The Radio Amateurs of Canada and Parks Canada have recently announced the Canadian National Parks on the Air (CNPOTA) operating event. The CNPOTA event will run from 00:00 UTC January 1, 2019 until 23:59 UTC December 31, 2019. Its goals are to:
- To promote Canada’s National Parks and National Historic Sites to the world.
- To promote Amateur Radio portable operation creating activity on the air from as many of the officially-listed Parks Canada Administrated units as possible. Also we need people from their home QTH to chase these activations.
All licensed radio amateurs are invited to participate. For more information on the event, including rules and a list of frequently-asked questions, visit the CNPOTA website. Once the event gets underway, the website will have news about activations, a leader board, and a a gallery of photos taken at Canadian national parks.
For those of us who live near Canada, this sounds like a lot of fun.
Thom - W8TAM says
There are some details in the rules, which I think will dramatically impact participation in CNPOTA.
Unlike the ARRL, the RAC has no established QSO database (ARRL: LOTW), but is expecting both activators and chasers to upload to their new system. I suspect that worked for the ARRL during NPOTA due to many people already using LOTW.
The way this is presented means I spend time and money driving to a location to make radio contacts, and my qualification for that effort is dependant on the folks who I contact making a log and uploading it to a yet unproven system. Frankly, I don’t see that happening.
I’m sure I’ll be able to wrangle log files out of the 5 necessary contacts for my Canadian activities to be qualified. I suspect activators without such a plan wouldn’t get qualified by random hams finding them on the air.
The good news for folks activating CNPOTA, is that Parks on the Air has 100% of the CNPOTA locations in the system, and as long as you are within the boundaries of the location (not within 100 yards/meters as in CNPOTA) your contacts count for POTA.