Beaches on The Air (BOTA) Program in Amateur Radio

Beaches on The Air (BOTA) Program in Amateur Radio

Recently there was a Beaches on The Air (BOTA) activation from Mousuni Island by AT23JCB/VU2WB, the West Bengal Radio Club devoted to Amateur Radio. This prompted me to look up more about the BOTA program. As the name implies, it is a global award program in amateur radio, for portable operation from qualifying beaches. Presence of a large amount of salt water nearby makes beaches a good location for portable amateur radio operations, leave alone the aesthetic importance of most beaches.

Unlike SOTA activations, which need a lot of stamina for climbing up the hills and mountains, BOTA is accessible to all, regardless of your fitness level. From the medical point of view, exposure to low levels of sunlight in the mornings and evenings will be useful to increase vitamin D levels with a lot of associated benefits like reducing the chance of fractures in a rapidly aging and less physically active, shack bound amateur radio population! Exposure to too much bright sunlight, especially around noon, could have deleterious effects as well.

While activators can directly enjoy the physical location of the beach, chasers could also enjoy in a lesser way. Often the QSL cards contain pictures of the beach and written remarks on the experience at the beach. Very often BOTA activators produce nice YouTube videos which are good to watch for the chasers as they can enjoy the benefit of visiting a beach virtually. I did enjoy the videos posted in various local groups by the recent BOTA activation from VU land. As per the rules of the BOTA program, it is not essential to operate sitting on the beach sand. Even activation from a car parked on the beach or even from a hotel room on the beach side are permissible. But there should not be a road between the activator and the beach!

Activations are there in all the six continents with a native human population. I was quite surprised to see that the maximum number of participants are from Asia, though the maximum number of points are for South America! Country wise, the maximum number of points are for Chile, with Australia coming next. Nearly thirty thousand beaches have been included in the list currently and they are ready to list another one if you activate an unlisted one. Had a look at the sponsors and managers. I was happy to see VU3IBL on the sponsor list. He has already had four activations in the past two years.