a little weather, a little wire in the trees, and a radio earning its keep in the fold of the land. Very fine stuff.
Another mobile CW op! 🚗🔑📻
We already know KQ1O occasionally goes out and does the very ham thing of operating mobile CW, which is already enough to make some of us clutch the dashboard.
But now comes K2EAG with this cheerful bit of madness:
“A quick mobile challenge while driving through Allegany State Park: 20 meter CW, with Angela logging. Ten contacts before reaching the other side of the park.”
Ten contacts. Before the far side of the park. While mobile. On CW. With teamwork. Honestly, that’s less an activation and more a heist. 😄🕶️
We salute the operators who look at an ordinary drive and think, “You know what would improve this? Morse code at highway speed.”
A New POTA convert… 🎣📡❤️
The hook is set, and another one has been reeled in.
Tom KG4R, formerly WB9HKO, reports that after being away from ham radio for more than 50 years, he returned to the hobby last September, quickly discovered POTA, and promptly got thoroughly snagged by it. Since then he’s upgraded to Extra and picked up a vanity callsign, which is exactly the sort of “I’ll just dabble a little” progression that old-timers somehow still pretend not to recognize. 😏
Now comes the payoff: Tom has reached the POTA 1K Parks Hunted Award, and he makes a point of thanking all the activators out there for putting the parks on the air day after day.
We love this kind of story. One of the beautiful things about POTA is how quickly it can make the hobby feel alive and social and immediate, whether you are brand new or returning after half a century away. Welcome back, Tom — and congrats on the kilo. 🏆
Black Swamp ARC weekly net reminder 📢🎙️
A friendly reminder from the Black Swamp POTA Net crew:
This weekly net meets every Tuesday at 7:30 PM EST and is hosted by Sandy Schwind, KE8UTX. The net includes one round of POTA-related topics, and all licensed amateurs are welcome to check in.
If you’re local, the frequency is 443.5375 +5.0, PL 67 Hz.
If you’re joining by node, use:
AllStar: 501240
EchoLink: 7550 K8BSR-L
And here’s the nice bit: after the formal net wraps, the conversation can continue on the same nodes, so folks who want to linger and chew the rag a bit can stick around. Which, as every operator knows, is how a quick radio chat becomes a proper gathering. ☕📻
Bryan KE7PEE off on a northeastern rove 🚙🗺️⚡
Some people take a weekend to relax. Bryan KE7PEE takes a weekend and tries to sweep half of New England.
Bryan reports he’s heading to New York with the intent to activate NY, CT, RI, MA, NH, ME, VT, and possibly NJ and PA if the wheels, weather, and caffeine all cooperate. He’s picking up a rental at LGA Saturday morning and returning it Monday morning, which means this is not so much a casual drive as a highly compressed rove missile. 🚀
Being from west Texas, Bryan notes that a five-hour drive is just a polite warm-up, which will sound either admirable or alarming depending on your regional calibration.
His specific question concerns southeastern Vermont, where he’s looking for a park that’s open and easy to get in and out of while coming from roughly the Worcester, Massachusetts direction. As many eastern rovers have discovered, “park exists” and “park is seasonally accessible without drama” are not always the same thing this time of year. Mud, gates, and posted seasonal closures do love to meddle.
Still, this sounds like a classic KE7PEE mission: broad ambition, limited time, and absolutely no interest in doing just one state like a sensible person. Godspeed, sir. 🫡
Chris KI4POT puts in 14 miles and a whole lot of summit radio 🐍⛰️📡
Pack Mule material? Oh, this is Pack Mule material.
Chris KI4POT reports a truly stout week of SOTA-POTA overlap during a welcome spell of warm weather after winter storms. Over the course of two outings, Chris and a buddy tackled five summits, all within various POTA entities, and logged the relevant parks: George Washington National Forest, Priest Wilderness Area, the Appalachian Trail, and Shenandoah National Park.
