Discuss potential Activator awards here. We’ll summarize them in Awards Summary.
What about an award for activation in multiple states over the year? Something like a base award at five different states.
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I’d love to see awards that encourage activators to branch out from only doing activations on 20m.
Yep, I know about the N1CC award. More along those lines, please.
Also awards for using modes other than CW/SSB/FT8/FT4. For example, JS8CALL, psk31, mfsk, Olivia/Contestia.
An award for doing an activation using nothing but satellite relay contacts.
An award for doing an activation that includes an EME contact.
It’s probably a personal quirk of mine, but I really like P2P contacts and especially P2P with both ends operating QRP.
I’d love to see some awards for QSOs at various levels of km/watt, and awards for QRPP activations a la those done by K4SWL, N4JAW, and others.
How about awards based on the duration of an activation, or the aggregate operating time in a particular park? Call it the W7PFB Endurance Award for 100 hours of operating time in a single park.
Perhaps a “Pedestrian Mobile Activation” award?
In many cases, making the verification for earning the award be uploading a video of the activation/QSO might make for some fun YouTube time. I’d sure watch a video where someone pulls off an EME contacts as part of an activation.
Activator awards for:
- activating in the rain/snow/high winds
- activating when the K index is above 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9
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I think there should be activator awards for using vintage equipment in an activation.
Examples:
- the Boat Anchor Award, for using a transceiver made before activator was born.
- the Vail Award, for activations using a key manufactured for wire telegraphy. An extra endorsement is available for hams who do activations using American Morse instead of International Morse.
- the Eniac Award, for keeping the activation log using a computer made before the activator was born. Hams born before November 15, 1971 may earn the award by doing their logs using pencil, paper, and a slide rule but must manually ensure that all decimal points are placed correctly.
How about this, Challenges, where you design your own award? Set the goal, the duration, and somehow on the back end we enable that. We track activity and the popular challenges become pat of the program.
Or, we have folks vote on a quarterly challenge that is run out of PN&R. I like that better, people can still submit challenge ideas and we’ll all vote.
What am I logging with a slide rule? Using it as a straight-edge to draw columns for the log?
Someone mentioned an award to get people off 20 meters.
The best I can think of is multi-band awards. Make 10% of contacts during an activation on a band and you can claim that band for 3-band, 4-, 5-, and 6-band awards. Seven? Ten bands at 10% each is a bit constrained.
It would be simpler with just 1 contact to claim a band but almost too easy for 3 bands. Could also be 10% for a “season” instead of a single activation.
My idea isn’t ready for prime-time but I hope someone can suggest something. My apologies for not finding whoever suggested that awards could encourage people away from 20m.
It’s a slide rule. It works using logarithms, aka logs.
It was a joke. ok, ok, it was a W7PFB sort of joke. My daughter has explained to me that no one gets my jokes even when I’m not high on morphine. She also told me there are two kinds of jokes, the kind I tell, and the funny kind.
I will refrain from telling the joke about how the snakes needed a wooden table so they could have baby snakes. Because, you know, adders can multiply if there’s a log table handy. 
I’m sorry. I’ll try to stop, now.
I really, really like the ‘design your own challenge’ concept. Oh, I like that so very much. I would be so happy to see this, just the thought makes me feel happy.
The twist I would add is this: everyone gets to design a challenge and name it. I design my challenge, and call it, say, the “W7ABD/KC7QXD Memorial Challenge”, in memory of my good friends Jim and Ralph who are now SK. It’s your challenge, you pick the name. No vulgar or offensive names, please.
Now, pota.review tracks your progress on the challenge. It also tracks other people’s progress. Everyone gets to try to beat your challenge. Ada generates a monthly report telling us who has met which challenges, and how much progress various hams have made on various challenges. There are monthly celebrations! With cake! Photos of those who have triumphed! I will persuade my good friend Bryan to post a youtube video of him playing the Horn of Triumph! (full disclosure: the horn of triumph is actually Bryan’s trombone from high school band, and traditionally he plays it at dawn at the end of his dock in Lake Washington)
Just a reminder that we have standards here…
So to riff on @W1ETC 's thought, how about single-band awards?
Groan. Logarithms went over my head entirely. I used the slide rule to multiply, divide, and find roots. Logs were a fascinating irrelevancy at my level of math.
It was the IBM 1130 that lured me away from Morse and Hallicrafters in the high school physics lab into the study of EBCDIC and Hollerith. Sometimes modern isn’t enduring.
By 1971 I was back to using a slide-rule in class because I’d completed all the computer classes offered. No calculators allowed.
I suppose I can activate a park and keep the log on an 028 card punch?
Especially for 60m, 80m, 160m, 630m, 2200m.
Adding multi-op awards as a placeholder.
Also adding that Bob @Pota143 and I just talked for a bit, he stressed the idea of time-limited awards, so work ten WMAs in thirty days, that sort of thing.
Bob’s got about every award that POTA offers, twice, and said that he doesn’t even look at them any more (hope I’m putting the right words in your mouth, Bob!).
Annual resets and time-based challenges will help a lot to keep interest up, I’m thinking.
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SOTA 10m challenge last year was pretty popular/successful.
A fellow on SOTA reflector asked if adding public transport notes to summits would be helpful.
Seems to suggest possible awards for getting to parks without private car/truck. (Uber?)
Would have to be honor system as far as I can figure.