PN&R Awards are a cross between POTA and SOTA

Awards
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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the awards program, and having some really good conversations with several of you about it. Paul and Santi have been especially insightful, thank you.

I’ve been trying to shape the program in POTA’s image to make it easier for people who are doing POTA now to slide into our program. What I’ve realized is that this isn’t the POTA awards program, it’s the PN&R awards program, and it isn’t necessary to carry over the pieces of POTA that I don’t believe align with the core value of POTA News & Reviews: That radio is an excuse to get into and experience some amazing open spaces.

That’s what the reviews on PN&R are all about, exploring the world around us in the context of ham radio.

That’s what the POTAmap is all about, helping people find new places to explore.

That’s what this forum is all about, a place where we can share all the cool places we’re going and the gear we’re using to do it.

Given all of that, I think that the goal of the PN&R awards program is this:

The POTA News & Reviews Awards program is established to encourage hams to explore the outdoors while communicating with other hams worldwide.

Or something like that.

What does this mean practically? It means that there will be no operating category for any activator award that provides for sitting in a vehicle, or using the vehicle for power or support. We’re leaning hard into the SOTA rules here. An open question: Should there be a power limit? I’m thinking 100W max.

Another outcome of the shift is that there won’t be classes of awards that reward sheer volume like the Kilo awards.

There are other programs for those who like to sit in parking lots.

This is POTA for operators who like to be in the outdoors.

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I’d encourage you to not have a power limit, for the same reason I’d suggest not having limits on what sort of antennas can be used. If some young whippersnapper wants to drag a power source and amp outdoors, well, I won’t stop him. There’s a local activator here in WA who has a 500W amp in his car. So he ends up putting 500W into a 1/4λ vertical with ground radials - I would think that would be all mouth and no ears, but whatever floats your boat.

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“no operating category for any activator award that provides for sitting in a vehicle, or using the vehicle for power or support.”……….that will remove 90% of Canadian operators and most of the US Northern State operators for 5 months of the year.

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I won’t be out in the cold activating for these PNR awards for several months. There are, however, many awards in the regular POTA program so I could go activate from a car if I wanted.

There are regular POTA awards for early morning contacts or late evening contacts and a variety of other different variations. If I understand correctly, these are for getting away from the car. All the normal POTA awards can be earned from the car. Seems like this rewards a valuable different activity within the overall POTA activity.

While these awards are not for me, they seem like a great idea.

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Including me! I tend not to hike during the hard winter months. Achieving Pack Mule is going to be tough for a lot of us, which I think is a good thing.

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