This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
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it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Here
we go, welcome to Amtok Live, call in, let's
talk, Neil's your guide, Amtok Live. It's time
for HamTalk Live episode number 300. We made
it to 300. It's a Parks on the Air summer recorded
on July 1st, 2022. I'm your host, Neil Rapp,
WB9 VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of HamTalk Live. Tonight, we're joined by Vance
Martin in the 3 V E M to talk about some big
news items coming from Parks on the Air. And
last episode, Mitch Ehrenstorf, AD0HJ, and Andrew
Northam, KE8FZT were here to talk about Walmart
parking lots on the air and got a chance to to
get in on three passes. I did get one whole contact,
but had like a hundred. For my point total because
of all the bonuses. So that was kind of cool.
But anyway Hopefully you you had a chance to
participate in one Plota. There's a lot of fun
a lot of fun pictures and videos out there of
people and shopping carts and everything else
So if you missed that show you can listen anytime
at ham talk live comm or on your favorite podcast
app or over on YouTube and Don't forget you can
catch ham talk live rebroadcast on Saturday afternoons
on WTWW 5085 AM and they usually run that about
330 p .m. Eastern Time so I'll be back with Vance
right after this word from Tower Electronics
right here on HamTalk Live. Thanks for choosing
Tower Electronics. How may we help you today?
We have PL -259s. We have in -connectors. We
have SMA adapters. We have BNC adapters. What
can I show you today? Where's the tower? Well,
we don't actually have a tower with us, but we
have all kinds of things you can use with a tower.
We have power poles, antennas, soldering irons
and meters. Where's the tower? Ma 'am, that's
the name of our company. We can't haul towers
to all the ham -fests across the country that
we visit, but we have almost every connector
and adapter you would need to connect your antenna
that's on your tower. I don't think there's a
tower back there. I really don't. Tower Electronics.
Visit us at a ham -fest near you or call 920
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.com. Sorry, one thing we don't have is a tower.
And on the Tower Electronics HamFest schedule,
July 9th, they'll be in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
That's on the south side of Milwaukee. July 30th,
they'll be in Winchester, Indiana. And August
6th, they'll be in Elkhart, Indiana. And of course,
a couple of weeks after that, they'll be down
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we don't have to mow it. You're listening to
HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp. And welcome back
to Ham Talk Live. Tonight, we're talking some
Parks on the Air with Vance Martin in three VEM,
and he joins us on the Orlando Amateur Radio
Club and Hamcation Zoom line. You'll hear a lot
about Vance and what's going on with Pota. So
here we go. Vance Martin, N3 VEM, became aware
of ham radio as a teenager when he stumbled onto
some of his dad's old radio books, but didn't
become a ham until April 2014, but since then
he's been doing all kinds of things. He passed
his extra exam in 2015, been working on CW. He
spent a lot of his early years on the air from
a mobile station. Now he's got his nice shack
at home, but still does a lot of mobile stuff.
And he's big into parks on the air and the portable
operations. So Vance, thanks for coming back
on the show to talk about a busy summer for Pota.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you were willing to have
me. There's all kinds of exciting stuff going
on right now. So we've got all kinds of exciting
Pota things to share. Yeah, well summer is definitely
upon us. We've been out of school here for about
a month out here in the Midwest and I was just
actually at a park just a little bit ago. I was
doing a satellite activation trying to get get
used to the the new handheld and get everything
ready to go before we take off to to uh... put
a six yankee in front of my call sign here in
a couple weeks but uh... uh... want to make sure
everything was working right and then luckily
it was so so i was out at a park and and and
thought you know we've got all kinds of questions
we can ask about this so we'll we'll talk about
that a little bit later on in the show but you've
got some uh... some big things coming up i know
you you asked uh... several of us out here in
the in the ham radio media to be presenters for
Some plaques and and for this big plaque event
that's coming up So tell us all about the big
summer poda plaque event You bet. Yeah, we're
coming up on the the time of year where basically
since 2018 I think was the the first year we
did it Where every summer in conjunction with
what we call our seasonal support your parks
events. We've been giving away plaques. So The
first year we did it there was just two plaques
that we gave away One for the activator that
made the most contacts and one for the hunter
that made the most contacts And the event was
very popular, so it grew from there. So this
year, the event comes up on July 16th and 17th,
so it's right around the corner. And the list
of plaques has now grown to, I think we're up
to 17 plaques that are available. So it's for
basically each for activators and hunters. There's
plaques for most contacts, most voice contacts,
most CW, most digital. And then we have a rover
and a chaser, which is similar to like the VHF,
UHF grid square rover crowd. So just moving between
parks instead of moving between grid squares.
