I was hiking in Arcadia down in RI today and had a thought… We could measure an activator’s appetite for adventure by doing something like ((Uniques/Activations)*100). A purely adventurous spirit would have an Adventure Score of 100, and a park-n-barker who is into kilos would have an AS of something like 8.
What’ya think, @w7pfb Paul?
Easy enough to implement. I’ll try to grind the data this weekend. I suspect the high adventure folks will be largely dominated by park-n-barkers who do roves, not people doing a 20 minute activation in the middle of a long walk, but it’s still an interesting way to slice the data.
I’ve been having thoughts along these lines. There are days when I want to go activate ‘new to me’ parks. There are days when I think “Ya know, I should go back to and do an activation”. And there are days where I think “Let’s go back to Crescent Lake and add a couple of dozen toward a Kilo there.” There are even days when I think “Let’s go do a long hike and a W1GRD style activation”. (thoughts along the lines of the last are often ruled down by inadequate progress rehabbing my back problems).
There’s fun to be had in all those things.
BTW I will now be referring to W1GRD style activations (where the activator sits down on a rock in the middle of a hike, quickly whacks out 10-12 QSOs, and then hikes back to the car) as “rock-n-roll’“ activations.
Also, it occurs to me that it would be interesting to plot activators AI against their average QSOs/activation and look at any patterns that emerge.
I also wonder if how activation styles (Park-n-bark, Rock-n-roll) correlate with different modes. I’d guess most rock-n-rollers are also mainly CW ops. But it’s not obvious to me that most park-n-barkers would be, say, primarily SSB or data mode ops.
I LOVE IT! Rock-n-Roll and Park-n-Bark.
I just talked for 90 minutes on Eric N1JUR’s podcast about PN&R activities and got some good response to the Pack Mule. Folks had some really good ideas for enhancements to the site and map, too.
I do all of those, too, in fact yesterday I was at Arcadia in RI, a place I activate quite a bit – just wanted to hike Arcadia, really. Sometimes I’ll swing into my home parks when I have half an hour.
I’m really curious about how SSB plays in. I’ve done my first two SSB activations in the past two weeks – half CW, half SSB – just for something new, and I was socked at how well I was getting out with just 10W into a short vertical. The QSO rate was higher than on CW, I think.
on SSB: if you can arrange to have your signal footprint overlap the eastern half of the US there’s a MUCH bigger hunter pool for SSB than for CW.
to my amazement, there are more than 9600 activators with an AI of 100.
And the minimum AI (from data about three weeks old) appears to be 698 activations in exactly one park, for an AI of 0.1433.
Very interesting.
of those 9600+ one-n-done activators, only ~315 have done 10 or more activations. Hmm.
Seems like we need to bound the set to a minimum number of activations… I busted my nuts last year doing uniques and I think I’m a 66 or somesuch.
And I would defend the bound by saying that by definition one-and-done is not ‘adventurous’.
W7PFB has an AI of 42.11
W1GRD has an AI of 76.67
It’s not like it’s hard to calculate but if someone else wants their AI just ask.
I agree that it needs a minimum or needs to be scaled when there’s a small number of activations.
My score is easy to figure but I don’t know the rules. Either 50 or 100. The English interpretation is “not much of an activator”. Two parks, with only 1 “successful”.
I intend to get out. Just had months of health problems between those 2 parks.
Sometimes it feels like when we finally have time to enjoy all the fun things, we’re getting too old to enjoy them!
My first activation (US-8550), I did on my BMW F800GS. Nothing terribly special just a small dirt road to the campground of the park where I had set up my station. I had already done some small hikes with a group of friends at other parks before I knew what PORA was with my gear, so setting up wasn’t a hassle.
My last of the season was scouting out a few SOTA locations around the Blue Buttes of the Missouri Grasslands. I foresee my G90 being my go to rig, but im also waiting on my QMX to arrive. My CW is vastly improving, yet I’mnot quite ready for long ragchews. Maybe by spring…
Out here in Western North Dakota we have many spots to choose from with miles of open range to hike/bike and camp. The Maah Daah Hey trail traverses the main region of the National Grasslands, connecting both units of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park (I tried getting each separate unit a designations but was denied. And the Maah Daah Hey is not a Trail recognized by POTA).
It also has miles of dirt roads thanks to the oil companies leasing of oil wells. Many have been taken over by the county/state/and feds for more public access. Not a bad deal, really. For me, in riding season, its a blast on the adventure bike.