Day one involved a three-hour drive to two remote summits requiring 4×4 access just to reach the trailhead. The first summit was a 5-mile round-trip with some off-trail bushwhacking and, delightfully, a cluster of garter snakes sunning themselves along the way. One snake got especially curious, Chris picked it up gently, and it explored his hand and arm before being set back down. Not every activation report includes reptilian meet-and-greet energy, but perhaps more should. 🐍
Radio-wise, Chris mixed 2m FM and HF SSB, while his partner worked heavily on 2m CW/SSB for the VHF challenge. Then, after lunch, they headed to summit two: only 1.5 miles, but with 1000 feet of climbing and basically straight up. No easy rolling stroll there.
The next day they grabbed three more summits near the far end of Skyline Drive. One required improvisation among boulders, with HF whips mounted to a hiking pole jammed between rocks because there was no good place for a wire. Even with the compromised antenna setup, Chris worked Germany and two stations in Spain on 15m, plus a bunch of domestic contacts. That is what we call making it work. 💪🌍
He also discovered his 20m whip has an internal fault, which he plans to fix… someday. Ah yes, the noble amateur tradition of carrying one slightly suspect piece of equipment while meaning to repair it “soon.”
Total hiking for the week: 14 miles. Total number of summits: 5. Total amount of “winter bonus” irony during springlike weather: considerable. The Hawk hereby notes this as very solid mule behavior.
Dom NC4XL closes in on 1,000 activations 🤯🏞️
Dom NC4XL is getting closer to 1,000 activations, which is one of those numbers that stops sounding like a statistic and starts sounding like weathered legend.
A thousand activations. Just sit with that for a moment.
That is a staggering amount of planning, travel, setup, calling, logging, teardown, and repeat. It is the sort of figure that makes ordinary operators glance at their own activation counts, chuckle softly, and go make a sandwich. 🥪
The Hawk tips a wing. Onward to four digits, Dom.
Pack Mules: mud, miles, and bragging rights 🫏🥾📻
A reminder that the PN&R Pack Mule Award celebrates the hardy souls who combine real hiking with a successful activation — not just a quick roll-up to the picnic table, but the kind where you earn the contacts with boot leather, elevation, grit, and possibly a little muttering. To count, an activation needs a genuine hike in and at least 22 QSOs, because a mule hauls the load all the way. 😎
The current leaderboard has Ed W4EMB out front with 6 qualifying activations, followed by Perry W1GRD with 5. Shane KD9NJJ and Chris N8PEM are tied at 3, with Lucas K9RFL also sitting on 3 and very much in the hunt. The trail is still long, the mud is still wet, and this one is far from settled. 🦅
If you’ve got a Pack Mule-worthy activation, send it in — the Hawk loves a good tale of miles, wire, rocks, sweat, and radio glory.
F5KSE special operation on March 15 🇫🇷📅📻
A heads-up for the calendar crowd:
The F5KSE Radio Club will be holding a portable radio outing on POTA FR-14997, Parc du Pigeonnier in Colomiers, on Sunday, March 15, beginning around 8:00 AM local time.
Location details given include DDFM 31 and locator JN03PO.
If you hear them, give them a call and help light up the logbook. Portable club operations always add a little extra sparkle, and it’s nice to see the international side of the program humming along. 🇫🇷✨
HI5ATA lights up Parques en el Aire 🇩🇴☕🥥🌾
This one has joy all over it.
HI5ATA checked in from Parques en el Aire while celebrating the 83rd anniversary of Bahoruco becoming a province. Having the day free, he went out and enjoyed not one but two parks: DO-0039 and DO-0188.
And honestly, the whole report radiates good energy: parks, celebration, photos, local pride, and the wonderful note that the kids seem to like POTA. That is how healthy programs grow — not just through scores and spreadsheets, but through visible fun, shared culture, and younger eyes getting curious. 🌱📻
Also, the food roll call gets its own applause: coffee, cocoa, rice, and pigeon peas. The Nosey News Hawk is, as ever, in full support of any activation report that remembers the fuel. 🍽️
Howard AE0Z racks up 129 and makes 15m look very inviting 📈🔋📻
Howard AE0Z reports a memorable activation on February 28 from US-4018 Wildwood Lake WMA, his ninthactivation from that park.