And then we have a club category for clubs that
go out and do activations, which there's one
new bit of information around clubs that I'll
share then. And then the newest plaques for this
year, the plaques that are brand new for 2022.
are the DX plaques by region. So we have a DX
plaque for activators that make the most contacts
from region one, from region two outside of the
contiguous 48, and then from DX region three,
and then there's a hunter companion for each
of those new DX plaques. So those are the fun
new categories this year. And then with the club
plaque, The thing that we like to share this
year, there's been a lot of activity around clubs.
Parks on the Air has always been very popular
as an individual activity, but more and more
clubs have been getting engaged. So just within
the last month or so, we actually put out a POTA
guide for clubs. So for clubs that are planning
on going out and chasing down the club plaque
this summer, we really do recommend that they
go to the resources section at pota .app. Check
out that guide for clubs because it gives some
hints and tricks and kind of the nuances to To
activating with a club so that folks can can
be successful that are they're having a go at
that So so that's the the actual event itself.
We're expecting a pretty big turnout I if I had
to guess I'd say there will probably be just
based on past trends will probably be at least
a thousand different parks put on the air by
Somewhere between 800 and a thousand different
activators. So it'll it'll definitely be a very
busy weekend We might hit the hundred thousand
Q. So mark in one weekend maybe where we're kind
of creeping up on that, you know every every
year and And yeah, it'll be busy and it'll be
a lot of fun And then once the event is over,
the thing that's new this year that we that you
had alluded to is we actually decided to do essentially
an awards style show. So when it comes time to
announce these winners, we have a whole slate
of. presenters lined up so it'll be you know
like Oscars or Emmys style where myself and another
one of our Volunteers Matt N3 NWV who most folks
know from like the POTA 101 videos that we put
out We'll be acting as the MCs. And then we have
a whole slew of folks who are going to be actually
announcing each category's winner. So we've got
a couple of you representing AR Newsline. We've
got Josh from Ham Radio Crash Course, Colin from
ICQ Podcast, Steve from Temporarily Offline Ham
Radio, Santiago from Ham World Online, Charlie
from Red Summit RF, Alan from the Pride Radio
Group, Rhea from Rhea's Shack. Michael from KB9
VBR antennas Kyle from AA0Z ham radio Shane and
crew from the ham radio clubhouse. We've got
James the ham radio adventure guy Mike K8 MRD
radio stuff. We've got Larry from ham radio live
and WRMI shortwave and we've got George and friends
from the ham radio workbench podcast and then
Jason Johnston from ham radio 2 .0 So we have
a whole a whole crew of folks that are gonna
basically help us announce those winners So that'll
be a lot of fun the final date for the awards
show isn't officially slated But we're targeting
two weeks after logs are due is when we'll be
scheduling that right now. So that's all the
fun stuff around the plaque event. It's going
to be an exciting July. Well, it sounds like
a great time to get out and operate from a park
and a chance to bring home some hardware. So
you've got to like putting another plaque on
the wall. So that's good. Option there for you
the July 16th and 17th and yeah, if you're if
you're Winning the club category. I'm sorry,
but it's gonna be Paul and I presenting so Well,
just go ahead and apologize in advance so But
yeah, it sounds like you've got the usual cast
of characters there. So we'll be happy to help
out with that Well, you know, it's time to get
out, you know, it's warm here in the U .S. and
great time to get out and throw an antenna in
a tree and get on the air. There's a lot of work
that has to go on behind the scenes and just
today as we're recording this, it'll be a few
more days before it's released, but as we're
recording this, it's the first day of a new website
feature that's going to help out some of that.
So tell us about the new feature. You bet. Yeah,
today at I think it was 1200 UTC, so 8 Eastern,
where I am, our new self -service log uploader
went live. So that's been probably the most requested
feature for the website for a number of years,
and we've been working on it for a while. We
did several rounds of beta testing, and earlier
in the week we hit the 7 ,000 logs uploaded in
the new system. via the beta testing groups.
So put a few final polishing touches on it and
launched it live to the public this morning.
So now when folks log into poda .app, under your
menu on the right hand side of the screen, you
have an option for my log uploads and you can
see the history of all of your logs that have
been uploaded since the beginning of poda. And
then there's just a file dialog box right there
that you can open up to upload your ADiff logs.
So basically the same logs that have been getting
sent to the email addresses, you can now just
drop right in that box and they'll zip right
in. The development team has come up with some
pretty slick features within that that people
will find as they use it. You can upload multiple
logs at once. So if you go and do a rove and
you have six logs, you can drop six logs in at
once and click the button and within a few minutes
you'll see the stuff starting to update on the
website. So that's been exciting news this morning.
