Parks on the Air Revisited!
Parks on the Air Revisited!
I had posted on Parks on The Air in Amateur Radio some time back. The program is extremely popular among Ham Radio operators in the United States and I see a lot of posts on Twitter or X about activations. Seeing quite a lot of posts prompted me to read more about Parks on the Air. In fact one of my VU freinds, who is an ex Ham, currently in the United States told me that the program is quite popular there and they see many activations in the nearby National Parks when they go for cycling. He also told me that he is thinking of coming back to Amateur Radio seeing the Parks on the Air activations! I also had a look at the active spots available online. At the time when I checked, I could find 18 spots and as I was browsing, two more were added! I could see that the spots were not restricted to the United States, but there were quite a few in Japan, Germany and even one on Marquesas Islands, which was of course a DXpedition. Frequency and mode of operation have also been mentioned for all spots, which is helpful for those who wish to contact them.
Our VU land co-ordinator for Parks on the Air has mentioned that some activations are being planned in VU land also in the coming winter and the activties can be spotted on the spotting site when they are active. I had a look at the awards available for Parks on the Air as well. There are plenty of awards available for both activators and hunters, grouped into categories like Standard Awards, Advanced Awards, Geographic Awards and Special Awards. It was a Twitter post of a Ham who qualified for a Rover Warthog award which prompted me to look at the various awards. It was the lowest of the Rover awards for activating certain numbers of unique parks in a single UTC day, requiring 5 references. Highest in the category for Rover Lion needed activating 30 references in a single UTC day! That seemed really, really tough to achieve. Unique references awards have been named based on endangered plants and animals list. There are huge number of awards to be sought depending on your taste!