He started by checking the spots page, which suggested 15 meters as a promising band. After setting up and powering on, he found the radio already on 15 and immediately heard IW2MJQ calling CQ POTA without even touching the VFO. That, friends, is what we call an auspicious opening. The radio gods do occasionally toss us a biscuit. 😄
Howard stayed on 15m for a good while, then sampled 10m and 17m, both of which produced additional contacts. He also took a look at 20m, only to find it packed to the rafters — at one point seeing six spots on the same frequency. He made a few contacts there, but concluded, in perfectly sensible fashion, that it was easier to head back to 15 than to use the chaos as a character-building exercise.
By the end of the activation he had drained the battery on the radio, tablet, and phone and piled up 129 contacts, boosted in part by a couple of multi-op, multi-park activations he hunted along the way.
He now needs only 44 more contacts for a Kilo in 10 visits. That is some very respectable efficiency right there. 📊🏆
Ingrid K8ZI celebrates International Women’s Day with W9YRC 👩🦰📻🌍
Ingrid K8ZI reports a terrific activation from US-1012 Moraine Hills State Park during the International Women’s Day YL POTA Party, and it sounds like she had an absolute banner outing.
Highlights included a CW contact with England on 17m, an SSB contact with Bermuda on 20m, and the Cayman Islands on 10m. She operated across nine bands, which set a new personal record, and the activation earned her both the Silver Activator Award and the DX Hunter Award. That is what we in the newsletter industry refer to as “not messing around.” 💥
She also notes the pleasure of activating with clubmates from W9YRC, the amateur radio club based in Elmhurst, just outside Chicago. It’s always lovely to see club energy mixed with portable operating — awards are nice, DX is nicer, but camaraderie still wins the prettiest ribbon.
Jason N5NU on contesting plus POTA: why not both? 🏆🌎📡
From Parque Las Haultatas, CL-0324, Jason N5NU delivered one of the more eye-popping reports in this batch: nearly 800 QSOs, all 50 states, and 32 P2P contacts during the ARRL DX SSB contest, all on 10 meters.
That is not just a productive activation. That is a small weather system. 🌪️
Jason describes the weekend as a satisfying fusion of two parts of the hobby: contesting and POTA. Contest callers received the standard “59 100” exchange and went into the contest log, while a separate log on PoLo handled DX hunters and CW contacts. It’s a nice example of making both worlds coexist without too much fuss.
The other star of the story is the antenna: a 4-element OWA yagi Jason has been developing on and off for the last six months. Built with telescoping aluminum elements, it packs into a hiking bag apart from the pool-pole mast and the lightweight 13-foot boom, which breaks into two pieces. He hauled the whole rig up in one trip and set it up on a hillside about 325 feet up, with the antenna only 10–12 feet above ground but benefiting from a steep drop-off toward the U.S.
Even better, the design can also be configured for 12m, 15m, and 17m with additional tubing.
This is exactly the kind of field-engineering madness the Hawk adores: portable, elegant, a little obsessive, and completely vindicated by results. 🛠️🦅
KG9JP beats the odds and salvages the day 🐺😅📻
A Murphy’s Law activation that refused to stay ruined.
KG9JP reports operating from US-4314 and having one of those days where the gremlins clearly clocked in early. First, the mouse was forgotten — though later found in the back of the car, which is somehow both irritating and deeply typical. Then, after 13 QSOs on 15m, station trouble set in and it briefly looked like the activation might be headed for the bin.
But no. After discovering the problem — which KG9JP gallantly declines to specify, and the Hawk respects that silence — the station shifted to 20m, where some operators had said conditions were not great. KG9JP disagreed, got the job done, and came away with a successful activation.
Also in the win column: a successful outing for Gus the new potamobile, which is a very good name and deserves continued service. Add in the cheerful endorsement of Wolf River Coils, and this one becomes a classic “everything went wrong until it didn’t” portable tale. Those are often the sweetest ones. 😎
KP4CUC and the KP4RCE club fight for a frequency on 10m 🇵🇷⚔️📻
Portable radio is not always pastoral bliss under whispering trees. Sometimes it is hand-to-hand combat for a scrap of clear spectrum.