And even in just the few short hours it's been
live, we're up to, I think we're approaching
600 logs uploaded already today in that new system.
So it's... off to the races which will be a big
benefit this summer for the plaque event because
everybody can go out do their activations drop
their own logs in right away and then just wait
to see if they won yeah anytime you can auto
-magically update all those logs. That's always
a great thing. So that should pay many dividends
for you all having to move all those logs around
everywhere and kind of automate things to where
they'll just auto -magically happen. So that's
a cool thing. And again, remind everybody of
that web address. Yep. It's just poda .app. So
pretty easy one to remember. Yeah, so pota .app.
There we go. All right. Well, and then, you know,
last time you were on the show, we were talking
about your POTA update and you're recording a
monthly update, I believe it is. And we've been
running some pieces of that over on Amateur Radio
Newsline. And I know many other outlets have
been running it as well. So you've got a little
bit of an update on that. So give us the POTA
update update. Yeah. So the POTA update update,
and this is a, this is hot off the presses. So,
you know, I've been involved with POTA since,
well, really since, since the beginning. So I
basically have ended up with my hands in just
about every pot there is. So I was actually looking
to offload some work to some of our fellow volunteers,
and one of our volunteers that helps out is MattN3NWV,
who actually has his own YouTube channel and
things. So I was able to, without regret, pawn
off the responsibility of recording the monthly
updates onto Matt. So a lot of people that are
familiar with Pota already know Matt's face,
they know his voice, because he recorded all
of our POTA 101 videos for how to do things.
So he's a very familiar face to the POTA crowd
that watches YouTube also. So he'll be the new
face of the POTA updates starting in... August
so the next update that comes out will be the
last one that I record and then Matt's gonna
take the reins of the Pota updates from there
Which I will admit we'll probably actually help
the quality of the updates because he Set up
to do some he set up to do some real nice audio
and video recording So as much fun as it was
I guess for people to kind of watch me in my
basement shack here doing the updates The the
production quality on those updates should should
jump up quite a bit when Matt takes it So I'm
looking forward to a little bit more free time
and he's looking forward to taking the reins
on that Yeah, and you know, you're you're a lot
like me you want to take on everything yourself
and get everything in and You know and get your
hands into everything and at some point it's
like, you know, you got a back off You got a
you got to let some stuff go and sounds like
this will be a good move for for all of you to
update the APOTA update. So we'll look forward
to hearing those and get you some time to work
on some other things because again, kind of like
me, you've always got something cooking. So we'll
check in with those and I know we'll continue
to have those over at Amateur Radio Newsline
as well. Alright, well we're gonna take a break
and when we come back with Vance, we'll talk
a little more parks on the air right after this
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Oh yeah, you're talking ham radio baby. You're
listening to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp. Welcome
back to HamTalk Live. Be sure you check us out
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just been
trying to work through my 13 colonies here trying
to get those last two bonus stations over in
Europe. So we'll try that again here after we
finish up some more parks on the air with Vance
Martin and 3 VEM. But first, You know what time
it is. It's Joke of the Week time. Now it's time
for the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the Week.
The part of the show where Rick tells us a ham
radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of
the Week is brought to you by QRM Labs. Now here's
Rick Garrett in 9GSU with today's HamTalk Live
Joke of the Week. I've been doing a lot of bicycle
mobile operating recently, but I've got a problem.
Every time I stop and get off my bike, it falls
over. I guess it's just too tired. This has been
the Ham Talk Live, ham radio joke of the week
with Rick Garrett in 9GSU. Tune in again next
week for another joke from Rick. We're back with
Vance Martin in three VEM talking about the big
summer of Pota It's parks on the air and all
the summer activities We've got the plaque event
coming up the 16th and 17th the new upload feature
to the website That we've been talking about
and all these cool things that the Pota people
have been putting together so Just you know for
someone who's not big into the the parks thing
yet what exactly counts as a park like i said
a while ago i was i was trying to do a satellite
activation make sure all the gear was working
because i'm going to be doing a portable operation
and so i i went down here to union park uh just
down the road is that going to count as a park
Well, it would depend on if it's in the official
list or not. So, the quickest way for folks to
check to see if a park counts and is in the list
is just at the main website, prota .app, at the
top of the website there's a search box and you
can just start typing in the name of a park and
see if it pops up. You can also go to the menu
and browse the park list by country and state
and things like that, but the search box is the
easiest thing to use. But if you're looking for
general guidelines, the program focuses on parks
that are federal or state entities. that run
them. So most of your national parks are included
in the system. Most of your state parks are included
in the system. Depending on the state some of
your like state fish and wildlife management
Associations those parks and facilities are in
the system So the the general rule is it has
to be either state or federally owned and operated
And if you happen to come across a park in your
area that is a state owned or federal owned that
isn't in the system There is a mechanism some
email addresses that are available at parks on
the air calm for who the mapping representatives
are by state. So then you can ping that person
and say, hey, this looks like a state park that
doesn't look to be in the system. And then they
get to go off and do their homework and see if
it's one that we somehow missed. And then they
work on getting them added in. So that's the
general scoop for which ones are and aren't parks
in the system. Okay. Well, I just went to the
website here and punched it in and Union Park
was not on the list, but it's a local it's a
local park so not not too surprised but so maybe
maybe we've got that clarified here you know
and then the other thing that we want to talk
about with with summer being here is is safety
you know i was outside and and the grass is all
crunchy because it hasn't rained in a while and
we've had all these crazy heat indexes and I
don't know if you followed us at Yoda here a
couple weeks ago. We were at Kings Island and
a hundred and five heat index. It was brutal.
