By Rod Murray VA3MZD
Have you ever been hiking along the Bruce Trail or through a Provincial Park or Conservation Area and encountered another hiker, taking a rest on a bench, speaking into the microphone of some unusual communication device, talking in unfamiliar English phrases, or perhaps tapping out Morse Code?
What you likely encountered was an Amateur Radio operator, a “Ham,” participating in a fairly recent phenomenon called Parks on the Air, (parksontheair.com) or POTA. No longer are Hams hunkered down in their basement radio rooms communicating with other hams near and far, but rather, operating portable radios in parks, making contacts with other Hams, who also happen to be in parks!
In 2016, the American Amateur Relay League in the United States started a program to get radio amateurs out operating in the field, in US National Parks, similar to a program in the UK where Hams make contacts from mountain tops, called Summits on the Air, or SOTA (www.sota.org.uk). Also based on another similar European amateur radio parks program called World Wide Flora and Fauna (www.veff.ca) intended to draw attention to wild natural areas like parks, POTA encourages Hams to set up portable radios in National, State, Provincial and Conservation parks and other public lands, including recognized trails. Most of our Ontario parks and trails have been added to the POTA system, the Bruce Trail being CA-5628 and The Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve CA-0063, for example. In addition, every park or Conservation Area through which the Bruce Trail passes has its own POTA identifier. Parks all around the world are included and every country has its own unique letter prefix, CA for Canada, US for United States, GB for the United Kingdom and so on.
When a radio amateur makes a contact with another ham in a park, called a QSO, they exchange their call signs and enter them in their logs. If both hams are in parks, they are said to be “Park to Park” or P2P, and they both get credit for activating the park they are in as well as hunting the park with which they’ve made contact. The data in their logs is digitized and uploaded to the POTA website (http://pota.app) and Hams can see what parks they have activated and hunted and in which provinces and countries the parks were located. Sometimes you can be making contacts while in two parks at the same time. An example would be hiking on the Bruce Trail CA-5628 while in Mono Cliffs Provincial Park CA-0308. This gives you two points in the POTA database and likewise for any Hams with whom you made contact while you were there.
QSOs are made using a transceiver to send and receive voice transmissions, Morse Code and even digital messages, where a computer or mobile phone is used to exchange the contact data which includes call signs (e.g. VA3MZD), date, UTC time, park number, and a signal report.
It’s a thrill to contact a Ham in another country who is also in a park! One of my most memorable POTA contacts was by voice with a Ham on the Appalachian Trail US-4556 in Georgia while I was hiking the Bruce Trail, atop the Bell Lookout in the Dufferin Hi-lands Section!
Since getting involved with Amateur Radio and POTA in 2021, I have made contacts with Hams in over 1000 parks, in 10 countries, from 20 different parks in BC, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. My goal is to make contacts from each of the POTA Parks in the Dufferin Hi-lands section over the next few years. The map shows many of the POTA Parks in Southern Ontario. Note the ribbon of parks along the Bruce Trail that create an unmistakable pattern.
It’s a wonderful extension to one’s outdoor hiking adventures to contact people who are also having similar adventures on a trail, in a park, on a mountain top or a wilderness lake somewhere close by or perhaps in another province, country or continent. Making Park to Park contacts to the East and West Coasts of North America, the Caribbean and even Europe are quite common. Activating from unique parks, like Signal Hill National Historic Site in Newfoundland, can be quite thrilling, especially if you’ve hiked all the way up to the top do so!