Annual Georgia Parks on the Air Event Returns for Fourth Year
The Annual Georgia State Parks on the Air event returns this year April 18-19. This annual event seeks to have individual hams, clubs, and ARES groups fan out across the state to activate all 52 Georgia state parks over the course of one weekend. Last year, all 52 parks were activated by a collective group of 65 individuals and 10 clubs. Participants activated anywhere from 1 to 14 parks (!) over the course of weekend, making as many as 1200 contacts (for an individual) to 2200 contacts (for a club).
Although the event remains basically the same as in previous years, a few changes have been made to make the event even more accessible.
First, the date was changed to April 18-19 to avoid Easter Sunday and to align the event with the national “Support Your Parks” weekend, meaning that participating in the Georgia POTA event will automatically make you a participant in the SYP event.
Second, a new category of operators, a “team” category, has been added. The purpose of this new category is to allow twosomes (husband-wife, best buddies, old hand + new operator, whatever) to have a fun time operating together. As noted in the rules, “A team is two persons operating physically next to each other at a single park sharing a single transceiver.” Each operator tracks his contacts individually, and the team score will be the sum of each operator’s individual score. Normally, both operators will have identical sets of contacts (such as when doing the standard POTA “Stand by for second operator”). But this is not necessarily the case; two operators may take turns at the transceiver without sharing the mic, or one may do phone and then take a break to let the other do CW or digital, or they may take turns doing digital. No matter. As long as the two operators are sharing one transceiver for the entire event, it’ll work.
Everyone who has participated in the event, whether just for an hour or two or by camping for the entire weekend, has said it was great fun and one of the highlights of the year.
More information, rules, and the registration link are all available on the event website: https://gaparks.org/. And note that, while there’s no limit on how many hams can operate at any given park (subject only to courtesy and good operating practices), there are still parks for which no one has signed up. So look over the list, find a park close by, make plans to activate the park, form a team, or assemble a club group, and head on out. For further information, see the website or email info@gaparks.org.