Being portable out there for 12 hours, but you
know, there's, there's some safety stuff that
you need to keep in mind when you're activating
a park. One of which is some, some dihydrogen
monoxide. You bet yeah, yeah the the most important
chemical compound of them all when you're when
you're out in and portable And yeah, the other
thing that I tell folks, you know aside from
the water is is shade So if you're gonna be setting
up for you know, any extended period of time
make sure you have water Make sure you have shade
make sure you have some snacks There's a lot
of what I would call standard outdoor safety
stuff But the thing that we also have to keep
in mind as ham radio operators is even though
our activity as portable radio operation is generally
within the permitted uses of public parks, it
is an activity that's not normal to most people.
So most other folks that would be wandering around
in the area curious what we're doing, they might
not be aware that For something that is wireless.
We have got ridiculous numbers of wires involved
So so we always remind people like hey if you're
setting up in a park where there could be other
people Do something to make sure that folks aren't
going to trip over your coax and wires and antenna
stuff You know use little yellow flag tapes or
set up, you know Just a little off the beaten
path so that you don't have to worry about that
and then the other thing that that I recommend
to folks. Recently there's been a lot of talk
about the new kind of RF safety evaluation rules
for stations. So for a portable operator, we
probably don't think about that a whole lot,
but the math isn't that hard to do. You can go
online and grab sheets to do it. And most of
us have a pretty standard kit that we set up
when portable so it's usually pretty easy to
say like well I travel with this radio it's never
going to do more than 20 watts and I have a 50
foot length of coax that I use and I always use
the same dipole antenna so you can usually figure
out kind of your safe distances and then I say
you know print that out on a little card or something
and just you know stick it in your box. It would
probably never actually become an issue but it's
a good idea to do. And then also along the lines
of safety Matt in three NWV that I talked about
He likes to point out and he actually had us
add to the club guide That when you're doing
a club activation really to keep the RF safety
stuff in mind, too you know if you're you're
doing a club activation and you've got some radios
running and Somebody wanders too close to the
end of a dipole. You don't want to accidentally,
you know cause RF burns to the general public
that Wandered by and touched a wire because they
didn't know what it was. So so there's a lot
of that that Type of stuff that you should be
considering as well Yeah, you just made me think
back again to my park this afternoon, you know
carrying around the big the purple arrow antenna
and I got a couple of strange looks, you know
carrying around this big thing Uh, and then we've
got, you know, Wimploda coming up here starting
tonight. So, you know, it's like, you know, we're
going to get all kinds of crazy looks. So yeah,
make sure you, you keep the, keep those around
you safe as well. Um, some, some flags, uh, you
know, something to let them know where those
trip hazards are. That's a, that's always a big
thing. So. Well, it sounds like you know with
with summer, you know having another month or
two left here we've got plenty of opportunities
to get out and and Activate a park and and work
some parks from home So it sounds like a lot
of fun and you know, like I said chance to bring
home some hardware with the plaque event so Um,
Vance, thanks for coming on the show and letting
us know what's going on with parks on the air.
And I'm sure we'll do it again soon. You bet.
Yeah. Thanks for having me. And I'm looking forward
to seeing what kind of turnout we get, uh, coming
up here on the 16th and 17th. All right. Sounds
great. Uh, let's see, you know, uh, July 17th
is, is my ham aversary. I didn't just now thought
of that. So. We'll have to celebrate with a park
on the air, maybe. That sounds like a perfect
plan to me. There you go. All right. Well, that
is a wrap for this edition of HamTalk Live. I'd
like to thank my guest, Vance Martin, N3 VEM,
and everybody out there in cyberspace for listening
and invite you all back next time. For a list
of all of our upcoming guests, go to hamtalklive
.com. So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG,
saying 7 -3. 75 and may the good DX be yours.