KP4CUC, along with the KP4RCE club, activated PR-0031 on March 7 and ran headlong into the reality of a contest-dominated 10-meter band. They started the day trying to get on the air, found 10 completely overrun, and shifted to 2 meters while waiting for the madness to calm down.
It did not calm down quickly.
According to the report, they were waiting from 9 AM and still scrambling for an opening until around 3 PM local time, when a usable spot finally emerged. Even then, it nearly got snatched away before they defended the frequency and jumped in hard enough to hold it. That, my friends, is a street fight with call signs. 🥊
But the mission was accomplished: the park was activated, the experience was had, and the story was worth telling afterward. Sometimes the victory is not elegance. Sometimes the victory is simply planting your flag and making the contacts anyway.
Mark Gibson on activating with Dom NC4XL 🎥📝📡
What’s it like to activate with Dom NC4XL? Apparently, a bit like working beside an analog supercomputer in a folding chair.
Mark Gibson shared reflections on activating a 3-fer with Dom on March 5 — US-8313, US-4860, and US-4852 — and the contrast in operating style is delightful. Mark mostly uses an iPad for activations. Dom uses paper. Old school, no apologies, and no loss of edge. 📋
Mark notes that when he types a call into the iPad, he gets a name. Dom, by contrast, often already knows the name when he hears the call. Not only that, he may know whether there is another ham in the household and will ask after them as well. Dom also keeps track of how many contacts an operator has had with him and will tell people how many they are away from the next milestone.
That is not mere logging. That is memory palace stuff. That is patron-saint-of-the-hunters behavior.
Mark says it was a treat to work with Dom and that the video may be helpful for others wanting to improve their own activations. And as if that weren’t enough Dom in one newsletter item, Dom also reported his 240,000th POTA QSO, with congratulations going to KY4EJ, Jeff Balfrey, for being contact number 240,000.
We are, once again, in numbers-that-stop-making-sense territory. 📞🤯
Mike KD2ZZA wanders around Florida with a radio 🌴🚙🔥
Some operators have a “productive day” and mean they activated one park before lunch. Mike KD2ZZA has a different scale.
On March 9, Mike reports an 8–9 hour Florida rove covering 11 activated parks. Eleven. In one day. Somewhere a normal person just lay down for a nap reading that sentence. 😵
Mike notes that Florida offered beautiful farms, ranches, historic sites, and unique state parks along the way, though it also served up 85–88°F temperatures, turning the inside of his Ford Explorer mobile station into a rolling sauna. Shade and open windows helped, but clearly this was not one of those crisp little spring outings where you casually sip coffee in a fleece.
The run also pushed him close to the Top 50 Activators group, and he came away with two awards: a Rhino and a Stenogyne flower for 400 unique parks. That’s a day’s work by any fair measure.
His mobile station was a Ford Explorer, Yaesu FT-891, and ATAS-120A antenna, running 100 watts SSB. His backpack setup: Xiegu G90, Spooltenna sloping wire, and 25 feet of RG-316 coax with a choke. Logging support came via an iPad Air running Ham2K Portable Logger through an iPhone hotspot.
In short: heat, miles, multiple stations, multiple awards, and eleven parks. The Hawk does not use the word “beast mode” lightly, but there it is. 🦏🌴📻
Got a tip for the Hawk? 🦅📬
The Nosey News Hawk is always peering over hedges, circling trailheads, and eavesdropping shamelessly on the POTA world — but even a determined bird misses things. 😏
So if you’ve got something worth sharing, send it in!
That includes:
Upcoming activations, roves, club outings, special event stations, award milestones, first activations, unusual operating locations, trail tales, gear triumphs, gear disasters, DX surprises, park photos, and any other tasty bit of POTA gossip fit for publication. If it made you smile, swear, sweat, celebrate, or immediately tell another ham about it, the Hawk wants to know. 📻🥾🔥
Send your tips, stories, photos, and event notices to tips@pota.news and help keep POTA News & Review lively, nosey, and full of good radio mischief.
[Photos this week from Facebook]
